AustinIO > UT Austin Nexus > U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM)

UT Austin and T2COM

The U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command, known as T2COM, is the largest command in the U.S. Army with approximately 350,000 personnel under it. It was activated on October 2, 2025 at the LBJ Auditorium on the University of Texas at Austin campus, in the same ceremony that cased the colors of Army Futures Command. TRADOC, the Army's training and doctrine command, had been inactivated six days earlier at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. T2COM merges the two predecessor four-star commands into a single unified headquarters responsible for force design, force development, and force generation, with the broader mandate of accelerating Army transformation under the Army Transformation Initiative announced by Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll.

The Austin headquarters at 210 W. Seventh St., on the 15th and 19th floors of the UT System building, was retained from AFC. Additional Austin-area office space sits in Round Rock. The Army Software Factory operates from the Rio Grande Campus of Austin Community College in downtown Austin. Some operations remain at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, primarily under the Futures and Concepts Command three-star subordinate. The decision to keep the headquarters in Austin rather than consolidate at a traditional Army installation reflects what AFC leadership called the bet on proximity to the technology ecosystem; T2COM has continued that bet rather than reversing it.

Command Leadership

T2COM was activated under Gen. David M. Hodne, who was promoted from lieutenant general to four-star general at the activation ceremony, having previously served as deputy commanding general for futures and concepts at AFC. Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond S. Harris assumed responsibility as command sergeant major, having most recently served in the equivalent role at TRADOC. Hodne was removed from command in early April 2026 by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alongside two other general officers, without specific reasons given publicly. As of the most recent confirmed reporting, Lt. Gen. Edmond M. Brown is performing the duties of commanding general until a new four-star is Senate-confirmed. Brown has been deputy commander since November 2024, when the command was still AFC.

Subordinate Commands

T2COM operates with three subordinate three-star commands, each carrying forward a major mission area from one of the predecessor commands.

Subordinate Command	Origin	Function
Combined Arms Command	Inherited from TRADOC	Combined arms training, doctrine development, leader development, the Army's centers of excellence and Army University; ensures combat-ready training across the institutional Army
Futures and Concepts Command	Inherited from AFC's Futures and Concepts Center; based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia	Future warfighting concepts; force design; emerging technology integration; cross-functional team coordination across modernization priorities
U.S. Army Recruiting Command	Brought under T2COM as part of the merger	Active and Reserve recruiting; talent acquisition pipeline; integration of recruiting with the broader transformation initiative

UT Austin Research Hubs

The UT Austin partnership with AFC, established in 2019, designated UT as the hub for two of AFC's five research programs: Robotics and Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). UT also participated in the Hypersonics, Artificial Intelligence, and biodefense hubs that were directed from elsewhere. The partnership continues under T2COM with the same research focus areas, the same UT facilities, and the same faculty leadership. The Robotics hub operates out of the renovated Anna Hiss Gymnasium robotics laboratory on the main campus. The Assured PNT hub draws on Professor Todd Humphreys's Radionavigation Laboratory and the Center for Electromechanics on the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, with the higher-security work conducted in dedicated space at Pickle.

UT's role in the partnership goes beyond running its own research; UT also coordinates and manages research conducted at other university campuses participating in the Robotics and PNT hubs. The UT System Board of Regents allocated funding to anchor the hubs at the AFC partnership's establishment and committed to additional faculty hires in the related research areas. The relationship deepens under T2COM rather than restructuring; transformation, modernization, and the integration of new capabilities into training and doctrine all draw on the same robotics and PNT research base that AFC anchored.

The Army Software Factory

The Army Software Factory (ASWF) is now a T2COM unit, originally stood up in January 2021 under AFC at the Rio Grande Campus of Austin Community College. The ASWF rotates active-duty soldiers and civilians through cohorts where they develop production software for the Army while building deep technical proficiency. The model differs from contracted software development in that the soldier-developers continue carrying the technical capability back to the operational force rather than delivering code and disengaging. On January 12, 2026, the Army signed a 10-year Intergovernmental Support Agreement with Austin Community College District extending the partnership and embedding ACC academic expertise in ASWF operations. The 10-year IGSA is one of the more concrete demonstrations of the Army's commitment to the Austin innovation footprint under T2COM.

The ASWF location at ACC's Rio Grande Campus places it within walking distance of the T2COM downtown headquarters, the State Capitol, and the UT Austin campus. The colocation pattern, four-star command headquarters plus soldier-led software development plus university research partnership plus innovation-ecosystem proximity, is what AFC built and what T2COM is designed to extend.

The Capital Factory and Innovation-Ecosystem Footprint

AFC's original choice to set up its headquarters in downtown Austin among startups and venture capitalists rather than at a traditional Army installation was deliberate. Capital Factory, the major Austin startup incubator and venture coordination hub, has hosted Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and AFWERX offices for years; AFC's coordination with that ecosystem was operational, not just symbolic. T2COM continues the pattern. The command's stated intent under Hodne and now under Brown's acting leadership is to expand personnel into the Austin footprint rather than reduce it, and to integrate transformation with training in a way that the predecessor commands could not while operating separately.

The integration with Texas A&M is the parallel substrate. AFC broke ground in October 2019 on a $130 million research facility at the Texas A&M System's RELLIS Campus in Bryan. The Bush Combat Development Complex on RELLIS continues operating and serves as the regional non-Austin anchor for the broader Texas defense modernization base. T2COM operates across both the UT and TAMU System partnerships, plus the ACC academic partnership, plus the Capital Factory and broader Austin private-sector relationships, plus a network of installation-level partnerships across the country.

Project Convergence and Transformation Tempo

Project Convergence is the Army's annual capstone experiment integrating Joint and Multinational forces with new equipment, new tactics, and new technology in a high-tempo simulated combat environment. Project Convergence Capstone 5 (PC-C5) was conducted at the National Training Center in California in March 2025, the last under AFC, and continues under T2COM as the primary venue for testing transformation concepts before they enter the institutional training pipeline. T2COM's mandate is explicitly to compress the cycle time from concept to capability to fielded force, what Hodne called turning warfighting concepts into war-winning capabilities at speed and at scale. Project Convergence is the operational test bed for that compression.

Constraints and Failure Modes

Command-leadership instability. The April 2026 removal of Hodne by the Defense Secretary, less than seven months into T2COM's operational life, demonstrated that command leadership at the senior level is subject to political-appointee discretion in ways less constrained than in many other federal organizations. Acting commander Brown is operating effectively, but the underlying instability of command tenure is now a known feature rather than a hypothetical.

Organizational consolidation execution risk. Merging two large four-star commands with different cultures, doctrines, and institutional histories is operationally complex. The merger was announced in May 2025 and executed in a five-month window, with the activation ceremony falling on the second day of a federal government shutdown that affected approximately 90% of AFC personnel through furlough. The transition is functional but not yet stable.

Geographic distribution friction. T2COM's Austin headquarters, Round Rock office space, ACC-based Software Factory, and Joint Base Langley-Eustis Virginia operations require coordination across two regions. The Futures and Concepts Command three-star at Langley-Eustis is geographically separated from the Austin headquarters, and the operational integration across the Atlantic time zone gap is an ongoing coordination challenge.

Funding-environment exposure. T2COM operates within the broader federal budget environment, and its mandate to accelerate transformation depends on continuing program-level funding for the modernization priorities inherited from AFC. Continuing resolutions, government shutdowns, and appropriations volatility all affect the pace at which T2COM can execute its mandate, with the October 2025 shutdown providing an early demonstration of the friction.