Inside the Army highlights

Some must-reads from this week's edition of Inside the Army:

1. The Army must modernize to ensure its readiness for future conflicts, but it cannot achieve this absent a "complete overhaul" of the existing acquisition system, according to the nominee for secretary of the service.

Full story: Esper seeks dramatic changes to Army acquisition

2. Over the next 18 to 24 months, the Army will pursue a trio of network initiatives to bolster its mission command capability and standardize systems across the entire service.

Full story: PM Mission Command tackles three key efforts over next two years

3. As the Army shifts its focus toward a potential near-peer adversary, the service needs access to technical data packages to better maintain its equipment, according to the head of Army Materiel Command.

Full story: AMC's Perna committed to 'breaking the paradigm' on contracting

4. The Pentagon successfully demonstrated a hypersonic glide vehicle Oct. 30, lofting an experimental payload on a rocket from Hawaii that -- during its ultra-fast, unpowered flight more than 2,000 nautical miles to the Marshall Islands across the upper reaches of the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean -- verified technological advances relevant to a potential future U.S. military hypersonic strike system.

Full story: DOD flies experimental hypersonic payload; claims success