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Transformation_in_Contact

3 min read

Transforming in Contact (TiC)

TiC is the Army’s mechanism for modernizing through operational units rather than through requirements documents. Started in 2024, it puts emerging technology into deploying and training formations, lets them change tactics and organization around it, and treats the resulting feedback as the requirement. It is the practical successor to the Cross-Functional Team soldier touchpoint, and it is how the Army_Transformation_Initiative turns “continuous transformation” from a slogan into a schedule.

FieldValue
TypeModernization and experimentation initiative
Began2024
ProponentT2COM and Futures_and_Concepts_Command, executed by operating force units
RelatedArmy_Transformation_Initiative, Mobile Brigade Combat Team conversions, Project Convergence Capstone

How it works

The premise is that the Army cannot write a valid ten-year requirement for a technology that turns over every eighteen months, so it should stop trying. Instead:

  1. Issue commercially available or prototype equipment to a real formation, often one preparing for a combat training center rotation or a deployment.
  2. Let the unit change its organization, tactics, and staffing around the equipment rather than forcing the equipment into the existing structure.
  3. Evaluate at a combat training center rotation under an opposing force.
  4. Feed what survives into force design and into a requirement, and drop what does not.

The distinguishing feature is the second step. TiC treats organization and tactics as variables, not constants, which is why it produces DOTMLPF-P change rather than just materiel change. The Mobile Brigade Combat Team design, the conversion of Infantry Brigade Combat Teams to smaller formations with organic drones and different mobility, came out of this line of work.

Progression

PhaseScope
TiC 1.0 (2024)A small number of brigade combat teams, including the restructuring of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. Focus on small UAS, counter-UAS, and electronic warfare at brigade and below.
TiC 2.0 (2025)Expanded to two divisions, two Stryker brigade combat teams, two armored brigade combat teams, and Army National Guard formations. Combined arms and division-level operations.
2026Extended into the Army Reserve and into Joint Readiness Training Center rotations as a standing rotation construct rather than a one-time event.

Why it matters

It is the fastest path from a product to an Army user. For a company with a fielded or near-fielded capability, getting into a TiC unit is materially quicker than getting into a program of record, and it produces the operational evidence a requirement needs. Under the post-ATI model, that evidence is what moves money.

It changes what the Army will buy. The systems that do well in TiC are the ones a unit can absorb without a program office: commercially supportable, low training burden, repairable forward, and not dependent on a proprietary sustainment tail. Systems that need a fielding team and a contractor field service representative per battalion do poorly.

It is the demand signal behind the ATI dated goals. The commitments to unmanned systems in every division by the end of 2026 and counter-small-UAS in maneuver platoons by 2026 are being executed through TiC-style fielding, not through a traditional acquisition milestone sequence. Track TiC unit lists to anticipate where that equipment goes.

It generates real losses. Equipment that fails a combat training center rotation gets dropped, and the Army has been willing to drop it. TiC is a competitive selection mechanism as much as a fielding mechanism.

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