Army secretary nominee advances out of Senate Armed Services Committee

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted today to move Dan Driscoll's Army secretary nomination forward, according to a committee release.

That comes after a relatively amicable nomination hearing for the Iraq War veteran and former Yale Law School classmate of Vice President JD Vance on Jan. 30, where Driscoll pledged to bolster the organic industrial base and invest in directed energy for countering unmanned systems.

He also promised to look into the fatal crash between an inbound American Airlines flight and a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter conducting a training exercise near Reagan National Airport, which happened the night before his hearing, Jan. 29, saying he would work to “make sure that never occurs again.”

Driscoll didn’t make it through the hearing entirely unscathed, as one particular testy moment took place when Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) informed him that in their one-on-one meeting prior to his hearing, he “performed very poorly.”

Duckworth quizzed him on the number of personnel in an average brigade combat team, accused him of filibustering and demanded him to share what FM 3-0, the Army’s field manual, is for.

“See this is working, cause you’re doing your homework,” she said, when he answered correctly. “Which you did not do [before] because you couldn’t name a country in Africa where we have troops when I asked you.”

Driscoll’s “nomination was immediately reported to the floor following the Committee’s action,” the release says.