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UT Austin and T2COM

The U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) is the four-star Army headquarters for force design, force development and force generation: recruiting soldiers, training them, writing doctrine and deciding what the future Army looks like and fields. T2COM merged two predecessor four-star commands, Army Futures Command (AFC), which had been headquartered in Austin since 2018, and the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which had been based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. The merger carries out the Army Transformation Initiative announced by Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll.

T2COM was activated on October 2, 2025 in the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium on the University of Texas at Austin campus, in the same ceremony that cased the colors of Army Futures Command. TRADOC had been inactivated six days earlier at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. A T2COM briefing slide shown at an Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) dinner in Killeen in April 2026 listed a $12.2 billion budget, more than 100,000 personnel, and a presence in every U.S. state, five territories and 25 countries. Earlier published estimates of the command's size ran as high as 350,000.

T2COM sits inside the UT Austin Nexus and is one of the anchors of the defense layer described on the Golden Dome Texas Corridor page.

Austin Locations

The Army kept AFC's Austin footprint when it formed T2COM. Its Austin-area sites are:

• Headquarters: 15th and 19th floors of the UT System Building, 210 W. Seventh St., downtown Austin.
• Round Rock office space: procured by AFC in the northern suburb in Williamson County.
• Army Software Factory: the Rio Grande Campus of Austin Community College (ACC), within walking distance of the headquarters, the Texas State Capitol and the UT Austin campus.
• Capital Factory: the downtown startup hub at 701 Brazos, which hosts the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and AFWERX (the Air Force's innovation arm) among the federal units in its Center for Dual-Use Innovation.

The Futures and Concepts Command, a three-star subordinate, remains at Fort Eustis, part of Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. AFC leaders chose downtown Austin over an Army post in 2018 to place the command close to startups, venture investors and UT Austin engineering research, and T2COM has kept that arrangement.

Command Leadership

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed Hodne in early April 2026, in the same week that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George stepped down at his request and the chief of Army chaplains was removed. No public reason was given, and the Army began processing Hodne's retirement request. An Army spokeswoman said Brown would perform the duties of commander until the Senate confirms a new four-star commanding general. Brown was still leading the command at the August 2026 change of responsibility.

Subordinate Commands

T2COM has three subordinate commands, each carrying forward a mission area from AFC or TRADOC.

Announced plans under Brown include making Fort Jackson, South Carolina the central hub for additional military training and a partnership with Arizona State University for a new Center for Army Learning and Innovation.

UT Austin Research Hubs

UT Austin's partnership with AFC, established in 2019, made UT the hub for two of AFC's five research programs: Robotics and Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). UT also took part in the Hypersonics, Artificial Intelligence and biodefense hubs, which were directed from other institutions. The partnership continues under T2COM with the same research areas, facilities and faculty leadership.

UT also coordinates and manages the Robotics and PNT research carried out at other participating universities. The UT System Board of Regents funded the hubs when the AFC partnership was established and committed to additional faculty hires in the related research areas. T2COM's training and doctrine mission now draws on the same robotics and PNT research base, since new capabilities developed there have to be written into doctrine and taught in Army schools. Related federal research channels at UT are covered on the UT Austin Federal Program Coordination page, and the engineering pipeline on the UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering page.

The Army Software Factory

The Army Software Factory (ASWF) stood up in January 2021 under AFC at ACC's Rio Grande Campus and is now a T2COM unit. Col. Vito Errico, its founder, serves as director. ASWF rotates active-duty soldiers and Army civilians through cohorts in which they write production software for the Army and build technical skills. The soldier-developers then return to operational units and take the skills with them, unlike a contractor that delivers code and leaves.

On January 12, 2026, the Army and the Austin Community College District signed a 10-year Intergovernmental Support Agreement (IGSA) extending the partnership and bringing ACC academic expertise into ASWF operations. The signers were David Dentino, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of the Army; Lt. Gen. Brown for T2COM; and ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart.

Capital Factory and Texas A&M

AFC set up its headquarters in downtown Austin among startups and venture investors by design. Capital Factory, the Austin startup accelerator and investor, has hosted DIU and AFWERX offices for years, and AFC worked with that network on day-to-day programs. T2COM continues the arrangement. Under Hodne and then Brown, the command's stated intent has been to grow its Austin personnel and to tie transformation work directly to training, which AFC and TRADOC could not do as separate commands.

The Texas A&M University System is the second university partner. On October 12, 2019 it broke ground on the $130 million George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex (BCDC) at its RELLIS Campus in Bryan, funded with $50 million from the Texas Legislature and $80 million from the Texas A&M System Board of Regents. The complex houses the Army Futures Command Research Center, and an Army cooperative agreement provided up to $65 million over five years for Texas A&M research on hypersonics, lasers, hypervelocity-resistant materials, coordinated air and ground vehicles, and resilient networks for autonomous vehicles. Its facilities are:

• Innovation Proving Ground: an outdoor test site for autonomous aerial, ground and subterranean vehicles.
• Research Integration Center: shared space for researchers, students, industry, government and the military.
• Ballistic, Aero-optics, and Materials (BAM) facility: hypersonics and directed energy research, including a one-kilometer above-ground tunnel.

T2COM now works across the UT System and Texas A&M System partnerships, the ACC agreement, Capital Factory and other Austin companies, and installation-level partnerships across the country. The Army presence north of Austin is covered on the Fort Hood Defense Cluster page.

Project Convergence

Project Convergence is the Army's annual capstone experiment, bringing joint and allied forces together with new equipment, tactics and technology in simulated high-tempo combat. It is the main test venue for transformation concepts before they enter the institutional training pipeline. Hodne described T2COM's mandate as turning warfighting concepts into war-winning capabilities at speed and at scale.

Constraints and Failure Modes

Related Coverage: UT Austin Federal Program Coordination | UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering | UT Austin CompSci & AI Programs | UT Austin Industry-Academic Partnerships