{"id":879908,"date":"2026-10-12T17:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T17:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879908\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T17:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T17:34:18","slug":"weve-drowned-ourselves-in-buzzwords-acting-us-army-secretary-gives-sermon-like-first-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879908\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019ve drowned ourselves in buzzwords\u2019: Acting US Army secretary gives sermon-like first speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year ago, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll<\/a> eviscerated bureaucratic delay and acquisition roadblocks in a profanity-laced public address<\/a>. <\/p>\n

On Monday, his successor, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle<\/a>, took things back to the biblical book of Genesis in his first public speech to troops since assuming the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cControlling land is fundamental to humanity,\u201d he told a packed ballroom at the Association of the United States Army\u2019s annual meeting<\/a>. \u201cThe Army does it better than anyone, and it\u2019s on us, the people in this room, to keep it that way. Humanity\u2019s connection to the land is biblical, and it even transcends faith, since the dawn of creation, as recorded in Genesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telle, who previously served as the assistant secretary of the Army for public works, enlisted the Old Testament to preach a message of simplicity of purpose, invoking the sacred ground of past battlefields and the Army\u2019s long history of protecting American territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes me wonder why the United States Army, again the most lethal and dominant institution in human history, struggles to explain in common terms who we are in 2026, who we really are,\u201d Telle said. \u201cWe\u2019ve drowned ourselves and the public in buzzwords, strategies, slideshows, government acronyms and bureaucratic doublespeak \u2014 things that are advertised as revolutionary. But the Army\u2019s value proposition is actually too fundamental for goofy corporate jargon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Telle\u2019s rhetorical approach differed from Driscoll\u2019s, he quickly made it clear that the Army was holding the course set by his predecessor, who resigned Aug. 31 over growing disagreements and friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n

\"\"Adam Telle, acting secretary of the Army, poses for an official portrait on Sept. 15, 2026 (William Pratt\/U.S. Army)<\/p>\n

Telle hailed the Army\u2019s work to streamline acquisition<\/a> and reduce roadblocks to getting soldiers the gear they need, citing the Army\u2019s work to reduce service \u201cfiefdoms\u201d from thousands to a few newly named portfolio acquisition executives. <\/p>\n

The service, he said, is moving away from what he called \u201ccompound self-interest,\u201d or bureaucratic risk avoidance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re empowering a small number of teams to address our biggest mandates to make difficult trade-offs around speed, manufacturability and supply chain realities early, often and together,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is how you generate compound soldier-interest. That\u2019s the opposite of compound self-interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

He demonstrated the Pentagon\u2019s new small drones online marketplace<\/a>, likening it to Amazon.com<\/a> and showing how soldiers could access it on their smartphones and leave reviews for future soldiers based on how well their gear worked. <\/p>\n

Likewise, he compared the Army\u2019s new online test range reservation system<\/a> for industry, initiated under Driscoll, to the hotel reservation site Booking.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The site, he said, is like a \u201cwhite-glove concierge service that allows innovators to get a reservation on the range faster.\u201d <\/p>\n

Officials have previously said the new system can accelerate companies\u2019 range-testing schedules from as much as 18 months to 30 days.<\/p>\n

Telle also reasserted the Army\u2019s commitment to what the military has called a \u201cright to repair,\u201d<\/a> meaning that it will demand open-architecture systems from all future vendors and limit industry\u2019s ability to control intellectual property and charge a premium for fixes and spare parts.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we\u2019re sprinting to field low-cost interceptors with open architecture built in from the outset. We need these low-cost interceptors to shoot down missiles and drones headed our way,\u201d Telle said. \u201cWe know we need thousands of these things, but they have to seamlessly connect to our network.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the data is trapped behind proprietary moats, and we have to call a contractor to decode the data, our superintelligent command and control doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d He continued. \u201cEverything we buy from here on out will have open architecture; it\u2019s non-negotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u2018manufacturing rodeo\u2019<\/p>\n

Next, he said, the Army will launch a new project: a \u201cmanufacturing rodeo,\u201d to be held early next year, that will put the service\u2019s industrial base suppliers in competition with each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve invested a lot in our organic industrial base. Now we need to strain it in the nation\u2019s larger industrial base,\u201d Telle said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to stress-test the supply chain, the manufacturing processes and see where it breaks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telle did not provide specifics, such as the precise mechanism for competition or the challenges in which companies would be asked to compete.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to learn by doing, not by sitting around postulating at the Pentagon,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to find the weak links. We\u2019re going to make them stronger, and we\u2019re going to keep iterating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telle did not refer to Driscoll or allude to the fact that the service has no current Army secretary nominee. He did, however, address the \u201cbeautifully chaotic\u201d system of American government, saying that while it wasn\u2019t efficient, it centered human freedom and allowed for creativity and innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States Army laid the groundwork for that, and will continue to guarantee that it\u2019s never extinguished. Meanwhile, the other team\u2019s human spirit, its imagination, is bounded and boxed and regulated,\u201d Telle said. \u201cThe United States of America is where the magic happens, where brilliant people turn science fiction into science fact, and you can\u2019t flip a switch to turn that on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Army\u2019s work over the course of history has been so fundamental, so successful that the American spirit it unleashed is now the most important and potent force we have,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\u2019s a potent force that the other guys don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year ago, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll eviscerated bureaucratic delay and acquisition roadblocks in a profanity-laced public address.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[204877,283657,23,11827,369818,41477,26711,4424,4427,38431,4428,4423,369819,3,1572,369820,369821,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-879908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-acquisition-reform","tag-adam-telle","tag-america","tag-army","tag-ausa-2026","tag-biblical","tag-circulated-army-times","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-circulated-military-times","tag-dan-driscoll","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-manufacturing-rodeo","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-small-drones-online-marketplace","tag-test-range-reservation-system","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}