VIDEO: Capito Questions Army Leaders on Soldier-Inspired Innovation and Training in West Virginia

To watch Senator Capito's questioning, click here or the image above. WASHINGTON, D.C. –Yesterday, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a leader on the Senate Appropriations Committee, participated in a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing with Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and Acting Chief of Staff of the Army General Christopher C. LaNeve to consider President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request for the Army, as well as the Department’s priorities to rapidly develop and field new technology to the warfighter. HIGHLIGHTS: ON THE EAST COAST WARFARE CENTER: Senator Capito: “You stated in your opening statement that the Army's Combat Training Centers need to provide training that is tough, realistic, and relevant to modern threats. As you know, much of our current training infrastructure is dated, over-scheduled, and concentrated in Western desert environments. That's why I supported the funding for the East Coast Warfare Center. It is in former industrial sites in southern West Virginia, to create a more agile, low overhead cost, government and industry accessible test bed in challenging terrain in our southern part of our state. Secretary Driscoll, will you commit to having the Army review how the East Coast Warfare Center could complement your Combat Training Center reform, and how it could fill gaps in threat representative training, mission rehearsal, counter-UAS, and electronic warfare? Can you describe where you think this would fill the gaps for you, this East Coast Warfare Center?” Secretary Driscoll: “Current training environments, like you said, Senator, are inadequate for the risk and the threat, and if you look back to Ukraine and you look at how difficult it is to move and to avoid being seen and to be dispersed enough to survive. The number and variety of training centers that we can create, where we can layer in things like electronic warfare and contested electromagnetic environments is crucial for our country. And so, what you're describing as part of a constellation of new solutions would be, I think, from my understanding, pretty impactful.” General LaNeve: “Ma'am, anytime we can provide a spot for our soldiers to see something new for the first time, to innovate there, to learn how they would react in different environments, different settings, it’s good for us in our readiness building. I commit as well as the Secretary to reviewing that.” ON CATALYST PATHFINDER PROGRAM: Senator Capito: “I think one of the things, and you and I talked about this, Mr. Secretary, was the Catalyst Pathfinder program where from the bottom up, so to speak, any innovative solutions can be created by the users of the technology or the users of the warfare. Soldiers always have really good ideas because just like in private industry and manufacturing, there are improvements made at the lower level for stress fractures […], during manufacturing of certain materials. I would like to talk about that. Last year's NDAA included language requiring the Catalyst Pathfinder program to be included in the Army divisions, and to be incorporated. I mean things with 3D printing and maker-spaces. Do you have a comment on that?” Secretary Driscoll: “I think this is the future of how we are going to learn the most, is from our soldiers. I say this as somebody that got out of the military after 3.5 years, did the fancy school thing, worked in finance, have been around talented people, but I would bet on the American soldier every single time innovating us to the most successful outcome. So, these maker-spaces you're talking about. We have done them, not haphazardly, but with less of a strategic enterprise level plan than we should have. We are actively investing more time into creating a plan to scale across all of our divisions because I am in wholehearted agreement.” # # #