WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke with the Honorable Daniel Driscoll, Secretary of the Army, and General Randy George, Chief of Staff of the Army, during a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing. Sen. Tuberville spoke with the top Army officials about the quality of recruits in the Army, ways to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Quantum Computing in the military.
Read Sen. Tuberville’s remarks below or on YouTube or Rumble.
ON RECRUITING REQUIREMENTS IN THE ARMY:
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on your recruiting.
I know how hard that is in my former profession, getting the right people. General, are we keeping our qualifications, discipline, values, and physical requirements when we recruit these people?”
GEORGE: “I think we definitely are, Senator, and one of the things that we have been having discussions [on] is how we’re raising our standards because of what, you know, what we’re having [come] in and doing that. So, we’ve had fewer at the Future Soldier Prep Course. We’re gonna keep that as an option. We do have times where we have some really brilliant soldiers out there that maybe need to spend a couple of weeks getting in a little bit better shape to join our formation. And that’s what that’s for, but [we are] really pleased with the path that we’re on.”
TUBERVILLE: “As long as we’re putting them through that, and they can handle it—”
GEORGE: “Yep.”
TUBERVILLE: “Again, I’ve been through that before. A lot of people need to get in better shape.”
ON AI IN THE ARMY:
TUBERVILLE: “In Secretary Hegseth’s memo directing the Army Transformation Initiative, it states that the Army will begin enabling AI driven Command and Control by 2027. Secretary Driscoll, how will the Army be using Artificial Intelligence to help decision making?”
DRISCOLL: “Senator, we think of the Army as kind of two discrete functions when General George and I talk about it. One is like a large enterprise business that moves people and things across the country and the world. The other is hopefully an incredibly lethal killing machine and war fighting machine. And so, I think AI and Generative AI will meaningfully impact both spaces. The first thing we’re working on is creating a data layer that basically allows for our people and our things and our sensors to all communicate in near real time. On the war fighting function, once you can have that occur, you can layer-in Generative AI for things like fires targeting, or air and missile defense—it’s incredibly valuable. I would estimate that we’ll start to see that at scale in kind of 12-18 months. On the Army and enterprise business side, we’re incredibly optimistic. We have 200 plus enterprise systems right now that are oftentimes siloed. Oftentimes we’ve had software created just for us that we have to maintain that is decades out of date, and we think Generative AI will be able to help us with all sorts of tasks in the coming months. I’m excited to announce, or just give credit to the recruiting team, [that] they’ve onboarded a very common CRM—customer relationship management—tool called Salesforce. Generative AI can be applied to a lot of the things that we do as we recruit soldiers and bring them into the Army.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. You know, right outside the gate at Redstone Arsenal—Secretary, have you been there yet?”
DRISCOLL: “Would you mind repeating that?”
TUBERVILLE: “Have you been to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville yet?”
WICKER: “What state is that in?”
TUBERVILLE: “That’s in Alabama.”
DRISCOLL: “I have.”
ON QUANTUM COMPUTING:
TUBERVILLE: “Okay. If you haven’t, we need to get in there. And by the way, you’re making decisions and transforming our military. I’m good with that. You’re actually cutting some contracts and things in my state. If it helps [save taxpayer dollars], I’m all for it. And so, we’ll work with you as much as we can.
But right outside the gate at Redstone, a partnership between Davidson Technologies and D-Wave have completed the assembly of a quantum computer system that should be soon complete [with] its calibrations and readiness tests. Secretary, how can the Army leverage these new systems in successfully implementing its transformation and optimize the future the right way?”
DRISCOLL: “Senator Slotkin and I were at a dinner a couple nights ago talking about quantum computing. And what quantum computing is going to be able to do to help our ability to process information as human beings is otherworldly. It [can be used for] something as simple as convoy routes for transportation all the way up to—you could probably start to plan out where should you put air and missile defense systems and how would they react in near real time to threats. And so, any sort of innovation like that we are completely supportive of.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. A lot of good things going on, especially with AI. I hope we all understand too that for AI and all the future big tech stuff, we’re gonna need energy, big time. China doubles our energy every three years that we have in this country. We’re way behind, and we can talk about all these technologies that we want. Unless we have energy, which is gonna be, should be, a national security threat, then we’re gonna have huge problems. If you agree with that, Secretary.”
DRISCOLL: “Yes.”
TUBERVILLE: “General?”
GEORGE: “Yes, Senator. I do.”
TUBERVILLE: “Yeah. I would hope we start talking about it a lot more. Make sure that, you know, with all these things we got coming down the pipe that we have the availability to number one, be able to build them and number two, have the energy to run all of our data centers and mega data centers in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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