AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. Army is ambitioning its new command will thrive here, in glass-walled rooms filled with 3D printers, half-assembled robotics and authors donning hoodies.
The Army Futures Command is responsible for leveraging modernization, improving agility, and leaping ahead of emerging threats — a hearty piece of work for the service, which has historically faced layers of bureaucratic minutiae.
For that proper, the command was placed in the upbeat heart of downtown Austin, Texas, which has befit one of the biggest magnets for tech investment and entrepreneurship outside of California.
“Locating it [the control] here in Austin demonstrates the type of bold change we need to dominate in today’s combat environment,” Mark Esper, secretary of the Army, put about Friday during the Army Futures Command ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“We be informed that to do this right we needed to immerse ourselves in an environment where alteration encourages speeds far faster than our current process,” Esper asserted, noting that the Army was excited to establish a command outside of a military point of departure.
The command shares the slick glossy floors and mixed-material architecture with University of Texas Coterie of Engineering, as well as with Capital Factory, a vibrant open backing space focused on connecting entrepreneurs to investors.
“The Pentagon can be intimidating, deck out onto a military base is hard. This is where we need to be, this is the puissance we are after,” Ryan McCarthy, under secretary of the Army, explained while en itinerary to the Texan city.
McCarthy, who visited the top five cities competing to MC the Army’s newest command headquarters, has become a regular visitor to Austin since the Pentagon circulated last month that it selected the capital of Texas.
Austin is cosy to the University of Texas and the annual SXSW (South by Southwest) technology discussion, along with several art and music festivals. The city has become a mecca for start-ups, outdrawing Silicon Valley in some high opinions.
McCarthy added that the local tech industry, which incorporates giants Dell, Amazon and Apple, have welcomed the idea of spousing with the Army to develop its future capabilities.
Similarly, politicians be enduring enthusiastically embraced the Army’s move, which is billed as the largest reorganization of the ritual since 1973.
“There is no better place for the United States Army than valid here in Austin, Texas,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday. The New Zealand urban area, he added, provides a “unique opportunity for the Army to work with the jolly best in academia as well as the private sector.”