Army secretary talks recruiting challenges, advancements in drone technology

WASHINGTON (KABC) -- In an exclusive interview, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth discussed advancements in drone technology, recruiting challenges and the future of the Army.

With only a few days remaining in her role, Wormuth is still preparing the Army for what's next.

Wormuth said a lot has been learned from the war in Ukraine.

"Because of surveillance, reconnaissance, space-based capabilities, it's much harder to hide than it used to be," she explained. "We knew that intellectually, but we have seen that play out in the real world in Ukraine."

Wormuth was referring to drone technology, which is moving quickly and changing our world beyond the battlefield.

An example happened last week when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department demonstrated how a drone saved an elderly man. Due to dementia, he was lost in the forest suffering from hyperthermia, but he still put out a heat signature that the drone spotted. That saved his life.

On the battlefield, that heat signature is your demise.

"Ukrainians are using them to try to spot Russian formations. The Russians are using drones to drop weapons on Ukrainian soldiers and tanks to kill them," Wormuth said.

That's another big evolution - a tiny drone that for a few hundred dollars can knock out $10 million giants. It's why the secretary says she has to think carefully about how she spends money.

She recently visited Southern California companies like AeroVironment, Epirus, Anduril and Shield AI to look for advanced technologies that can either build drones or neutralize them.

"One company, for example, is using high-powered microwaves to basically be able to kill swarms of drones, not just intercepting a single drone at a time, but to be able to fry large numbers of drones all at once," Wormuth said. "That kind of capability is going to be critical for the Army."

But her job goes beyond weapons and the battlefield. A key responsibility is recruitment. That's why for the first time ever the Army had a float in the Rose Parade.

"It's just a great way to sort of attract attention to the Army, and it gives us both literally and figuratively, I think, a platform to talk to folks about what the Army is today," Wormuth said.

The Army offers 130 different occupational specialties and Wormuth has used that message to turn her greatest challenge into her greatest accomplishment.

"The Army was facing a real recruiting crisis," Wormuth said. "That became evident about six to nine months into my first year, and it was a lot of hard work to turn that crisis around."

"I want Americans to sort of start thinking, 'Wait a minute, I could do that.' I want to serve our country," Wormuth added. "I want to be all I can be."

That includes women. Wormuth is a role model as more and more women are signing up.

"Nineteen percent of our new recruits this year were women," she said.

But with the sun setting on her time in office, does she worry a new administration means all her hard work is thrown out? Her answer is a reminder of a dark day: 9/11.

"This building has 25,000 people working in it on any given day. A jet plane flew into the building, killed hundreds of people. The building was on fire for more than a week, yet everyone came back up into this building the very next day," she said.

"We have been very focused during the last four years on modernizing the Army to be able to handle a country like Russia, a country like China," she added. "I think the new administration will continue doing that."