In lockstep with the Army Transformation Initiative, the 25th Infantry Division is replacing some of its howitzers with High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers to boost lethality and survivability in the Indo-Pacific, division leaders said.

“As part of [the initiative] we are integrating in HIMARS systems," Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, said July 15 during an Army media roundtable. "What this means for the division ... is that we are integrating in long-range precision fires that increases the ability to extend our operational reach. … It also provides us a platform that we can better protect ourselves with, because we can shoot and then we can rapidly … move to an area that affords us better protection.”

The division is replacing eight 105 mm and six 155 mm howitzers with 16 HIMARS launchers, according to a DoD news release. The first HIMARS arrived on July 14, and fielding the new equipment will take about six weeks, Evans said. This is the first time the division has had HIMARS capabilities organic to the division artillery brigade, according to the release.

About 70 soldiers trained in indirect fires volunteered to switch MOSs—from 13B, or cannon crewmember, to 13M, multiple launch rocket system crewmember, according to the news release.

Once the soldiers train on the HIMARS, which will take about three weeks, they will return to their units and begin training for a validation exercise in the fall at the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii.

There is “excitement inside of our formation to be a part of something new for our Army," Command Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry, the division’s senior enlisted leader, said during the media roundtable.

“There’s been a large drive from these NCOs and junior enlisted service members,” he said. “They want to stay in the Pacific; they want to stay in Hawaii. But more importantly, they want to be a part of the cutting edge of warfighting for our nation.”

Working with HIMARS enables soldiers to make ground-up innovations, Evans said. “This is a campaign of learning that is focused on one thing, warfighting readiness, and it works best in terms of innovation when this new technology is given to soldiers at the lowest level, and [the Army] allow[s] them to iterate on it, work on it in a field environment and then provide bottom-up feedback,” he said.