“CFTs (Cross Functional Teams) and Army Futures Command will always have a place on my schedule and the chief’s schedule,” Esper said. Over time, he said, “it becomes a routine… the expectation not just for AFC and the CFTs, but for future service secretaries and future chiefs of staff.”

“There are ways to be innovative in the Army,” retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr said. But you have to protect the innovators from the institutional culture of the Pentagon: “You can send them someplace else, like Austin.”

“We were never above probably a total of eight people,” the aviation Cross Functional Team chief, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, told me. “We’re not this big colossal thing, we’re a lean, mean organization.”

Manned air and ground forces would work together and protect each other along the front line, while relatively expendable drones and missiles go deep into enemy airspace.

This internal budget battle in the Army could cede the actual battlefield to high-powered Russian and Chinese jammers, electronic warfare advocates fear, with the same lethal consequences for US troops that Ukrainian forces have suffered since 2014.

“Recent guidance from Army senior leadership has us looking at, emphasizing, Bradley replacement,” Miller told reporters in a conference call. “What we have now done is moved to accelerate our optionally manned fighting vehicle, the Bradley replacement, and we want to be able to focus on that.”

The last time the US Army tried to modernize it spent $20 billion buying the Future Combat System, which was cancelled as it foundered. Is the Army repeating the same mistakes with its Big Six?

“You’ve got to remain open to change, you’ve got to remain flexible, you’ve to remain accessible,” Army Secretary Mark Esper told me. “That is the purpose of this command.”

There is real uncertainty whether such things as robotic tanks and high-speed scout helicopters are possible on the Army’s timeline. But if there’s one area where a high-speed approach can work, it’s training simulations, where the Army can piggyback on the rapid development in commercial gaming.

“It’s very encouraging,” McCarthy said. “It gives you high confidence in some of these investments we’re going to make….We’ve got these decisions coming up here by the middle of the summer for the POM 20” — the five-year budget plan (Program Objective Memorandum) for 2020-25.