Senate confirms Driscoll to be next Army secretary

The Senate voted 66 to 28 today to confirm Dan Driscoll to be the Army's next secretary.

Driscoll was a senior adviser and Yale Law School classmate of Vice President JD Vance. He served in the Army from 2007 to 2011, including a deployment to Iraq in 2009 with the 10th Mountain Division.

More recently, Driscoll ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in North Carolina in 2020, owned a consulting practice and served as chief strategy officer for OnCall Physician Staffing.

President Trump nominated Driscoll in December, and he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee Jan. 30. During the hearing, Driscoll emphasized the need to stockpile critical munitions and said the Army must look at directed energy as a potential counter drone solution.

During that hearing, Driscoll also addressed the fatal collision between an inbound American Airlines flight and a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people, promising to work toward preventing future similar tragedies. Driscoll suggested the Army ought to re-evaluate whether it conducts training exercises near the airport.

The Jan. 30 hearing also featured a tense exchange in which Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told Driscoll that he “performed very poorly” when they met initially a week earlier. She then quizzed him on topics such as the number of personnel in a brigade combat team, the Army training manual and elements of force posture.

“I'm glad you're doing your homework. See, this is working because you're doing your homework, which you did not do because you couldn't name a country in Africa where we have troops, when I asked you,” Duckworth said in the hearing.

Driscoll’s nomination was voted out of committee earlier this month.

Driscoll succeeds Christine Wormuth, who served as Army secretary during the Biden administration.