Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down after 18 months in the job, the White House confirmed Monday, becoming the latest senior military leader to leave the Trump administration amid friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Driscoll was the youngest Army secretary in U.S. history, sworn in at age 38 after the Senate confirmed him by a 66-28 vote in February 2025. An Iraq War veteran who served as an armor officer from 2007 to 2011, he later became a tech investor and was an adviser to Vice President JD Vance, whom he met at Yale Law School. As secretary, he took on an unusually public diplomatic role, including involvement in talks aimed at ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.
During his tenure, Driscoll drew on a background in venture capital and private equity to push what he called the Army Transformation Initiative, an effort to cut bureaucracy for defense contractors and speed the development of drones and counter-drone systems. He testified before Congress on the overhaul as recently as May, and had represented the Army in talks with Mexico's military on unmanned-aircraft cooperation.
No official reason was given for his departure, but tension with Hegseth had been widely reported for months. Driscoll was an ally of Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff whom Hegseth pushed out in April, and people close to Driscoll say he was troubled by that ouster and by the subsequent rollback of a drone-modernization program he had championed.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly praised Driscoll as "highly effective in advancing President Trump's agenda," pointing to his work on what she called historic military operations and on negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
"It's unfortunate that somebody like that can't last in this administration."
Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger
Not everyone framed the departure so warmly. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said Hegseth was "cultivating a culture where dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance." Driscoll's exit extends a pattern of turnover among senior military leadership under Hegseth, who has removed or sidelined several top generals since taking office. No successor has yet been named, and the Pentagon has not said when a nomination might be sent to the Senate.
