Army halted weapon development and pushed tech to soldiers faster: 2024 in review - Breaking...

In what has turned out as Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s fourth and final year as the service’s top civilian leader and Gen. Randy George’s first full year as chief of staff, the duo shed high-profile modernization programs, revamped others and pushed tech down to soldiers at a faster clip.
Wormuth, slated to wave goodbye to her post as the 25th secretary of the Army in January 2025, largely spent her tenure keeping the service’s high-profile modernization portfolio intact. This year, though, the axe fell on several initiatives starting with the early February aviation shakeup that ended development on the next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), kept General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase longer, and shelved legacy Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems.
“We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release at the time. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”