UT Austin and T2COM

Overview

Army Futures Command and TRADOC Merged

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 fields. It merged Army Futures Command (AFC), headquartered in Austin since 2018, with the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, under the Army Transformation Initiative announced by Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll.

The command was activated on October 2, 2025 in the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium at UT Austin, in the same ceremony that cased the AFC colors; TRADOC had been inactivated six days earlier. 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 state, five territories and 25 countries.

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

Footprint

Austin Locations and Leadership

AFC chose downtown Austin over an Army post in 2018 to sit near startups, venture investors and UT engineering research. T2COM kept that footprint, while the three-star Futures and Concepts Command stays at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed Gen. David Hodne in early April 2026, the same week Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George stepped down at the secretary's request. No public reason was given. Lt. Gen. Edmond Brown performs the duties of commander until the Senate confirms a new four-star commanding general.

Structure

Subordinate Commands

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

Partners

UT Austin, Software Factory and Texas A&M

UT Austin's 2019 partnership with AFC made it the hub for two of five AFC research programs, Robotics and Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), and UT took part in the Hypersonics, Artificial Intelligence and biodefense hubs led elsewhere. Robotics work runs in the renovated Anna Hiss Gymnasium; PNT runs through Professor Todd Humphreys's Radionavigation Laboratory and the Center for Electromechanics on the J.J. Pickle Research Campus. The UT System Board of Regents funded the hubs and committed to added faculty hires; the partnership continues under T2COM. See UT Austin Federal Program Coordination and the Cockrell School of Engineering.

The Army Software Factory (ASWF), founded in January 2021 by its director Col. Vito Errico, rotates soldiers and Army civilians through cohorts that write production software and then return to their units. On January 12, 2026, the Army and ACC signed a 10-year Intergovernmental Support Agreement (IGSA), signed by David Dentino for the Army, Lt. Gen. Brown and ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart.

Capital Factory connects the command to Austin startups through its DIU and AFWERX offices. The Texas A&M University System broke ground in October 2019 on the $130 million George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex at its RELLIS Campus in Bryan ($50 million from the Texas Legislature, $80 million from A&M regents). It houses the Army Futures Command Research Center, an Innovation Proving Ground for autonomous vehicles, a Research Integration Center, and the Ballistic, Aero-optics, and Materials (BAM) facility with a one-kilometer tunnel; an Army agreement provided up to $65 million over five years for hypersonics, lasers, materials and autonomy research.

Experiments

Project Convergence

Project Convergence is the Army's annual capstone experiment with joint and allied forces, and the main test venue for new concepts before they enter Army schools.

Risks

Constraints

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• Fort Hood Defense Cluster
• UT Austin CompSci and AI Programs
• UT Austin Industry-Academic Partnerships
• Austin Aerospace and Space Corridor