The CIO’s recently released software modernization implementation plan for fiscal 2025 and 2026 marks another call from Pentagon leadership for the entire department to improve delivery of software-based capabilities. The document lists three key goals for the next two years — focusing on software factories, enterprise cloud and transforming processes — as well as specific tasks for each goal that aims to improve overall software modernization.

The goals and tasks in the document build upon the DOD CIO’s first software modernization implementation plan for fiscal 2023 and 2024. According to the new roadmap, the Pentagon completed 27 out of 41 of the tasks outlined in the previous plan, carried 12 tasks over to FY25 and FY26 and combined two tasks with others in the updated document.

Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said that while working through the goals in the first implementation plan, the office realized that some of the associated tasks weren’t mature enough to fully execute on.

“For a small portion, we learned that we didn’t know enough about a couple of those activities, so we dropped them. And then some of them, we were maybe over aggressive or they evolved,” he said Wednesday during a panel discussion at AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference. “I’ll say, from an agile perspective, we didn’t have the user score exactly right, so some of these stories have continued into the implementation plan two.”

The first goal outlined in the new plan is to accelerate and scale the Pentagon’s enterprise cloud environment. Along with its multi-cloud, multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), the department also has a number of other efforts aimed at providing cloud infrastructure overseas and at the tactical edge. 

Vietmeyer said that even though JWCC has been a relative success — noting that the department has awarded at least $2.7 billion worth of task orders under the program — the contract vehicle was “suboptimal” for large acquisitions. The CIO is currently planning for what it calls JWCC 2.0, a follow-on phase that adds more vendors and different contracting mechanisms to the program.

Beyond JWCC, the implementation plan calls for the establishment of additional contract options for cloud innovation — specifically geared towards small business and “niche providers” — that can be awarded before the end of fiscal 2026.

“In the implementation plan, we’re trying to build that next-generation cloud infrastructure and extend it. Not just looking at JWCC, but we’re also looking at how we extend for small business cloud providers,” Vietmeyer said. 

The document also offers guidance for Pentagon efforts to expand cloud access to the edge, such as through Stratus or the Joint Operational Edge (JOE) environments. In the next two years, the department will develop a reference design for an “underlying cloud mesh” that facilitates data transport, software development and information-sharing across different infrastructures overseas, according to the plan.

The mesh architecture would allow warfighters from one military service to access a cloud node operated by a different service, or one owned by the Defense Information Systems Agency, Vietmeyer explained.

“We’ve seen that one of the challenges is moving to a mesh type of architecture, so we can identify where computing infrastructure exists and allow the warfighters to take advantage [of it],” he said. “How do we start to build the ability for applications and data to scale across that infrastructure in a highly resilient way?”

Along with enterprise cloud, another goal within the updated implementation plan focuses on creating a Pentagon-wide software factory ecosystem that fully leverages a DevSecOps approach. The CIO intends to take successful practices from the various software factories in DOD and replicate them across the department, according to the plan.

“DoD must continue to scale success and bridge the right disciplines together … to ensure end-to-end enablement and realization of the software modernization vision and adoption of software platforms and factories organized by domain,” the document stated.

The CIO will also work to remove existing processes and red tape that prevents software developers from accessing critical tools and capabilities; increase the number of platforms with continuous authorization to operate (cATO) approvals; and create a DevSecOps reference design for artificial intelligence and software-based automation deployment.

Lastly, the implementation plan outlines multiple tasks geared towards evolving the Pentagon’s policies, regulations and standards to better support software development and delivery — including creating secure software standards, improving software deployment in weapons platforms and growing its workforce.

Although work to accelerate the Pentagon’s software modernization has been happening for years, leaders at the department have begun pushing for more focused efforts to remove bureaucratic red tape through new guidance — such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Modern Software Acquisition memo released in March, and the CIO’s new Software Fast Track (SWIFT) program.

“For modern practices to become the routine way of developing and delivering software, policy, regulations, and standards must be reviewed and updated,” the implementation plan stated. “DoD must work with DoD Components to update policy and guidance to reduce the barriers to adopting new practices and to accelerate software delivery and cybersecurity approvals to enable adoption of the latest tools and services.”

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While the department didn’t specify in the award announcement how many rings would be purchased under the firm-fixed-price contract — the rings retail for $299-$349 — it explains that the contract will also provide a suite of data analytics services the Pentagon’s health arm can use to take action on the biometric information generated by the devices.

“This contract is to provide the Defense Health Agency (DHA) Wellbeing Office delivery of Ouraring Inc., biometric sensor devices; data analysis including monitoring of physiological stress, recovery, resilience, and wellbeing indicators; individualized biometric data visualization; aggregate wellbeing visualization for the agency; and content delivery of wellness-related insights and training,” the award announcement says.

With those services, Oura will also “deliver workforce wellbeing services including high-performance medicine, mindfulness training, leadership coaching, protective factors, and peer-to-peer support training,” and “provide its wellbeing services at military medical treatment facilities (130 subordinate entities) for delivery to the entire DHA workforce. “

This isn’t the first time the DOD has used Oura rings. The department’s Defense Innovation Unit used the device, along with Garmin watches, during the COVID-19 pandemic for its Rapid Assessment of Threat Exposure project, which paired the commercial biometric technology with an artificial intelligence algorithm to detect infectious diseases in advance of symptoms.

“The DOD invests heavily in maintaining the readiness of its workforce to conduct essential missions. However, the risk of infectious disease, like COVID-19, has long been an unpredictable variable. With RATE, the DOD can use commercial wearables to noninvasively monitor a service member’s health and provide early alerts to potential infection before it spreads,” Jeff Schneider, program manager for the project, said at the time.

Likewise, the Air Force last year distributed more than 1,000 Oura devices to graduates of the First Sergeant Academy. And, the Navy in 2021 gave out about 300 of the rings to sailors and Marines onboard amphibious assault ship Essex to study fatigue.

The new contract was awarded to Oura on a sole-source basis and runs through Sept. 30, 2025.

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The AI and Data Acceleration initiative — or ADA, in homage to computer programming pioneer Ada Lovelace — was originally a three-year effort funded through fiscal 2024, when Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks first unveiled it in 2021.

While the exact requested amount for ADA in the president’s budget request for fiscal 2025 remains unclear, according to two senior officials who briefed DefenseScoop recently, the Defense Department has opted to keep the program running at least through fiscal 2029, or the end of the Future Years Defense Program.

“I think this is a journey. We’ve made incredible progress, but it’s not going to be done [this year]. And so having that right talent out there to constantly be responsive and aware of their needs is a great thing for the department,” the Pentagon’s Deputy Chief Digital and AI Officer Margie Palmieri said in an interview.

‘Where’s my stuff?’

ADA’s roots trace back to before Hicks in 2021 formed the CDAO, combining teams of officials from the Pentagon’s former Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Service, Office of the Chief Data Officer, Project Maven and the Advana program within one new hub to strategically accelerate data-sharing and AI adoption. 

Palmieri noted that inspiration for the ADA initiative came from discussions that participants across those organizations were having back then about how to best equip the military’s combatant commands with technological expertise and assets.

“The idea was that we would put one civilian [Government Schedule or GS-15] at each combatant command, and then provide core support to them through department initiatives,” she explained.

After that step, though, “it really took about two years to get all those leads in place — by the time we went through the hiring process and found the right folks who were willing to go live at the combatant commands out across the globe,” Palmieri said. 

Early on, the CDAO leads found that each of the commands was functioning at very different stages of maturation in their paths toward being fully data-driven and were not applying resources in a standard way. However, officials did see a trend in requests for assistance associated with the DOD’s centralized data and analytics platform, Advana.

Recent budget documents refer to Advana as “a technology platform that not only houses a collection of enterprise data, but expands the boundaries of a standard data warehouse by arming military and business decision-makers with decision support analytics, visualizations, and data tools.”

Putting it another way, Palmieri said: “It is a collection of capabilities that, when they come together, give you the power of data analytics. At its core it is a data hub — I’ll call it a hub, it’s kind of a data catalog — so it tells you where all the data is in the department.” 

Quickly, leadership across the combatant commands was broadly interested in using data to inform the readiness of the personnel and logistics elements of their operations. 

“A lot of them just really want to know where their people are. What’s the readiness status? Where are they with operations and exercises and support? What does security force assistance look like inside of their combat command? So, a lot of things that had been done through data calls or through PowerPoint. But doing this in Advana gave us a kind of coherent, CoCom-wide view or department-wide view,” Palmieri explained.

“It’s one thing to have the raw data; it’s another thing to be able to make sense of that data in a way that can be presented to decision-makers,” she added.

In her view, the fast-moving, modern technology landscape — and top U.S. priorities like Joint All-Domain Command and Control — are forcing the department to no longer silo what was previously considered business versus warfighting data.

“In reality, personnel readiness, logistics, the status and positioning of forces, it’s stuck in the middle. It’s neither business nor warfighting. It’s both,” Palmieri said.

The CDAO’s senior representative embedded at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Dan Tadevich, also recognizes an ongoing transformation. 

“There’s a cartoon that I really like. It’s called the blind men and the elephant. If you can visualize this picture of an elephant, and all of us sitting around the table are touching a different part of the elephant. So all that we know is what we’re touching, instead of the fact that there’s an elephant there that you’re trying to get a picture of. In my mind, that’s very illustrative of what we try to do,” he told DefenseScoop during the interview alongside Palmieri.

“You take the logistics work, and you take the operational work, you take all these other pieces, but then you all come together as an operational planning group or planning team, put all your information on the table and you come up with a plan. And so that’s what we did at Indo-Pacom, and that’s what the ADA teams are out there really doing, is helping everybody get access to the data in a much more streamlined and expeditious way — so that you can build those visualizations and things that help you understand the elephant that you’re trying to see,” he explained.

As that bigger picture all comes together, the aim is that military leaders at each command can make high-stakes choices faster and based on more accurate information.

“When everybody is sitting around the table talking about how to execute something, [it starts with] ‘Where’s my people? Where’s my stuff? What can I do with it? And who’s ready to act now?’ So, if you can answer those initial questions, then the people sitting around the table can now start making the decisions and laying out the puzzle pieces in a way, and they give you the picture of what we can do today. Because that’s really what the leadership and the boss want to know,” Tadevich said. 

He and the CDAO’s other combatant command embeds catch up on weekly calls and daily in informal chat rooms to share updates on their progress and ideas for integration or opportunities to share in-development and existing resources.

Among other responsibilities, the ADA officials are also conducting digital readiness assessments on each command. 

When asked which command demonstrated that they were the most “digitally ready”
at this time, Palmieri and Tadevich both pointed to U.S. Transportation Command.

“They have been tested through fire. The [Afghan non-combatant evacuation operation or NEO] — how do you get people in and out of Afghanistan? The Ukraine support in terms of how are you going to move equipment all over the place? And [the COVID-19 pandemic] actually was a big Transcom challenge,” Palmieri said. 

The next chapter

“You won’t see an ADA line inside of our core CDAO budget,” the deputy CDAO noted, pointing out that the undisclosed total comes from several different “pots of money.” But again, Palmieri confirmed that — as part of a recent, overarching restructure of the CDAO’s budget — senior DOD leaders have formally initiated plans to extend CDAO support at the commands via ADA through fiscal 2029.

Palmieri and other CDAO officials did not share the exact number for requested or planned ADA funding (in or after 2025) before publication.

One thing that news of this ADA extension does provide, though, is the chance for current ADA embeds like Tadevich to be hired in “permanent” roles — instead of their current three-year temporary billets.

“That’s been one of the worries, that the three years is coming up. Whether the commands had taken the proper steps to be organically self-sufficient or not, doesn’t really matter — except for if it was going to go away — then it’s a problem, right? So the fact that [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] recognizes that all the commands didn’t move equally, and then they’re committing to continue to help and provide resources and to be that bridge to the next step is, I think, the most important thing that comes out of this,” Tadevich told DefenseScoop.

Now, he and other CDAO officials are preparing to steer what they hope will be a new wave of ADA-driven progress.

“I think the next chapter is we see a lot of value being connected to the combatant commands and their data needs. So having that CDAO rep at the combatant commands that can reach back to make sure that we’re providing the best support to our senior-most military commanders and decision-makers in the field is 100% where we want to be,” Palmieri said.

“The next question is — that’s one person — and we have some resources in the CDAO budget, but ADA was created to really figure out what we want to do is the department in supporting data-enabled decision-making inside the combatant commands,” she added. “And so through our normal budget processes, we’ve heard from a bunch of combatant commands about how they want to grow their teams, about how they want more resources, and more applications to use. They’re really excited to grow this mission space. So our next step in the CDAO is to get a sense of what that should look like for the department.”

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It’s no secret that the Defense Department and military have been deliberately prioritizing AI pursuits and working to strategically drive momentum around the technology’s adoption in recent years, particularly as they prepare for potentially higher-tech conflicts down the line.

After unveiling new documents and details about the Defense Department’s FY ’25 budget request on Monday, officials told DefenseScoop that the fact that their AI topline requests appear to remain flat between FY ’24 and ’25 does not reflect any change in how they view that technology as a top priority.

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) caps are mandatory and, if disregarded or exceeded, would be enforced by sequestration. Understanding those fiscal constraints, the department made responsible choices to prioritize readiness and take care of people but make targeted reductions to programs that will not deliver capability to the force until the 2030s, preserving and enhancing the Joint Force’s ability to fight and win in the near term,” a Pentagon spokesperson explained.

After a negotiation between Congress and the White House, President Joe Biden signed the FRA into law in June 2023. In exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, the legislation introduced limits on discretionary spending for defense and non-defense programs. 

The overarching aim of FRA was to essentially reduce the projected deficit levels by approximately $1.5 trillion over the 10-year period between fiscal years 2024 and 2033.

During a press briefing at the Pentagon on Monday about the latest DOD request, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks made a point to note that unlike all of the current administration’s prior budgets to date, this one is “capped by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.”

“Because of these statutory caps — and as good stewards of taxpayer dollars — we made smart, responsible choices to work within those limits. The result is a strong focus on executability, a necessary emphasis on near-term readiness and people investments,” Hicks said. 

“But to be clear, we must grow the defense budget in the out-years of our Future Years Defense Program if we want to achieve the goals of the National Defense Strategy, and especially in the face of rapid modernization by the [People’s Republic of China],” she added.

In response to questions from DefenseScoop, DOD officials could not immediately confirm or list all of the programs, efforts and elements that are encompassed under the department’s request for $1.8 billion for artificial intelligence.

According to the Pentagon’s budget overview, that funding proposal is meant to support “efforts to deliver and adopt responsible Al/ML-enabled capabilities on secure and reliable platforms, workforce development, and DOD-wide data management and modernization efforts.”

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The Department of Defense has used bug bounty programs to find cyber weaknesses by incentivizing white-hat hackers to hunt for them. Now, lawmakers want a similar concept to be applied to AI models.

“Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act and subject to the availability of appropriations, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer of the Department of Defense shall develop a bug bounty program for foundational artificial intelligence models being integrated into the missions and operations of the Department of Defense,” states the conference report on the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that was released this week.

For the bill, lawmakers define a foundational AI model as “an adaptive generative model that is trained on a broad set of unlabeled data sets that may be used for different tasks with minimal fine-tuning.”

The CDAO would be able to collaborate with leaders of other federal departments and agencies that have cybersecurity and AI expertise on the effort.

No later than one year after the enactment of the legislation, the head of that office would be required to brief congressional committees on the development and implementation of the program and long-term plans for these types of initiatives.

An amendment to the Senate’s version of the NDAA included a provision for an AI bug bounty program, but the House version did not. The mandate for such a program made it into the compromise version.

The CDAO is already exploring bounty concepts for its missions. In July, it issued a call to industry to set up and administer a “bias bounty” program to tackle bias in artificial intelligence systems.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is exploring use cases for generative artificial intelligence through Task Force Lima and other efforts. However, there are also concerns that adversaries could use generative AI to harm the United States.

The Senate version of the NDAA included an amendment that would require the Defense Department to create and execute a prize competition to evaluate technology for the detection and watermarking of generative AI. The House version did not include such a provision, but the compromise version does.

“Not later than 270 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, under the authority of section 4025 of title 10, United States Code, the Secretary of Defense shall establish a prize competition designed to evaluate technology (including applications, tools, and models) for generative artificial intelligence detection and generative artificial intelligence watermarking,” the NDAA conference report states.

The objective would be to facilitate the research, development, testing and evaluation of these types of technologies to support the secretaries of the military departments and combatant commanders “in warfighting requirements,” as well as transitioning such technologies from prototyping to production.

For the bill, lawmakers define generative AI detection as “the positive identification of the use of generative artificial intelligence in the generation of” digital content. Generative AI watermarking is defined as “embedding within such content data conveying attribution of the generation of such content to generative artificial intelligence.”

Private sector entities, defense contractors, academia, federally funded R&D centers, and federal departments and agencies would be eligible to participate in the prize competition, which would be administered by the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

Congress hasn’t voted yet on the compromise NDAA.

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In its so-called “Tech Watchlist” for fiscal 2024, DISA now has multiple items that cover specific capabilities and issues related to artificial intelligence — from leveraging large language models to what guardrails are needed when deploying AI. The new categories have been divided up from a single item that was dedicated to tracking overarching AI/ML technologies, according to Steve Wallace, DISA’s chief technology officer and director of emerging technologies.

The update comes as the Pentagon pushes for improved and responsible deployment of AI. Last week, the Department of Defense released its new Data, Analytics, and AI Adoption Strategy. For DISA, the specific areas will help inform how it leverages the technology in the future, Wallace said Monday while unveiling the new watchlist at DISA’s annual forecast to industry event.

“There is nothing more important than the ability to operate a system that you deliver. You could deliver the most spectacular, exquisite capability in the world, but if it is too hard to operate then you’ve really not done a whole lot because it’s likely down more than it is up,” he said. “So, how are we going to insert artificial intelligence into that chain?”

DISA’s watchlist — which is routinely updated at least every fiscal year, but oftentimes more frequently — is a broad inventory of over two dozen new technologies the agency has identified as ones it’s interested in pursuing. The items are divided by maturity levels, from technologies just being surveyed to actual prototypes that the agency is gearing up to deploy, such as the recently awarded Thunderdome zero-trust cybersecurity effort.

One new category in the “monitor” subdivision tackles AI operations and was born from conversations the agency is having with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) about a prototype it has in the works, Wallace said. The AI-enabled prototype is “taking log sets from given infrastructure components and given systems and then using a model to train itself over the course of weeks or months to do predictive analysis or predictive reliability analysis,” Wallace said.

DISA is hoping to learn some lessons from the prototype work in order to improve how it addresses vulnerabilities in the Defense Department’s networks by using artificial intelligence to predict them far in advance.

The agency has also added an item in the “monitor” subdivision of the watchlist that is dedicated to trust, risk and security management of artificial intelligence. Wallace noted that this category will explore how the Pentagon can keep pace with its adversaries’ use of AI, while also identifying technology guardrails DISA will need to implement.

Wallace pointed to some capabilities that act as a proxy for publicly available large language models as an area of concern. These tools will take in queries from users, run them against a contained dataset, and eventually pass them to public large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, he said.

Broadly, large language models are deep learning algorithms that are trained with massive datasets to recognize, summarize, translate, predict and generate convincing, conversational text and other forms of media in a manner that mimics a real human being.

“The department has a number of concerns against querying those commercial, large language models,” Wallace said. “How are we going to protect ourselves? How are we going to deal with that until such time that these models exist in a [government] cloud or higher environment?”

Despite the concerns, DISA hasn’t sworn off large language models as the fiscal 2024 technology watchlist renamed its generative AI category, added earlier in 2023, to “concierge AI.” The technology currently sits on the “planning” subdivision of the watchlist — meaning the agency has an understanding of how it could impact and integrate into missions.

“What we’re looking for out of a concierge AI … is the idea of having for the business side of the house that ChatGPT-like experience of being able to interact and ask questions of data sets,” Wallace said. “The other side of that coin that we sort of bundle under this, although it’s a slightly separate effort, is how are we helping the analysts. On the security platforms, how are you helping the analyst more quickly diagnose threats [and] put the pieces together far more quickly?”

It’s possible DISA will award an other transaction agreement for a prototype of the capability in fiscal 2024, he added.

Although the watchlist offers a snapshot of DISA’s technological endeavors, the agency does have a technical strategy in the works that will serve as a more specialized counterpart to DISA’s overall strategy, Wallace said. Although the strategy is still in its first draft, Wallace teased three main points it will cover: simplification of systems, integration across the agency and iterative delivery of new capabilities.

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The EO on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” gives the Pentagon 180 days to conduct the pilot.

The secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security “shall, consistent with applicable law, each develop plans for, conduct, and complete an operational pilot project to identify, develop, test, evaluate, and deploy AI capabilities, such as large-language models, to aid in the discovery and remediation of vulnerabilities in critical United States Government software, systems, and networks,” the directive states.

Within the next 270 days, the two secretaries must each deliver a report to the White House on the results of actions taken “pursuant to the plans and operational pilot projects … including a description of any vulnerabilities found and fixed through the development and deployment of AI capabilities and any lessons learned on how to identify, develop, test, evaluate, and deploy AI capabilities effectively for cyber defense,” according to the EO.

The Defense Department has already set up a group known as Task Force Lima to look at potential use cases for generative AI tools such as large language models. More broadly, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office is focused on helping deploy artificial intelligence capabilities across the department. A number of other DOD agencies and offices are also involved in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity efforts, and it wasn’t immediately clear which DOD organizations will execute the pilot that Biden directed.

Biden highlighted cybersecurity concerns during remarks at the White House on Monday before he signed the order.

“In the wrong hands, AI can make it easier for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in the software that makes our society run. That’s why I’m directing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security — both of them — to develop game-changing cyber protections that will make our computers and our critical infrastructure more secure than it is today,” he said.

Additionally, in the next six months the Pentagon chief must also deliver a report about ways to fix “gaps in AI talent” related to national defense, including recommendations for addressing challenges in the DOD’s ability to hire certain noncitizens; streamlining processes for certain noncitizens to access classified information through “Limited Access Authorization” at department labs; the appropriate use of enlistment authority under 10 U.S.C. 504(b)(2) for experts in artificial intelligence and other critical and emerging technologies; and ways that DOD and DHS can “enhance the use of appropriate authorities for the retention of certain noncitizens of vital importance to national security,” according to the directive.

Meanwhile, White House officials have been tasked with overseeing the development of a national security memorandum that will provide guidance to the Pentagon, intelligence community and other relevant agencies on the continued adoption of AI capabilities for national security missions, including as it relates to AI assurance and risk-management practices for use cases that “may affect the rights or safety of United States persons and, in appropriate contexts, non-United States persons,” per the EO.

Notably, the memo will also include directives to address the potential adversarial use of AI systems “in ways that threaten the capabilities or objectives of the Department of Defense or the Intelligence Community, or that otherwise pose risks to the security of the United States or its allies and partners.”

That document is expected to be delivered to the president within the next 270 days.

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The document follows the publication of the Biden-Harris administration’s strategy, released in 2022, that outlined four pillars related to emerging issues in the Arctic — one of which called on the Pentagon to develop capabilities for enhanced military operations. The other three focused on the long-term impacts of climate change, economic development and international partnerships. 

The plan now lists broad strategic security-related objectives — ​​improving understanding of the Arctic operating environment, increasing presence in the region and working with relevant allies and partners — that also includes specific actions for the Defense Department and other federal agencies to take to deter aggression in the region.

“Our security in the Arctic is inclusive of many interests, from national defense and homeland security to safe commercial and scientific activities. However, the Arctic environment poses region-specific challenges that require tailored technology, assets, infrastructure, training, and planning,” the implementation plan states. “To secure our interests as attention, investments, and activity grow in the Arctic over the coming decades, the United States will enhance and exercise both our military and civilian capabilities in the Arctic as required to deter threats and to anticipate, prevent, and respond to both natural and human-made incidents.”

The original strategy pointed to both Russia’s increased military posture and China’s plans to grow its influence in the region as areas of concern for national security. In order to keep tabs on adversaries and track potential threats, the new plan calls for improvements to domain awareness capabilities. That includes making investments to replace and upgrade outdated systems and infrastructure, expand coverage of the Arctic and incorporate emerging technologies.

The Pentagon will partner with Arctic nations to conduct research and development tailored for operations in the region — specifically with Canada to “modernize, improve and better integrate” capabilities for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), per the document.

Having persistent and accurate eyes in far northern latitudes is a top priority for leaders at NORAD. And the joint U.S.-Canadian organization is seeking capabilities — from long-range radars to artificial intelligence — that will offer better domain awareness.

The White House also directed the Defense Department to put funds towards updating current and developing new real-time observation, modeling and data analytic capabilities for the region.

Much of the directives for the Pentagon are focused on capabilities that are used to monitor the weather — including investments across the next five-to-seven years for the Navy’s Oceanographic and Atmospheric Master Library’s Ambient Noise Database and a Space Force-led effort to develop a real-time model of the ionosphere “to monitor and provide data on environmental conditions unique to the Arctic region and thus afford opportunities to predict and potentially mitigate the effects of changes in the natural environment.”

In addition, the implementation plan calls on both the Pentagon and NASA to “improve communications and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities by developing communications and data networks capable of operating in the northern latitudes.”

Satellite communications and GPS availability in the Arctic are extremely limited for the U.S. military, as the connecting data links become unstable due to long distances needed to operate in the environment. A number of services are exploring new ways to offer more reliable capabilities for the region, such as low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellations.

NASA is tasked with evaluating existing and emerging U.S. commercial space-based assets — particularly LEO satcom constellations — in order to “assess their sufficiency to fulfill the identified requirements and user needs” by mid-fiscal 2024, according to the implementation plan. The agency will also create a framework dedicated to potential partnerships related to future satcom needs in the Arctic by the end of fiscal 2024, it noted.

On the other hand, the Defense Department will assess the availability of the global positioning system in the region — both as a stand-alone capability and in combination with similar allied space-based capabilities like Europe’s Galileo and Japan’s Quasi-Zenith — among other directives to enhance Arctic-based situational awareness and communications, according to the document.

Along with improved capabilities, the Arctic strategy implementation plan seeks to deter potential hostile activity with enhanced force posture and Arctic-focused military exercises.

“The United States will maintain and, as driven by requirements, refine and advance our military presence in the Arctic in support of our homeland defense, global military and power projection, and deterrence goals,” the document states. “We will make targeted investments to strategically enhance security infrastructure as required to enable these aims, while building the resilience of critical infrastructure to protect against both climate change and cyberattacks.”

The White House is directing the Pentagon to leverage region-specific military exercises, like Arctic Edge and Arctic Challenge, that are conducted with allies and partners “to develop and strengthen homeland defense plans in the Arctic and exercise Joint presence,” in addition to other training for cold-weather and Arctic operations.

Finally, the Pentagon is charged with coordinating with allies and partners in the Arctic to not only understand the region but also improve overall deterrence and readiness. The implementation plan directs enhanced partnerships with Canada, Arctic NATO nations, Alaska and Alaska Native and rural communities for a range of activities — including combined exercises, training on cold-weather ops and overall interoperability.

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“I do think that we have a number of areas that would be right for Replicator, and that would include [unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs] of all sizes,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told DefenseScoop Monday during a press briefing at the annual AUSA conference. 

First unveiled by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in August, Replicator is meant to help the U.S. offset China’s recently intensifying efforts to bolster its military, while simultaneously accelerating the Defense Department’s capacity to unleash American-made drones at-scale for operations in the next 18 to 24 months. 

However, details regarding exactly how the Pentagon will fund and facilitate this new initiative — and how the individual services and contractors will support it — have largely remained sparse since Replicator was announced. Senior officials have expressly stated their intent to keep those associated plans mostly close to the chest to prevent China from being fully informed on the pursuit.

“[Replicator] is a fairly new initiative that the deputy secretary has just announced — so we’re still exploring how the Army can fit into that,” Wormuth said during Monday’s briefing. 

In response to DefenseScoop’s questions, the secretary hinted at some of the service’s existing uncrewed capabilities that could make sense to underpin Replicator. 

“Using [drones] as sensors and as deliverers of payloads, and then also defending against them, is key on the battlefield — so, UAVs of all sizes. I think, also, some of the loitering munitions that we have could be candidates for Replicator. And then, finally, perhaps some of our ground robots. But we’re still in dialogue with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] on that,” she said. 

Relatedly, Wormuth also articulated her desire to deliberately “emphasize the theme of the need for the Army to innovate and transform,” during this year’s conference. That theme was threaded throughout her morning keynote to kick off the three-day event.

For example, Wormuth confirmed that this year the Army “started fielding our first robots outside of the” explosive ordnance disposal community for the first time. Separately, the service has also recently launched a new integrated formations effort, she noted, to ultimately bring robotic systems into units alongside humans — “with the goal of always having robots, not soldiers, make first contact with the enemy.”

“New systems and technologies — paired with a robust digital transformation, incorporation of autonomy, [artificial intelligence], machine learning and advanced computing — will all contribute to the transformation of today’s force into the Army of the future,” Wormuth said. 

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Defense Department leaders launched Task Force Lima within the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s (CDAO) Algorithmic Warfare Directorate back in August to accelerate the enterprise’s understanding, assessment and deployment of generative AI. That nascent, buzzy realm broadly encompasses technology associated with large language models that produce (convincing but not always correct) software code and media based on prompts. And experts warn it’s rife with promising opportunities and serious challenges that are far from fully realized. 

In a recent interview, Navy Capt. M. Xavier Lugo, the CDAO’s new Task Force Lima mission commander, briefed DefenseScoop about how this first industry day and the other in-the-works events and elements fit into his team’s overarching, ambitious vision to rapidly navigate the uncertain and transformative power generative AI presents across the defense landscape, and to ultimately support the department’s ethical adoption of the tech.

“The mission from a task force perspective is really to develop, evaluate, recommend and monitor generative AI capabilities for the whole DOD and to responsibly ensure that the department capitalizes on their mission impact while integrating these technologies at scale. That sounds like a lot. So, what we did is we broke it into phases, with the first phase being learning everything that’s out there as much as we can,” Lugo explained. 

Lugo is a 28-year Navy officer with extensive experience in the Supply Corps. A mechanical engineer by degree, he’s been a coder since high school and is also an operations research graduate from the Naval Postgraduate School. In his previous assignment, he worked to modernize logistics-aligned information technologies for the entire Navy.

“I am very familiar with how [AI technology] actually works, and how it utilizes data,” he told DefenseScoop.

In his current capacity leading the new task force, Lugo meets with DOD’s Chief Digital and AI Officer Craig Martell very frequently. He and Martell — the former head of machine learning at Lyft — have “some geek sessions here and there” too, Lugo noted. They “don’t always agree on some of the theoretical stuff,” he added. 

But to both, encouraging diverse viewpoints in tech-driving pursuits is a good thing.

“From our perspective, because the use cases are military-related and because the workflows are all based on operational pieces, you do want military officers involved at some level. I have been lucky that I was involved from the sense of being the commander of it. But we bring that practical flavor to the research and technical pieces of AI. And also, just to be clear, CDAO as a whole is not a research entity. We’re not here to build models. We’re here to operationalize them. And that’s where a task force like Task Force Lima and the military officers in this command come in: We operationalize this technology,” Lugo told DefenseScoop.

DOD is a sprawling, distributed enterprise — “so getting to all the generative AI efforts out there is not an easy task,” the task force chief also noted.

So far though, his team has had “very good collaboration” from the services, combatant commands, and all DOD agencies. They are beginning to hone in on the categories where large language models, specifically as part of the generative AI-capable tools, are being considered for performance across the department.

Lugo’s team also has a short-term task to populate interim guidance on generative AI for the Pentagon.

“That has also been sort of coordinated. What I mean with ‘sort of’ is that it’s not not being coordinated, but that in parallel all the services and federal agencies have also provided guidance. So, what we did was, we’ve taken all of those multiple guidances and also included what we have learned so far, and we’re going to populate that soon. That’s one of the first steps so that everybody knows what their ‘left and right limits’ are with this technology, and so that we can all be at least in the same field as to what we are thinking of utilizing the tech,” Lugo said.

Task Force Lima, he added, has multiple “touch points” to carry out its mission.

“We have a battle rhythm of weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings,” he said.

And earlier this month, the cadre hosted its first government-only kickoff to engage internal stakeholders on their in-the-making plans and approach. Between 200 and 300 officials attended virtually and in person.

That “gives you a scale of the level of interest — and every single service was represented, plus the Coast Guard, plus multiple agencies, all the [Principal Staff Assistants]. I mean, it was very well covered from the perspective of which agencies and personnel were in it,” Lugo noted.

The team also recently released a new request for information via which it has invited the public to help the DOD “further understand and explore the risks and benefits of development, acquisition, and integration” of generative AI. 

Responses to that RFI are due by Oct. 8. 

“That is based on what we’ve learned so far. There are some gaps that we have noticed in the technology. And what that challenge is about is to tell [industry and academia] we are interested: ‘You’ve done a great job on the development and on the delivery of this technology but there’s some pieces that we need some help from you, because if you fix these gaps, we have more potential use of this technology,’” Lugo explained.

One example of such gaps is referred to as “hallucinations” — a phenomenon where a large language model essentially makes up untrue information or false facts that aren’t rooted in actual real data or events.

“So, how do we get around that? How do we measure it? How do we protect against it? What are some solutions out there — whether it is a single solution from a model per se, or whether it is a system with a system solution, or whether it is a mitigation process? Any of those or all of those, right, for that just one challenge. Come in and tell us your ideas on how we’re going to do that,” Lugo said.

Potential collaborators are learning more about this and other issues that need addressing at the industry day unfolding Wednesday. The task force will accept white papers — and then ultimately aim to work with partners through its Tradewinds initiative.

“While building the plane after we’re flying it — this is one of those pieces that has to be built over,” Lugo said.

Ultimately, Task Force Lima is deeply involved in both the Pentagon’s actual research and deployment of large language models, and in informing its creation of guidance, frameworks, workflows and policies to govern their evolving use.  

While publicly accessible models made by Open AI, Google, Microsoft and others already exist, the Pentagon has urged components not to enter government information into them for reasons it says are associated with operational security.

“We are not building at this moment in time and we have not decided whether we’re going to build DOD-specific models. However, what is happening is that models that are already built are being utilized in a containerized fashion — so disconnected from the wild, if you want to put it that way,” Lugo noted.

Multiple times in the interview, he emphasized that there are still many unknowns regarding if, in what ways, and for what purposes generative AI might be eventually deployed at scale by the military and DOD.

“Our mind is not necessarily made up yet — without doing the experimentation — as to whether we’re going to go ahead and say, ‘Yes, for sure, we’re going to implement this technology.’ That’s exactly where we are right now and that’s part of the reason we were stood up. This is new, this is out there with a lot of emphasis from industry — and so, how should we and how can we utilize this technology? Those are the two main questions,” Lugo said.

Ambitiously, Task Force Lima’s initial timeline to figure that out is only 18 months.

“Now, let me caveat that the reason we have a short timeline is because of the immediate nature of the technology,” Lugo noted.

Still, before his team stands down after that year-and-a-half passes, the plan is to provide a transition strategy with deliverables including a list of all the players and assets needed to carry on this generative AI-driving work. 

“This is extremely, extremely new technology — and we’ve got to have the humans on top of it all the time,” Lugo told DefenseScoop.

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