Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is looking to leave the Pentagon around the end of 2026 after a months-long power struggle with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a departure that could cut short an ambitious modernization push.
Multiple sources told The Hill that Driscoll, a former venture capitalist and ally of Vice President Vance, has been eyeing the door for weeks. A former White House official and a separate source familiar with the discussions both pointed to a departure timeline around year's end. A U.S. official granted anonymity confirmed hearing a similar window.
A third source familiar with the situation framed the timeline differently, saying Driscoll has long communicated that "between 23 and 24 months is the lifetime of an Army secretary in the Trump administration." Driscoll's spokesperson declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported on his expected exit.
If Driscoll walks away by December, he will leave behind an Army in the middle of a sweeping transformation effort he personally championed, and a service branch whose top uniformed leader was fired by the man Driscoll clashed with.
The Senate confirmed Driscoll in a 66-28 vote on Feb. 25 of last year. He arrived at the Pentagon with a clear agenda: improve living conditions for service members, modernize equipment, and study how Ukrainian forces used commercial technology on the modern battlefield.
Driscoll formed a close working relationship with Gen. Randy George, then the Army's chief of staff. Together they rolled out the Army Transformation Initiative, which aimed to "deliver critical warfighting capabilities, optimize our force structure and eliminate waste and obsolete programs." A core focus was integrating drones and artificial intelligence into Army formations.
Sources described Driscoll as aggressive in getting buy-in from general officers for his agenda. That approach produced results, but it also brought him into direct conflict with Hegseth over influence inside the department.
The friction flared late last year when President Trump picked Driscoll to negotiate directly with Ukrainian officials in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. That assignment gave the Army secretary a portfolio well beyond his lane, and the simmering tension with the defense secretary intensified.
In early April, Hegseth ousted Gen. George from the Army chief of staff role. The firing drew criticism from Republican lawmakers, George had been central to the modernization effort Driscoll was driving, and his removal looked to many on Capitol Hill like a power play.
Trump and Hegseth replaced George with Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army's vice chief of staff and a former military aide to Hegseth. LaNeve has met with senators in recent months, but his confirmation remains in question over objections from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The specific nature of those objections has not been made public.
George's departure did not just reshuffle the org chart. It removed the uniformed leader who had co-authored Driscoll's transformation plan and who had backed a battalion within the 173rd Airborne Brigade that was studying and incorporating lessons from overseas wars, including the use of unmanned systems in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
On Thursday, The Hill reported that the Army is planning to phase out that very unit, the one inside the 173rd Airborne Brigade that had been pulling battlefield lessons from Ukraine and applying them to American formations. Gen. Chris Donahue, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, had backed the battalion's work.
The timing is hard to ignore. Driscoll and George built a modernization agenda around exactly this kind of capability, learning from a live war to give American soldiers better tools. Now George is gone, Driscoll is heading for the door, and the unit doing that work is being shut down.
What remains of the Army Transformation Initiative under LaNeve's acting leadership is unclear. So is the status of Driscoll's Ukraine negotiation role, which sources described as a flashpoint in his relationship with Hegseth but which has not been publicly updated.
George's firing had already rattled Republican members of Congress who saw the general as an effective reformer aligned with the administration's own stated goals. LaNeve's bipartisan confirmation trouble adds another layer of instability. If Driscoll departs on the reported timeline, the Army will have cycled through its top civilian and uniformed leaders within roughly a year, during a period when the service was supposed to be transforming for the next fight.
None of the anonymous sources who spoke about Driscoll's departure indicated whether he had formally communicated his plans to the White House or to Hegseth. The absence of any on-the-record statement from either Driscoll or the Defense Department leaves open the possibility that the timeline shifts, or that Driscoll's exit accelerates.
The Pentagon can survive personality clashes. What it cannot afford is losing the people who were actually building the force the next war demands, and dismantling the work they started before anyone can prove it wrong.
