Reps. Pat Ryan (D-NY), and Rob Wittman (R-VA) set up the caucus in early 2024 to strategically inform legislation to improve the Defense Department’s adoption of modern software and warfighting capabilities.

“This is what happens when you get industry, academia, and members of Congress who refuse to maintain the status quo together in a room. We’re going to keep pushing as hard as we can,” a senior member on Ryan’s team told DefenseScoop on Friday.

Early this year, Ryan and Wittman formally solicited policy proposals and focus areas from stakeholders across industry and academia to puzzle out the reforms. The caucus also set up a unique portal for modernization-related recommendations.

“We need to put disruptive technologies in the hands of warfighters, we need more competition in the defense industrial base, and we need to cut down pointless red tape and bureaucracy. Congress must be relentlessly focused on providing the U.S. military with the capabilities and capacity necessary to deter our adversaries — we cannot afford complacency,” Wittman said in a statement.

The senior House staffer previewed some of the caucus-inspired inclusions and amendments that made it into the massive defense package.

The NDAA includes language that would:

• Accelerate the DOD’s counter-unmanned aerial system operations and authorities to protect military operations and other specific locations around the U.S.
• Add additional reporting requirements to the Authority to Operate (ATO) process and streamline timelines for such approvals
• Require the Pentagon to develop and maintain a virtual sandbox environment for operational testing and development
• Require the secretary of defense to brief Congress on the integration of AI and machine learning across the department
• Empower the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to expand outreach and create additional onramp hubs domestically and internationally
• Direct DOD leadership to submit a plan to accelerate the accreditation, construction, and operational use of commercial Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF) accessible to industry
• Seek to streamline and simplify the requirements for a modular open system approach to the design and development of a major weapon system.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” the senior official said. “This was a collaborative process over the course of many months, and it’s truly only just the beginning of what we can accomplish in the future.”

Beyond Ryan and Wittman, they said other members of the caucus who serve on HASC and helped champion these and additional efforts include: Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Don Bacon (R-NE), John McGuire (R-VA), Pat Fallon (R-TX), George Whitesides (D-CA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Wesley Bell (D-MO) and Mark Messmer (R-IN). 

“Stay tuned, because we’re only just getting started,” Ryan said in a statement.

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“I think that the building is not quite prepared for what’s about to happen to it. That’s my observation in the first 30 days,” noted Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, referring to the Pentagon.

Carroll, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer with deep AI expertise, participated on a panel with defense and industry officials at the House Defense Modernization Caucus’ official re-launch for this session of Congress.

At the event, HDMC’s co-founders Reps. Rob Wittman, R-Va., and Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., also spotlighted some of the caucus’ near-term initiatives — including growing its bipartisan membership and driving legislative changes to transform how DOD adopts modern software and tech-enabled warfighting assets.

“I think we have a huge opportunity in the new administration. I’m very optimistic that there’s broad, bipartisan and sort of non-partisan recognition of the urgencies here. And disruption can be good as long as we’re thoughtful about it, which I think we will be. And we want to be part of driving that and making sure that that’s aligned with you all,” Ryan, an Army combat veteran, told attendees.

Broadly, the lawmakers suggested that in parallel with their Senate colleagues, the one-year-old caucus is keen to pinpoint and ultimately eliminate what they view to be unnecessary bureaucratic layers and processes that are hindering the DOD acquisition system. 

They each emphasized the need for more innovative “flexible funding” mechanisms to accelerate the delivery of new and quickly-evolving capabilities to the military — especially at the operational level.

“I think the caucus is a critical component of what’s necessary to inform both the authorization and appropriations process. The good news is that the authorizers and appropriators are starting to see what is necessary for us to do,” Wittman said.

“We’ve seen in the past when we’ve had significant changes, it is because Congress has acted. And we have to be unafraid of making big changes. Being constructively disruptive, that’s our key,” he added.

Government and industry officials on a separate panel also highlighted existing policy and contracting complexities that could be hindering the military’s progress, suggesting a need for both immediate and more lengthy institutional reforms to modernize how the Pentagon does business.

Carroll hinted at some of the potential changes in the pipeline from DOD’s new and incoming leadership team.

“I think you’ll see the administration do some interesting things with a concept called the DRPM, the Direct Reporting Program Manager, which is a formal acquisition concept that the services typically run,” he said, pointing to the Navy’s Overmatch program as one example.

“I think you’ll see that applied to some weapons systems and business systems directly to either the deputy or [acquisition and sustainment directorate] going forward [to move more quickly]. But you can’t do that with every weapon system and program in the department. So, we have to fix the longer-term foundation as well,” he explained.

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Reps. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y. and Rob Wittman, R-Va., who will co-chair the group, are hosting a kickoff to celebrate its launch on Thursday afternoon.

The bipartisan caucus is envisioned to “amplify and champion key policy and funding priorities necessary for the technological evolution of the U.S. Department of Defense and associated national security functions,” an aide told DefenseScoop ahead of the event and official announcement. 

While many modernization efforts have been rife with bureaucratic and other challenges, Pentagon leadership has long been working to update defense infrastructure and ultimately accelerate their department’s development, procurement and use of existing and emerging technologies for operational and business purposes.

The formation of this new caucus comes as the DOD is pursuing a number of nascent high-stakes technology initiatives — including Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) and Replicator. 

Its launch is also inspired by lawmakers’ firsthand experiences and frustrations they’ve dealt with associated with attempting to drive defense modernization.

“When I returned home from Iraq, I co-founded a company that deployed cutting-edge analytics software to support our troops in harm’s way. We navigated the often-winding halls of DOD, working to find ways to break down barriers for innovative and disruptive technologies,” Rep. Ryan told DefenseScoop in an email Thursday.

Ryan, who earned two Bronze Stars from his time serving two combat tours in Iraq, is the first-ever West Point graduate to represent that academy’s congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“We, as Members of Congress, need to continue to push DOD to do more and do better at working with innovative companies to partner, develop, and deploy technologies that will change the game  — and I’m thrilled to co-chair the bipartisan Defense Modernization Caucus, which will continue this critical work,” he said.

During a National Security Innovation Base Summit hosted by the Ronald Reagan Institute on Wednesday, Wittman acknowledged that “through the years, the whole [military tech modernization] process — both in Congress and in the Pentagon — has been slow.”

“Our focus needs to be not just exquisite systems, but how do we get capability and capacity quickly? How do we get expendable platforms? We see that happening in Ukraine, those are incredibly effective. How do we get to attritable platforms that are also great conduits to use technology that leverage what we can do quickly? We can generate mass, we can increase the risk calculus for China. All those things are incredibly important,” Wittman, the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said.

Jon Harper contributed reporting.

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But at this point, members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) are not convinced the individual branches and other Defense Department components are moving quickly enough to enable the joint integration of data and technologies necessary to fully realize JADC2, according to their proposal for the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

In the proposal, they call for a progress report on how data will be transmitted from different battlespaces in one secure and shared hub.

HASC is broadly “concerned service-led initiatives associated with JADC2 will be insufficient to provide the joint integration that is urgently required,” an approved amendment to the NDAA, put forward by Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., states.

JADC2 — more recently deemed Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or  CJADC2 — is considered a key driver for the U.S. to maintain its military advantage as conflict evolves to incorporate increasingly sophisticated technologies. 

At the direction of the deputy secretary of defense, DOD’s nascent Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is already working with the combatant commands and other components to generate a “joint data integration layer” to boost the military’s access to and ability to share the data needed to underpin all-domain command and control across echelons. Relatedly, the CDAO recently assumed the responsibility of steering the department’s Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE) wargames. In the latest of those events to be unveiled, the office will work with command partners to test how AI can strengthen data integration across the military for emerging JADC2 pursuits.

HASC members do not mention GIDE explicitly in their legislative text, but they express support for the “CDAO’s role as the lead office to develop a joint data integration layer for JADC2.”

“The Committee directs the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer to provide a report to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services not later than March 1, 2024 which details efforts related to the Joint Data Integration Layer, its resourcing, timelines, coordination with relevant stakeholders such as United States Indo-Pacific Command, and demonstration opportunities,” the text states.

HASC passed its version of the NDAA text last week. The bill next faces approval from the full House and Senate before moving on to receive the president’s signature and become law.

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