Bradley, a Navy SEAL officer who most recently commanded Joint Special Operations Command, will also get a fourth star.

He was nominated for the role by President Donald Trump in early June.

Bradley will take the reins at SOCOM — which has been an early adopter of many cutting-edge technologies like AI within the Defense Department — as America’s special operations forces work to modernize and prepare for competition with more advanced adversaries.

“The changing, accelerating pace of technology, the ubiquitous information environment, and the advent of man-machine teamed autonomy on the battlefields of the world today are absolutely changing the character of warfare … in our very eyes,” he said last week during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He added that legislative proposals such as the FORGED Act and SPEED Act, and other initiatives to reform DOD acquisitions and speed up the fielding of new tech, are “critical to allowing us to use the innovative spirit of our operators to be able to capture those problems and opportunities we see on the battlefield and turn them into new man-machine teamed approaches.”

Bradley also called for “fusing all-domain capabilities” to gain advantages over adversaries, endorsing the so-called “irregular triad” concept that includes SOF, space and cyber capabilities.

“The pervasive technical surveillance environment presents both unique challenges and unprecedented opportunities. Recognizing this, I am committed to strengthening the Space-SOF-Cyber triad, leveraging the combined strengths of USSPACECOM and USCYBERCOM to ensure SOF’s operational effectiveness in support of national security objectives,” Bradley wrote in response to advance policy questions from senators ahead of his confirmation hearing.

“My vision encompasses integrating technological advancements across all domains — physical and virtual — including surface and subsurface maritime platforms; autonomous uncrewed systems; counter-unmanned systems; next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; stand-off precision effects; and modernized mission command systems,” he added.

Bradley is a U.S. Naval Academy grad who later earned a master’s degree in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School.

According to his Navy bio, he was among the first U.S. servicemembers to deploy to Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He later served as commander of Special Operations Command Central, which oversees joint special operations throughout the Middle East region, and Naval Special Warfare Development Group, among other leadership positions in the SOF community. He also served with SEAL Team Four and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team Two.

Bradley’s staff duty positions have included assistant commander, Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC J-3 technical operations division chief and deputy J-3, vice deputy director for global operations for the Joint Staff J-3, executive officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and deputy director for CT strategy for the Joint Staff J-5, according to his bio.

He will succeed Gen. Bryan Fenton, a career Green Beret officer, as SOCOM commander.

The post SOCOM getting new commander after Frank Bradley earns Senate confirmation appeared first on DefenseScoop.

When Caudle takes the helm, he will be the first Senate-confirmed CNO since Trump fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti from that post in February without explanation. Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s vice chief, has been serving as acting CNO since Franchetti was removed.

Caudle told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing last week that he approves of Franchetti’s CNO Navigation Plan, or strategic vision, that was released last year. That plan included Project 33, an effort to accelerate the acquisition and fielding of unmanned systems, AI and “information dominance” capabilities to deter or defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan or other U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.

Caudle told lawmakers that his top priorities for Navy transformation, if confirmed, would be to invest in platforms, sensors and weapons systems that are “modular, scalable and built for rapid upgrade cycles” to stay ahead of emerging threats; boost sailors and warfighters through advanced training, leadership development and talent management; and “accelerate delivery of integrated, networked capabilities across the joint force, including unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and resilient C3 architectures to enable decision advantage and operational dominance in contested environments.”

Adopting cutting-edge tech such as AI, uncrewed platforms, cyber tools and data-driven decision-making could enable the Navy to “outpace adversaries by leveraging faster learning curves and feedback loops from the assessment of existing combat operations,” he wrote in response to senators’ advance policy questions ahead of this confirmation hearing.

Caudle suggested a more aggressive push to adopt robotic platforms might be needed if Navy shipbuilding programs face further budget constraints or cost growth problems.

“Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS), also referred to as Unmanned Systems, are a force multiplier already being employed across a wide range of missions. Prioritizing the integration of RAS at scale, as appropriate, into naval and joint force architecture would be a necessary step [to deal with further fiscal constraints]. Additionally, we could potentially expand and accelerate current RAS systems further across the fleet, in all cases focusing on affordability, training, and interoperability with manned platforms,” he wrote.

The nomination of Caudle — a four-star who has been serving as commander of Fleet Forces Command — for the CNO role wasn’t a controversial pick.

Caudle’s confirmation was approved by voice vote, along with a slew of other military nominations, as the Senate nears its August recess.

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The Ban Military Drones Spying on Civilians Act, introduced by Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez on Friday, was referred to the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees for review. Text of the legislation was viewed by DefenseScoop this week, but hasn’t been published widely online.

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2026 or any fiscal year thereafter for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, or any other executive agency may be used to operate a covered unmanned aircraft vehicle in the United States to conduct surveillance of United States persons engaged in protests or civil disobedience,” the bill states.

In this context, the legislation defines “covered UAVs” as the MQ–9 Reaper and all variants, as well as any unmanned aircraft that uses an airframe initially developed for use by U.S. armed forces; is a medium-altitude, long-endurance aircraft or a high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft; or can fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet or higher.

If passed, the bill would also require the president to produce annual reports to Congress detailing every instance in which a covered drone is deployed by the government for novel purposes or for operations not authorized by Congress — “including with respect to a use by one executive agency for an authorized purpose to assist another executive agency that is not authorized to carry out such purpose.”

The reports would need to include information about any weapons the drones were equipped with and the information they collect about people on the ground.

A senior staffer on Gomez’s team told DefenseScoop that the congressman introduced this legislation “in direct response to recent actions” of DHS, which deployed surveillance drones over Los Angeles in June to monitor protests related to immigration enforcement. Notably, it was also put forth at a time when DHS and DOD are working closely on border security operations that involve expanded drone deployments.

Privacy hawks have raised concerns about DHS’s drone surveillance operations to capture information about civilians in recent years, including in 2020 when UAVs were flown over more than a dozen U.S. cities where demonstrators protested police violence after the killing of George Floyd. But Gomez has warned that the increasing sophistication and advancements of military drone technology warrant more explicit limitations on their use to track public protests.

“[Rep. Gomez] believes the U.S. government should never use military-grade drones to spy on its own people, especially those exercising their constitutional right to protest,” the senior staffer on his team told DefenseScoop.

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According to two former senior defense officials, the disclosure advocacy community welcomes those directives. However, they’re also calling for further policy changes to impel improved reporting and transparency from the government on unidentified anomalous phenomena — or UAP, the modernized term for UFOs and associated transmedium objects — that could threaten U.S. national security.

“More can — and should — always be done,” Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, told DefenseScoop. 

The legislative text targeting Defense Department and military-led efforts on UAP in the massive bill include:

• Sec. 1555 — to require briefings on UAP intercepts by North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command 
• Sec. 1556 — to require a consolidated security classification guidance matrix for programs relating to UAP 
• Sec. 1561 — to require the consolidation of reporting requirements applicable to the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)

In separate discussions last week, Mellon and a former senior military officer provided analyses of the NDAA and their latest recommendations to Congress in response to those proposals. 

‘Low-hanging fruit’

The Pentagon has a storied but complicated history confronting technologies and craft that insiders have reported performing in ways that seem to transcend the capabilities of contemporary assets. At a high level, the DOD’s mechanisms to study what it now refers to as UAP have taken different forms over the decades. 

The most recent iteration — known as the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO — was officially launched under the Biden administration in 2022 to fulfill a mandate in that year’s NDAA. 

The office achieved full operational capacity in 2024. Although its establishment largely stemmed from mounting calls for Pentagon transparency on UAP, government officials have been mostly secretive about AARO’s projects and caseload of dozens of open investigations. 

Still, AARO’s responsibilities have expanded as the organization matures, and particularly as it has been charged with helping the department resolve the recent uptick of mysterious drone incursions at military bases and other sensitive national security sites. 

Building on those tasks, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s NDAA draft includes requirements that would require Northcom and NORAD to alert AARO and Congress about any time they intercept a potential UAP.

Mellon — a longtime UAP transparency proponent who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and later, an influential Senate staff member — said he’s been advocating for such a directive for years.

“NORAD’s historical failure to inform AARO of UAP incidents is inconsistent with the intent of Congress when AARO was created as the central repository and conduit to Congress for all UAP data in the U.S. government. Currently, by the time AARO learns of these intercepts — if it does at all — NORAD’s critical sensor data is often no longer available. But Congress clearly needs this information to determine, among other things, how effective the U.S. air surveillance network is,” he said.

He said this section would mark a “welcome step” towards oversight, if passed. But in his view, more needs to be done. 

“In many cases, for instance, Navy ships report UAP sightings from areas where Air Force radars and aircraft operate but, strangely, these systems appear to report no UAP. At the same time, many official UAP reports refer to U.S. fighters chasing UAP over or near the continental United States … Where is that data? If the Air Force fully and properly reported to AARO, then Congress — and the American people — may even learn of UAP in space or in orbit,” Mellon said. “At a time of rapid advancements in drone and aerospace technology for America’s adversaries, better domain awareness, including in the space domain, is critical for ensuring the nation’s security.”

Elsewhere in the legislation is a provision that would result in a consolidation of all the disparate reporting requirements applicable to AARO. 

“While we appreciate that the [Intelligence Community] and Pentagon often face redundant reporting requirements to Congress, the matter of UAP — where Congress has only lately begun to extend its oversight — is not one of those areas,” Mellon said. 

He also raised concerns about one change to an existing law that currently requires all UAP data to be delivered “immediately” to AARO. 

“The proposed provision appears to restrict AARO’s now-immediate access right by requiring UAP data to be delivered to it ‘in a manner that protects intelligence sources and methods.’ But who makes that determination? AARO is independently empowered elsewhere by statute to receive all UAP data and should retain unfettered access to it. It knows how to protect intelligence sources and methods. There should not be provisions of this sort that could be interpreted to create impediments to AARO’s access rights under law,” Mellon said.

Beyond those inclusions, the bill would require AARO to issue a consolidated security classification guide relating to UAP investigations and events.

“Since I provided historic gun camera footage of Navy warplane encounters with UAP incidents to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, the release of additional footage by the government has all but stopped. In fact, shortly after that footage was aired, the Pentagon cloaked under order of secrecy virtually everything about its UAP investigation,” Mellon noted. “That was wrong, and it’s past time for the current draconian classification guide to change.”

At the same time, even if the requirement passes and a new declassification guide were enacted, he said AARO would still retain ample discretion to keep many UAP records from the public. So instead, Mellon suggested, the office should be mandated by law to routinely submit unclassified videos through the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review for secure dissemination.

“Despite the earlier pledge to Congress by the Department of the Navy to release more records, it appears that the Pentagon, AARO, and the IC don’t view Congress and the public as having a legitimate ‘need to know’ about the wealth of UAP footage the government has within its clasp. That is low-hanging fruit for Congress to fix,” Mellon said.

‘The big picture’

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet previously led Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command and served as Oceanographer of the Navy. He deployed on multiple tours afloat during his career in uniform, and later served as the Senate-confirmed assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere after retiring from the military in 2017, during the first Trump administration.

During his retirement, Gallaudet has opened up about his experiences on active duty observing now-verified video footage of UAP and unidentified submerged objects (USO) captured by colleagues — and his efforts to help destigmatize this previously taboo topic across the U.S. military.

When asked about his views on the UAP inclusions in the NDAA legislation, Gallaudet pointed to the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA), which was first introduced in 2023. That bill has seen continued support in the Senate, but has not been passed to date. It seeks to enable much deeper congressional oversight on UAP-related activities and operations.

“In my opinion, these UAP provisions are all good individually, but the bigger picture is that they dilute, distract, and compete with the authorities and priority of the UAP review board in the UAPDA. I do not think the fragmented approach which they represent is the best path forward, and what is needed is a whole of government approach that the UAPDA will bring us closer to,” Gallaudet told DefenseScoop.

Mellon also mentioned the UAPDA in a separate discussion, noting that the UAP Disclosure Fund — a civil society organization dedicated to protecting whistleblowers and promoting government accountability, on which he serves as chairman of the board — fully supports its passage.

“We hope to see that transparency measure included in the next version of the NDAA by way of a manager’s amendment on the Senate floor. We also hope that the House takes commensurate action to ensure that this vital legislation is enacted into binding law,” Mellon said.

He partnered with two other members of the UAPDF’s leadership team, Hunt Willis and Kirk McConnell, to co-author an upcoming policy brief for Congress, policymakers and potential whistleblowers that addresses a misperception they’ve encountered among possible sources of confidential information that they can’t disclose classified details to Congress behind closed doors. 

Notably, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) recently expressed frustration at the hesitancy of potential witnesses to step forward as the House Oversight Committee’s task force plans for hearings in the coming months.

The new policy brief, viewed by DefenseScoop ahead of its publication, spotlights legal reasons to demonstrate that lawmakers are “fully authorized to receive classified information and endowed with a clear ‘need to know’ given their oversight responsibilities.”

More broadly, regarding the proposals that have made it into the fiscal 2026 NDAA draft so far, Mellon noted that the UAPDF’s hope is that they’ll help to pave the way for a virtuous cycle, where “more information leads to greater understanding of, and interest in, UAP, impelling further legislation to obtain the release of still more UAP information.” 

“This cycle will help to build consensus across Congress — not within a few pockets of a few committees — for broader reforms in this centrally important issue, leading to greater transparency for the American people,” Mellon said.

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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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Like the Navy, the Air Force years ago chose to integrate its intelligence function — known as the 2 — and its communications and network function, known as the 6, into the A2/6, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

This week the Air Force broke the 6 function away from the 2 on the Air Staff, creating the AF/A6 deputy chief of staff for warfighter communications and cyber systems, in what the service calls one of the most significant reorganizations in over 30 years.

The office will be led by Maj. Gen. Michelle Edmondson, who most recently was senior advisor to the undersecretary of the Air Force.

“Our mission is to ensure warfighters have the reliable, secure communications they need to succeed in a complex and contested environment,” she said. “We’re building an enterprise that connects people, systems and decisions at the speed required by today’s operational demands.” 

The new AF/A6 will serve as the functional authority and management for warfighter communications and cyber operations.

The move had been telegraphed for about a year, with officials explaining it was designed to elevate the role of operational communications and cyber needs within the force, providing a dedicated general officer, typically a three-star, to advise senior leaders.

The office will help the Air Force operate in and through cyberspace and compete against the growing threats presented by China and others, officials have stated in the past, given core missions are vitally dependent on secure and resilient communications, and require a deputy chief of staff singularly focused on that.

In future fights, U.S. communications networks are expected to be attacked and stressed by adversaries.

“We created the A6 to ensure communications and cyber systems are available, secure and aligned with warfighter priorities,” Gen. David Allvin, chief of staff of the Air Force, said. “This office will help us focus resources and oversight where it matters most — supporting the mission in contested environments.”

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The effort is part of the service’s sprawling Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative, one of its top modernization priorities to provide commanders and units a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures.

Army officials have said NGC2 is composed of a horizontal operational design that involves a technology stack that goes from a transport layer to an integration layer to a data layer to an application layer, which is where soldiers interact with it. That application layer is also where the Army has broken down the silos of individual warfighting functions — such as intelligence or fires — into applications that ride on the same integrated backbone.

A team of vendors led by Anduril was awarded a nearly $100 million contract last week to continue prototyping for NGC2 and scale it to a full division with 4^th Infantry Division.

Despite the award, the Army is pressing on to continue offering industry opportunities to support the program. The Army is planning to continue releasing periodic so-called characteristics of need statements, which initially served as an acknowledgement of a complex problem space, officials said.

In doing so, the service doesn’t seek to prescribe requirements for industry, but rather provide them with a broad set of challenges they could then seek to develop creative solutions against.

The most recent update, which was just recently signed out, targets decision dominance.

“To me, decision dominance is reflective of a concept,” Joseph Welch, deputy to the commanding general at Army Futures Command, told reporters on the sidelines of a daylong conference hosted by AUSA on Tuesday. “The concept of an OODA loop or a killchain has been one that’s been well established for some time and obviously very consequential to the outcome of a military engagement.”

Officials have stated that one of the most important aspects for NGC2 is the data layer. To realize the stated vision for NGC2 — the ability for commanders to do “more, better, faster” — commanders need to make sense of their data quicker than the adversary.

“The biggest thing for us is the data layer and that’s where artificial intelligence and future capabilities like artificial intelligence come in. We have to understand the data and how we integrate data across a different platform. All of our forces need access to that same level of data. For artificial intelligence, for C2, decision dominance is the answer,” Col. (P) Mike Kaloostian, the incoming director of the C2 cross-functional team for Army Futures Command, told the conference. “Whoever is able to sift through the amount of data that’s going to be available on the battlefield of tomorrow, to sort through that and use that information effectively to make decisions that force is going to win war. There’s no doubt about it … AI-enabled decision dominance is where we need to come and what the future is.”

The updated characteristics of need with the new decision dominance focus provides industry with a baseline to work off of.

Officials noted that data has to be in the right place and AI is ineffective if the location of data is unknown or isn’t in a place where it can be analyzed.

As the Army continues to work with industry partners — either working on the prototype or others still vying for future NGC2 efforts — to establish a data integration layer and scale it, there must be a destination for all the data to go.

Industry can help the Army figure out what that data plane looks like and how the service is bringing in data, ingesting it and sorting through it to make it relevant to commanders in real time. Areas the Army is interested in include using capabilities such as edge computing to process data and decisions faster than the adversary in the dirt.

Continuing characteristics of need for industry

When the initial characteristics of need concept was first announced, the plan was to update it every 90 days or so as the Army conducted exercises and experiments to keep industry abreast of the latest observations.

The plan, even after the prototyping contract, is to continue updating it; however, the cadence might shift.

Welch described periodic updates that will be based on lessons learned, which will likely come from home station events with 4^th Infantry Division at Fort Carson.

“We’re focused now on our work with our awarded team. We’re focused on the work that we’ll have upcoming through the” commercial solutions offering, he said, describing an ongoing effort with the program office to evaluate additional vendor teams and capabilities with the vision of adding them on in the future. “We’re focused on 4ID in our first prototyping initiative right now and I think there’s a lot that’ll be coming from that.”

He said the Army needs to continue to convey where opportunities exist for industry, and the characteristics of need aims to lay things out broadly, including for the Army, to understand the scope of what it is looking for.

“We’re going to continue to describe what we know about the capability as we work into prototyping, what we think we have solved and where we still think there are challenges,” Welch said.

The prototyping effort will help the Army discover what the NGC2 architecture looks like.

“We were very resistant to providing an architecture up front for companies to bid on, not because we don’t understand the importance of it, but because we feel it’ll likely be emergent as we work through, continue on with the prototype, with whatever commercial software or sets of commercial software may underpin it. That’s something that will emerge as we continue to work the prototyping effort,” he added. “That may be a level of detail that may not be in the characteristic of need, but will certainly be, I think, very useful to industry in terms of understanding where the opportunities, the base of which to innovate upon, is going to get established.”

Welch noted that within the technology stack, he’s always envisioned sub-problem statements that components of teams can try to help solve.

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Broadly, GPS refers to a satellite-based navigation system that supplies information about locations and time on Earth. It’s increasingly vulnerable to intentional attacks and other disturbances, partially due to its historic dependence on weak, unencrypted signals beamed from space. 

Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and James Lankford, R-Okla., recently introduced the GPS Resiliency Report Act to help get ahead of GPS-related hazards to America’s foundational systems and public safety.

“GPS technology plays a critical role in both our national infrastructure and our national security, and so we need to remain vigilant about the risks to GPS,” Hassan told DefenseScoop in an email on Tuesday. “This commonsense, bipartisan bill will ensure that the Department of Defense is learning from conflicts around the world, and preparing for the possibility that it cannot rely on GPS satellite technology.”

If passed, the bill would require the secretary of defense to submit a report on “the Global Positioning System and associated positioning, navigation, and timing services” within one year of enactment, according to the legislative text.

That review would be unclassified, with a classified annex if warranted.

Elements of the report would need to include descriptions of risks during a potential conflict in which the U.S. is involved — or in the case of an attack on an ally. Notably, the bill defines allies as members of the NATO alliance, non-NATO partners listed in section 644(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and Taiwan.

The lawmakers also call for a full assessment of “the capabilities of competitor countries, including the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to degrade or deny” U.S. GPS access.

Additionally, the report would need to cover current DOD pursuits to develop and buy assets that provide redundant global positioning and positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities — including space-based, terrestrial-based and quantum-sensing technologies. 

Defense officials would also be expected to evaluate the ability of the Space Force’s Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) program to achieve full capacity to provide resilience to existing U.S. satellites, and separately, produce framework for enabling a full-scale terrestrial-based GPS redundancy system that could be operational no later than 15 years after the legislation is enacted.

“By reviewing the risks to current GPS technology, we lay the groundwork for the next generation of position, navigation, and timing systems that will keep us safe, secure, and free,” Hassan said.

Following its introduction, the bill was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Leslie Beavers, who also served as acting DOD CIO for a period at the end of the Biden administration and during the early days of the second Trump administration, will step down as DOD principal deputy CIO at the end of September.

“The Office of the CIO would like to congratulate Principal Deputy DoD CIO Leslie Beavers who announced today that she will be stepping down from her position at the end of September after more than 30 years of uniformed and civilian service,” reads a LinkedIn post from the DOD CIO’s office. “From projects such as Mission Partner Environment and the standup of the Cyber Academic Engagement Office to work to accelerate Identity, Credential, and Access Management enterprise solutions, Ms. Beavers’ unique blend of uniformed, civilian, and private industry experience drove success and innovation.”

Beavers also played a key role in the Office of the CIO’s delivery of its Fulcrum IT strategy in 2024 with then-CIO John Sherman.

In an exclusive interview with DefenseScoop, Beavers detailed the genesis of Fulcrum, which has become the guiding strategic framework for the Pentagon’s IT modernization.

“It was really important to crystallize the department’s vision into what success looks like, which is what we are attempting to do here in Fulcrum because I am trying to get program managers across the department — not just within the CIO organizations, but in all the different weapon systems program offices — to make decisions a little differently, to make them with the user experience in mind, to make them with interoperability as a priority first and really defining what success looks like, and giving them that vision,” she said.

When Sherman stepped down from the CIO role at the end of June 2024, Beavers filled it temporarily until Katie Arrington was appointed to perform the duties of CIO in March. Since then, Beavers retained her deputy role, supporting new efforts under Arrington’s leadership like the Software Fast Track initiative and “blowing up” the Risk Management Framework.

It’s unclear what Beavers’ next role will be after her departure or who will take her place when she officially leaves. DefenseScoop reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

Prior to serving as principal deputy CIO, Beavers was director of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance enterprise capabilities in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security and an intelligence officer in the Air Force at the rank of brigadier general. She also held roles in the private sector with GE and NBC Universal.

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NGC2, one of the Army’s top priorities, is a clean-slate design for how the service communicates on the battlefield and passes data for operations, providing commanders and units a new approach to information sharing and C2 through agile and software-based architectures. The Army plans to spend almost $3 billion on the effort over the next fiscal year across procurement and research and development funds.

The $99.6 million other transaction authority agreement will span 11 months and cover Anduril’s work to prototype a system for 4^th Infantry Division, which will scale the capability all the way up to the division level. Prior, it was outfitted to an armored battalion, as well as higher headquarters elements, and tested at Project Convergence Capstone 5 at Fort Irwin, California, in March.

Anduril’s partners on the contract include Palantir, Striveworks, Govini, Instant Connect Enterprise, Research Innovations, Inc., and Microsoft, the company said in a statement Friday.

The OTA requires the team to provide an integrated and scalable suite of command and control warfighting capabilities across hardware, software and applications, all through a common and integrated data layer, the Army said.

The Army has pushed teams of industry partners to work on the NGC2 effort, calling for “self-organized” teams.

Anduril had been working previously on the NGC2 effort to produce a prototype that was tested at Project Convergence, along with other vendors.

The prototype award is not the end of the road for other vendors seeking entry into the NGC2 program. The Army said additional vendors can seek to participate through an open commercial solutions offering with additional OTAs expected to be awarded later in fiscal 2026 for prototyping with other units such as 25^th Infantry Division and III Corps headquarters.

“NGC2 is not a one-and-done contract, but a long-term effort of continuous contracting and investment in the technologies that will deliver needed overmatch for our force,” said Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks.

Army Futures Command has been in charge of the prototyping effort to date, testing a proof of principle and then a proof of concept to demonstrate what is possible, while the program office has been working on the eventual program of record, devising a contracting strategy and seeking vendors.

Army officials have maintained they want to inject and maintain a high level of competition within the program. If contractors aren’t performing, they will seek to build in mechanisms to offboard them and onboard new vendors.

Similarly, the constant competition is also aimed at avoiding vendor lock-in where one partner holds the bulk of the program for an extended period.

The commercial solutions offering allows the Army to maintain a continuous open solicitation with specific “windows” for decision points, the service said, providing opportunities for industry teams aligning incentives and continuously onboarding new vendors as the capability evolves.

“NGC2 uses a combination of flexible and innovative contracting techniques. This is a completely non-traditional, unbureaucratic way to equip Soldiers with the capabilities they need, using expedited contracting authorities,” said Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground.  

The prototype OTA will allow the Army to continue its momentum toward delivering a solution for units while the commercial solutions offering enables the service to keep looking for capabilities to add to the NGC2 architecture in the future, the service said.

4^th Infantry Division will take the NGC2 system to Project Convergence Capstone 6 next year to test it out in a division holistically, to include the headquarters and enabling units, which have typically been neglected with communication network upgrades.

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