The nominee to be the next undersecretary of the Army said that if confirmed, he will focus on “disciplined resource management” and ensure that soldiers “never have to experience a fair fight.”

In testimony May 8 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider his nomination, retired Col. Mike Obadal said he would commit to focusing on readiness, transformation and the responsible management of resources, “all in order to ensure that our soldiers never have to experience a fair fight.”

His decades of Army service coupled with his private sector experience have prepared him well to be the Army’s second-highest civilian official, he said. Obadal, who served as an Army special operations aviator for 27 years, is a 1996 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, where he majored in international studies. He is currently an executive at defense tech company Anduril Industries.

His industry experience, he said, “was critical to my understanding of the defense industrial base, the challenges of the military acquisition process and the widening time gap between the commercial innovation cycle and the military’s adoption of emerging technology.”

If confirmed by the Senate as Army undersecretary, Obadal said he would focus on the business of Army installations, budget, acquisitions and manpower, areas he believes are “direct contributors” to national security and his key priorities of readiness, transformation and responsible resource management.

“In a time of crisis, from large-scale combat operations to disaster relief, our Army is the machine to which the nation turns,” Obadal said, emphasizing the need to transform rapidly and deliberately “instead of in response to the actions of external forces.”

Addressing the recently announced Army Transformation Initiative, part of which involves merging Army Futures Command, which was stood up as a major Army command in 2018, and Army Training and Doctrine Command, Obadal acknowledged that the move has “generated a lot of interest.”

“When we look at why Army Futures Command was pulled out [of Training and Doctrine Command] to streamline [acquisition and transformation] requirements, I think that the Army has learned quite a bit over those seven years,” Obadal told the panel. He added, “I am confident that the Army can utilize the lessons learned ... and apply them.”

Obadal cautioned that it will be up to Army leadership to guide the new “merged command” by stipulating “very specific outcomes and milestones to meet and define how they are going to streamline the requirements in the interest of the soldiers and the defense industrial base.”