WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., encouraged the Secretary of Army nominee Dan Driscoll to, if confirmed, look into speeding up the construction process at military installations like Redstone Arsenal.
Driscoll is an Army veteran and previously worked as an adviser to Vice President J.D. Vance.
At the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Driscoll, Tuberville brought up military construction at Redstone and said it was taking too long to complete.
“The military warehouse is going to cost almost $56 million and it’s going to take 48 months—four years—to build this,” Tuberville said. “Where the FBI facility is going to cost $40 million and take only basically a year and a half. We (have) got a problem. Okay? How on earth does this make any sense?”
Driscoll said the issue made his “blood boil” and vowed to look into it.
“The Army has a limited budget to begin with,” Driscoll said. “We have to be good stewards of the American taxpayer’s dollars. And when we are not, it is both the taxpayer and the soldier—and these soldiers are my friends—it is my friends that live in these barracks and raise their families there.”
Tuberville also questioned Driscoll on the need to have good pay for military recruits to incentivize them to join. He asked Driscoll about the new standards for pilot training.
“Fort Novosel in my state of Alabama, you know, we train all the vertical lift Army pilots, as you well know,” Tuberville said. “…I wanna get your thoughts on what you think about the new curriculum for a flight school that the Army has proposed.”
Driscoll said the Army’s aircraft system needs to be more advanced to fight new threats and said the training also needs to be improved to keep up with those advancements.
“I would wanna get briefed on this and do a deep dive with the team to figure out how we are going to position ourselves and what training we need for the next one day to five years until we can get to a better state,” Driscoll said.
A committee vote for Driscoll has not been scheduled yet.