1st Cavalry Division Advances Division-Level Combined Arms Transformation for Large-Scale Combat Operations

WASHINGTON - Senior leaders from the 1st Cavalry Division discussed the unit's ongoing transformation efforts, emphasizing readiness, integration, and modernization during their Army Current Operations Engagement Tour (ACOET) at the Cannon House Office Building, April 14, 2026.

The 1st Cavalry Division is actively reorganizing formations, integrating new technologies, and refining doctrine to ensure it can fight and win in large-scale combat operations. The division applies lessons from recent training and ongoing global conflicts to rapidly adapt how it fights, focusing on long-range fires, data integration, counter-unmanned systems, and sustainment.

The division is currently one of the Army's largest divisions with 22,000 soldiers and growing toward 24,000 personnel as it restructures into a fully integrated combined arms formation. Its force includes armored brigade combat teams, a Stryker brigade, division artillery (DIVARTY), and aviation and sustainment units.

Leaders emphasized the necessity of training as a complete division, not just as separate brigades, at the ACOET to Congressional leaders.

"We brought the division to the National Training Center because one of the things that we realized is that brigades don't fight alone," said Maj. Gen. Thomas M. Feltey, commanding general, 1st Cavalry Division. "We all fight together as a combined arms team. That's what makes it so special."

Col. Jose A. Reyes, commander, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, stated that the transformation is a comprehensive effort spanning doctrine, organization, training, and equipment.

"When you think about the Army's continuous transformation, it's not just about spending money on cool things," Reyes said. "We have been working closely with the Army to upgrade and update our Army's warfighting doctrine, especially for armoured formations, so that we fight the way that we want to fight."

Division Artillery remains central to the division's strategy, using long-range precision fires to enable maneuver forces to advance.

Feltey explained that the division acts as a decisive enabler for the joint force, using its combat power to secure strategic ground from which its long-range precision fires can support other military branches.

The division is also working to connect its sensors, networks, and command systems to deliver real-time battlefield data to leaders at lower echelons, enabling faster and more informed decisions.

"The challenge is, how do we take all this data that all our sensors are gathering and package it up into something usable and then transfer it to the intelligence enterprise?" Reyes asked. "If I can get it there, then I can use it for targeting."

To counter the widespread use of small, low-cost drones, the division is developing a layered defense. While leaders report that detection capabilities are improving, the ability to defeat these systems remains a challenge.

"What we're really concerned about also is Group two and Group one threat... very hard to detect and then defeat," said Col. Nicholas H. Dvonch, the Division Artillery commander. "In the detection space, we found the use of acoustic sensors and passive sensors to be highly effective. The defeat portion is a much harder problem to solve."

Leaders are experimenting with kinetic solutions to destroy these threats, particularly at close range. One of the most promising systems being tested is a fully automated weapon designed to protect vehicles from an imminent drone attack.

"One example is [a system that] uses a tungsten shotgun round where there's no human that has to be in the loop. It can automatically slew and fire right to defeat at the very last second what's about to hit a vehicle," said Dvonch.

Sustainment in contested environments is another critical component of the transformation. Reyes said his brigade maintained a high state of readiness during its recent National Training Center rotation despite a demanding operational tempo.

"We fought consistently with about eighty four percent readiness rate for all of our vehicles," he said. "We did, we did dip at one point to about sixty six percent, and then we left the National Training Center with ninety percent of our equipment working, which is pretty great."

The division is adapting its medical support for scenarios where immediate evacuation is not possible.

"We don't think the 'golden hour' is going to exist much longer," Reyes said. "So we're training our medics for prolonged care so they could treat their wounded longer and keep them alive longer."

While unmanned systems are being integrated across the force, leaders noted their limitations during fast-paced offensive operations.

"There's certainly value in it and we learned the limitations of that and some of our current UAS systems is that they can't keep up with the tempo of an armored brigade," Reyes said. "When we're on the offense and we want to attack, and we want to keep the enemy on their heels, it's harder to utilize them in that way."

Leaders stressed that these transformation efforts are urgent and ongoing, driven by observations of the modern battlefield.

"This is a now problem, right? It's not what we're going to do in ten years," Feltey said. "'We need to innovate now. The battlefield is changing faster than ever.'"

Reyes affirmed that every aspect of the transformation is focused on a single goal: ensuring the division is ready to deploy and fight at a moment's notice.