“This event is particularly special because it’s the first event of this caucus,” a congressional staffer told DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity ahead of the meet-up.

The new group was originally launched in September 2024 by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Two months after that [we sort of went] into a ‘lame duck’ Congress. So, the intent here is to essentially kick-start the caucus again — and to generate buzz there. We’re also going to be recognizing the new members [and use this as] a sort of recruiting tool for any prospective members who might want to join the caucus,” the staffer explained. 

The SDMC’s overarching mission is to promote defense investments and next-gen capabilities to deter and counter foreign adversaries. According to the staffer, an immediate topline goal for the lawmakers involved is to “get after” the process behind defense innovation.

“We as a government, as a military, need to move at the speed of relevance, which is to say, move at the speed of China. And with that comes an issue, not so much with a lack of innovation in our country — we have great innovators, but more so at the process that I guess disheartens innovators from staying within the defense industry,” they said. 

“So with this Congress, while still in its kind of nascent phases, I know it’s very important [for] Sen. Cramer to get after the processes, the bureaucracy … and kind of unleash that innovative spirit and mindset. That would be probably the biggest priority right now,” the staffer added. 

They confirmed that Cramer will not be in attendance on Wednesday, as he’s recovering in Bismarck, North Dakota, after slipping on ice and hitting his head over the weekend. He’s currently under doctor’s orders not to fly. 

“The senator’s bummed he’s missing it,” the staffer said, noting that he’ll be in close contact with co-chair Sen. Kelly about how it all goes.

DefenseScoop viewed a list of the more than 200 representatives from both chambers of Congress, different-sized companies and the Defense Department who RSVP’d to participate in person. Lawmakers from the Democratic, Republican and Independent parties — and notably several representing the House Defense Modernization Caucus — are expected to join the event.

Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, and Defense Innovation Unit Director Doug Beck were invited as “special guests” and will each provide remarks.

Members of Beck’s team told DefenseScoop ahead of the reception that he’s going to share new details about DIU’s high-level modernization aims for the next few years. Beck’s also likely going to spotlight some big-picture impacts, including that DIU has awarded nearly 550 prototype awards worth $2.4 billion — primarily to nontraditional vendors — to date.

On Wednesday, a second congressional staffer familiar with the plans also emphasized the dual role of caucuses on Capitol Hill.

“A lot of times caucuses are meant to be these public events that highlight good ideas, highlight good changes that can be made. And it’s a bit of a PR, it’s a PR platform. And then there’s the second part of caucuses that are meant to be idea factories — and so they can feed into the actual legislative work that’s going to get done in an NDAA. Obviously, caucuses are not official government organizations. So whatever comes out of this is meant to then be built into the work that we do in NDAA and other legislative vehicles,” they told DefenseScoop, referring to the annual policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act.

Both staffers suggested that moving forward, members of the new Senate caucus are keen to host more engagements that are open to the public. However, “what exactly that forum would be in the public space is still kind of being worked out at the staff level,” one told DefenseScoop.

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President Donald Trump has nominated former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as defense secretary, and billionaire investor Stephen Feinberg to be deputy SecDef in his second term. Both men need Senate approval. If confirmed, they and the White House will have the option to name new officials or keep on existing staff for certain top Defense Department positions.

In conversations over email this week, sources revealed who is currently functioning in a few of those key roles between now and the arrival of DOD’s new bosses.

“Acting Chief Information Officer is Ms. Leslie Beavers,” a spokesperson told DefenseScoop late Tuesday.

Beavers, who retired from the Air Force as a reserve brigadier general, was tapped as acting CIO in July 2024 after John Sherman’s departure. She previously served as Sherman’s deputy and helped oversee multiple high-stakes, enterprise IT initiatives inside DOD.

A Pentagon spokesperson also confirmed that Gurpreet Bhatia is temporarily serving in dual-hatted roles as acting deputy CIO for cybersecurity and DOD’s chief information security officer. Before working at the Pentagon, Bhatia led the National Security Agency’s engagements with foreign partners, among other senior government roles.

Defense acquisition expert Radha Plumb assumed the role of DOD’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer in April 2024. In a recent interview ahead of her planned departure from the department, Plumb told DefenseScoop that Principal Deputy CDAO Margie Palmieri was set to serve as the acting chief of the office in the interim until Trump’s pick is named.

Personnel in the CDAO told DefenseScoop Wednesday that the hub is largely operating as if Palmieri is its director this week. Pentagon spokespersons did not confirm that she’s officially leading the organization.

Separately, sources at the Defense Innovation Unit told DefenseScoop this week that former Apple executive Doug Beck continues to head the organization, where he took the helm in April 2023. Historically, “the DIU director is not a politically appointed role,” one official noted.

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DIU Director Doug Beck unveiled his updated strategic vision in early 2024 as a way to address a number of challenges that have kept the organization from accelerating the Defense Department’s adoption of dual-use, commercial technologies. A significant part of the new vision focused on both growing DIU and improving its ability to work with the commercial sector, Liz Young McNally, the organization’s deputy director for commercial operations, told DefenseScoop.

Hired in April 2024 to spearhead the unit’s collaboration with the commercial sector and investment community, McNally has spent the last several months integrating different components within DIU into a more unified commercial ops center while also helping the organization build out its regional infrastructure.

“DIU has folks all across the country helping to galvanize the defense innovation ecosystem,” she said in a recent interview. “We have onramp hubs, we have individuals — both government and contractor — bringing in talent, new companies [and] new technology into the department.”

Although the organization is still working to synchronize all relevant components into a single commercial operations center, McNally said DIU is already seeing improvements to how it brings new companies into the Pentagon ecosystem.

“I think now we’re in an even better position to focus on what the big rocks are, which are really around how do we lower the barriers for entry and … what are all the things that we can do to help make it easier to work with the department,” she told DefenseScoop.

For decades, Pentagon bureaucracy has been an obstacle for non-traditional contractors wanting to do business with the department — a phenomenon DIU and others are trying to remediate as commercial technology advances at a rapid pace.

McNally noted that while funding uncertainties have historically served as a barrier to entry, new entrants are also worried about other bureaucratic hurdles such as cyber resiliency, security clearances and the cumbersome authorization-to-operate (ATO) process. Addressing those specific challenges will be a focal point for the unit in 2025, she added.

“There’s so much chicken and egg for a lot of those in terms of when did the company work on them,” McNally said. “We’re in the process of, in the new year, launching some various efforts to pilot, in terms of what we can do even more to help our DIU portfolio companies in those different areas, using some of the [Defense Innovation Community of Entities] funding in the budget to do so.”

As it launches those pilots, McNally said her organization is taking lessons learned from working with some of the smaller companies on the Replicator initiative — an initiative that seeks to field thousands of advanced autonomous systems by August 2025. A future effort will allow the organization to aid those non-traditional defense companies in assessing their cyber resilience, she said.

“I think DIU just has more of a commercial lens to it than other parts of the department,” McNally told DefenseScoop “So when we do those assessments and help companies to think about what types of remediation they are going to do, quite frankly it feels different than when other parts of the department do it.”

The cultural difference between the commercial sector and the sprawling DOD is another barrier McNally pointed to as an area DIU will be tackling this year. For new entrants, the Pentagon is a large and opaque organization to try and navigate, and her organization wants to increase transparency to help companies know where to focus their investments and technology development, she noted.

It’s a task that requires change from both the top- and bottom-levels of the entire ecosystem, McNally said.

“By actually working together, you’re starting to evolve things as well so that there’s the top-down change,” she said. “But then ultimately, it’s starting work with those different program offices and starting to do the work that we’re doing at [Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program] offices and with the [Defense Acquisition University] and others to evolve that.”

Moving forward, a big focus will be on aligning the Pentagon’s most critical capability gaps with where the venture capitalist community is making investments. While some technologies — like AI and autonomy — are readily being funded, others that are more hardware-intensive currently don’t have as much private capital flowing in, she explained.

“Maybe there will be a window going forward to continue to think about what are the right incentives and other changes we have to make to ensure that we have enough private capital, [and] thinking about those other areas as well,” McNally said.

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Viasat, Aalyria, Higher Ground and IoT/AI were selected among the 119 companies that submitted proposals for DIU’s Opportunistic, Resilient & Innovative Expeditionary Network Topology (ORIENT) commercial solutions opening. The firms are expected to provide technologies for “improving the resilience” of command-and-control capabilities for so-called “all-domain attritable autonomous” (ADA2) systems. A total of 130 solutions were proposed by interested vendors before the selections were made, according to a release.

Additionally, Swarm Aero, Anduril Industries and L3Harris Technologies were tapped to provide tools to facilitate “the automated coordination of swarms of hundreds or thousands of uncrewed assets across multiple domains in order to improve their lethality and efficiency.” Proposals were requested via the Autonomous Collaborative Teaming (ACT) commercial solutions opening. The winners were chosen among 132 companies that submitted a total of 165 proposed solutions, according to DIU.

DIU didn’t disclose the value of the contracts, though DefenseScoop reached out to obtain those numbers.

Last week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced that the Pentagon had tapped vendors to serve as “integrated software enablers” to help fully realize the department’s ambitious Replicator plans, but she didn’t identify the companies.

For Replicator tranches 1.1 and 1.2, the department selected a variety of unmanned systems — including uncrewed aerial vehicles, loitering munitions and maritime drones — for accelerated production to support Replicator, which is intended to help the department counter China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific by fielding thousands of robotic platforms.

Replicator 2.0, unveiled in September, is primarily focused on counter-drone systems.

However, drones and counter-UAS capabilities are only part of the broader Replicator effort. Software is seen as a key enabler of autonomy and networking chosen systems with other platforms.

“While these systems are valuable as single agents or swarms of like systems, they are most resilient and effective when they operate in combined teams that can collaborate with other types of systems across domains. Resilient C2 and collaborative autonomy vendors will enhance the effectiveness of these systems by providing user interfaces, collaborative autonomy architectures and software, and network orchestration. The enabling software technology will also allow Replicator systems to seamlessly connect robust long-haul communications solutions to redundant local mesh networks and ensure they can continue to operate as a system-of-systems in disconnected, disrupted, low-bandwidth, and intermittent environments. Together, these critical software enablers will enable so-called ‘heterogeneous collaboration’ between different Replicator systems fielded in the next year and lay the foundation for the Department’s broader push towards collaborative autonomy,” DIU officials wrote in the release.

The innovation unit, which was established less than 10 years ago by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to serve as a bridge between the Pentagon and the commercial sector, is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has outposts in major tech hubs like Austin, Boston and other locations, as well as an office in the Pentagon. The organization is playing a key role in spearheading Replicator efforts by bringing additional companies into the fold and trying to get them on contract quickly.

“We believe that best in breed commercial software solutions can significantly enhance DoD modernization efforts,” DIU Director Doug Beck said in a statement Wednesday. “Many leading AI and autonomy firms are outside of our traditional defense industrial base, and DIU is working actively with partners across the Department to bring the very best capabilities from the U.S. tech sector to bear in support of our most critical warfighter needs. This latest step in the Replicator initiative is a critical example of that teamwork in action.”

At a Brookings Institution event Tuesday, Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said unmanned systems like those being accelerated for Replicator offer significant benefits. They fit in with a “Hellscape” warfighting concept that he’s laid out for a potential conflict with China in the Taiwan Strait.

However, operational challenges in the region also highlight the need for other types of capabilities, he noted.

“Certainly, these systems are ideal in enclosed spaces … if you can deploy it. Then when you’re finished with doing this, you’re going to have to sustain those forces in Okinawa over wide-ranging space. To do so, you’re going to need air and maritime superiority. How am I going to do that?” Paparo said.

“For closed spaces for executing sea denial, this can be a very key capability. But air and maritime superiority are going to be important over wide expanses, and that means energy and energy density. And here the coin of the realm is dazzle, deceive [and] destroy an enemy’s capability to see and sense the battlespace; maneuver in periods where an enemy can’t see; bring long-range fires on an enemy; gain that capability to maneuver; and sustain across seven joint functions — and one of those joint functions is sustainment,” he added.

The U.S. military can’t achieve that type of superiority just because “we got some drones,” the admiral said.

DefenseScoop asked Paparo if Indo-Pacom was planning to deploy large numbers of Replicator systems on U.S. ships and aircraft to avoid some of the complications associated with stationing them on the territory of allies in the region.

“Probably, yeah,” he replied.

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This development marks the first public report of the second capability focus area under the Replicator initiative — a high-profile effort that underpins the Defense Department’s multifaceted plan to deter China.

According to a memorandum signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sept. 27 and viewed by DefenseScoop ahead of publication Monday, the Pentagon “will tackle the warfighter priority of countering the threat posed by small uncrewed aerial systems (C-sUAS) to our most critical installations and force concentrations” under Replicator 2.0.

“The expectation is that Replicator 2 will assist with overcoming challenges we face in the areas of production capacity, technology innovation, authorities, policies, open system architecture and system integration, and force structure,” Austin wrote in the memo.

Austin has directed Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady to oversee the development of a Replicator 2.0 plan that will be proposed to Congress in the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2026, according to the memo. 

The Defense Department aims to field the C-sUAS systems selected through Replicator 2.0 within two years after lawmakers approve their funding, the secretary wrote.

A defense official declined to provide details regarding what systems, specific capabilities or quantities will be included in the Replicator 2.0 plan. However, the official noted the Pentagon will focus on fielding C-sUAS systems at locations both within and outside the continental United States.

The department sees opportunities to work with state governments, local communities and interagency partners to “burn down risk regarding domestic authorities needed for safe and secure base protection,” the official told DefenseScoop. As for overseas locations, the Pentagon will work with allies and partners to ensure the protection of military bases and surrounding communities, they added.

Hicks first launched Replicator as a key military technology and procurement modernization effort in August 2023. 

At the time, she billed it as a strategic initiative to confront China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by incentivizing U.S. industrial production capacity and the Defense Department’s adoption of advanced warfare technologies en masse — through replicable processes — at a much faster pace than has been achieved before.

Tranches within the first capability focus area — Replicator 1.0 — broadly encompass the purchase and making of loitering munitions, and other technologies associated with what Hicks refers to as “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” (ADA2) to counter China’s anti-access/area-denial A2AD strategy by August 2025.

DefenseScoop has reported that the first two tranches of selections — dubbed Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — include a variety of maritime and aerial drones and associated counter-drone assets selected for mass production.

Austin noted in the new memo that the Defense Department is “on track with the Initiative’s fielding plan for next summer,” adding that Replicator has “helped ignite our efforts to scale autonomous systems across the force more generally.”

Pentagon officials have secured roughly $500 million from Congress for fiscal 2024 to fund the first Replicator technology batches. The department has requested an additional $500 million for fiscal 2025.

Since Replicator’s inception, Hicks and other defense leaders have been expressly secretive about their full vision, select capabilities and concepts of operation that are foundational to realizing this effort, often citing security concerns.

Lawmakers, however, have also steadily questioned whether the department has allowed Congress and oversight bodies enough access to adequate information about the implementation of this initiative.  

The defense official emphasized that Austin’s memo for Replicator 2.0 serves as an endorsement of the broader initiative, as well as a reflection of his commitment to delivering counter-unmanned aerial vehicle systems for warfighters. 

“In marrying that commitment to the Replicator oversight and delivery model, the department will be well positioned to accelerate progress in this critical area,” the official said.

The forthcoming activities are envisioned to complement and advance “the significant C-sUAS work already underway in the Defense Department in delivering modular and mutually reinforcing solutions to sensing, AI-enabled decision support, and defeat capabilities appropriate to the range of environments in which those most critical installations and force concentrations operate,” the official added.

Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, will take the helm on Replicator 2.0 efforts in collaboration with Pentagon Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante, who also serves as the department’s C-sUAS principal staff assistant, according to the memo.

Austin wrote that work under Replicator 2.0 will leverage efforts by the Counter Uncrewed Systems Warfighter (C-UXS) Senior Integration Group, which was established in March to identify capability gaps and potential technology solutions for countering threats posed by UAS.

The defense official told DefenseScoop that this team has since “been the body responsible for executing ‘fight tonight’ solutions to combat this threat.”

“Lessons learned from the C-UXS Senior Integration Group’s work regarding the ongoing threat posed by unmanned systems will help inform solutions for the Replicator 2 effort,” the official explained.

The defense official further pointed to real-world evolving conflicts in multiple regions abroad that they said “demonstrate the warfighter need for increased focus on” drone-disrupting technologies.

“The secretary has made clear that countering uncrewed assets is one of his top priorities. As a result of the Ukraine war and engagements in the Middle East, the department has learned a lot about the dynamic pace of the threat and the accelerated pace of emerging sUAS technology — all of which informed leadership’s thinking on where to focus Replicator 2,” they told DefenseScoop.

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“This is our hemisphere that we live in, and so those allies and partners are critical to us,” he told DefenseScoop Thursday on the sidelines of an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Secure and Emerging Technologies.

While it has operated as a key Defense Department innovation hub for almost a decade, DIU was elevated and realigned to be a direct report to the secretary of defense at the start of Beck’s tenure last year. At that time, Beck — a Navy reserve captain and former Apple executive — unveiled his strategic vision for DIU 3.0. Under that plan, the unit aims to scale capabilities it has already helped mature, while explicitly focusing on the most critical, real-world gaps by physically embedding officials within the combatant commands to match approved technologies that can support existing needs.

In Chile, Beck connected with DIU’s first embed at U.S. Southern Command, Sarah Cuellar, who is the unit’s key liaison for the region and is also the deputy director of its energy portfolio.

“She’s double-hatted and she’s fantastic. She has a military [special operations forces] background, a technology background, and she’s currently bilingual,” Beck said. 

Southcom is primarily responsible for providing force protection, contingency planning and other capabilities in most areas of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The command currently faces a range of unfolding and emerging threats, including those posed by transnational criminal organizations and adversaries like China and Russia.

According to Beck, DIU “actively uses Southcom as kind of a test bed for things that we might leverage in other places around the world,” including in autonomy or other intelligence tools. Both organizations, in his view, are relatively small and nimble, and seek to move really quickly.

“They’re an [area of responsibility] that has both a broad range of partners. And they also have a pretty broad maritime environment, which is important. And then there’s also a lot going on in the region itself that is also really important,” he told DefenseScoop.

The main reason for his visit to Chile was to attend the South American Defense Conference at the invitation of Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of Southcom, who co-hosted the summit alongside the Chilean defense chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown was also in attendance.

“A major focus of the discussion was actually around technology — AI — and how do we leverage this technology in order to do things together?” Beck said. 

Defense leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay joined the American and Chilean officials for the conference, and representatives from Canada, France and the United Kingdom where there as observers.

In the separate remarks they delivered at the event, both Richardson and Brown each spotlighted intensifying needs for the military partners to collaboratively harness AI and jointly pursue efforts to enable space-domain awareness.

“Authoritarian, communist governments are attempting to seize all they can here in the Western Hemisphere — operating without regard for domestic laws or international laws. Malign state actors are increasingly using advanced technology to perpetrate corruption, disinformation campaigns, cybercrime, human rights abuses that undermine the fabric of democratic societies, and hide the truth from populations,” Richardson told attendees.

“In the rapidly evolving global security landscape, the need to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into defense and security functions, has transitioned from a forward-looking ambition to a here-and-now immediate operational necessity,” she said.

During his presentation, Beck said he sought to shed light on his organization’s evolution from DIU 1.0, to 2.0, to 3.0, and “what that means for taking capability and speed, and combining it with focus and scale to have strategic effect.”

“I also talked a lot about the criticality of international partnerships to that work, and how we’re working closely with partners around the world — that our allies and partners are one of the unique strengths that we have as a nation,” he added.

Looking ahead, Beck said the U.S. and its partner nations in the region are working out next steps and possible future collective engagements on emerging technology, as they continue to build momentum around joint efforts.

“It’s about getting that whole group together and enthusiasm around how we work together. There are a lot of ways that particularly data and AI can make a difference — for not just the major conflict-oriented forms of deterrence and warfighting — but also things like combating counterterrorism and transnational crime, securing fishing rights, all kinds of things that matter so much to these countries and that we can really work together as a team to help get at,” Beck said.

He’s deeply familiar with the region, noting that he spent a lot of time there as an Apple executive who had “the Americas” within his portfolio.

“So, I was not surprised to see how much technology is in the region. There’s a lot of great, for example, software that’s already been built in the region, as well as critical areas around the supply chain that’s already there,” Beck said.

However, the DIU chief noted that he was “encouraged” by the ways in which America’s partners in Southcom’s area of responsibility are actively pursuing military innovation. 

“I think for me, it was a big ‘Aha!’ moment to see just how immediately some of the same kinds of technologies — for example, in domain awareness, that are so critical to us for deterring major conflict or winning if we [are] forced to fight — are also critical to these other strategic imperatives, like transnational crime, like securing a fishing rights, etc., that are very much front-and-center on all of their minds as well,” Beck told DefenseScoop. 

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The effort — dubbed Blue Manufacturing — will seek to establish and maintain a roster of pre-approved commercial manufacturing facilities that meet the department’s standards for producing military capabilities, DIU Director Doug Beck said Thursday at NDIA’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition.

“There’s this amazing advanced manufacturing capability that’s happening — everything from digital engineering to additive manufacturing and 3D printing and everything in between,” he said. “What we’re doing now is essentially creating a program that pre-vets for quality, security [and] adversarial capital — so we can make that introduction and actually build the bridge to help both sides to scale.”

Beck noted many commercial companies — particularly smaller businesses — often struggle to meet the Defense Department’s demands for producing capabilities at scale. But having a roster of manufacturing facilities equipped with advanced technologies that those companies can turn to should help mitigate some of those challenges.

“These guys need these guys to scale, and these guys … can help us scale with those guys,” he said. “Doing that will help us really build the defense industrial base in a new way and do it right now.”

The new program is modeled after DIU’s Blue UAS effort, he noted. Started in 2020, Blue UAS sought to pre-approve a roster of commercial unmanned aerial systems that can be purchased by Pentagon components. The innovation hub also has a Blue UAS Framework that includes additional drone subcomponents.

Drones added to the program’s cleared list do not require a Defense Department exception to policy to be purchased, because they have already undergone necessary cyber-security evaluations, had a National Defense Authorization Act compliance check, and issued administrative documentation, according to DIU.

“We’re revamping [Blue UAS] so that we can accelerate it, expand it and bring the cost of using it down,” Beck said.

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At the military base in Hawaii, Beck and Paparo engaged with key members of the command and DIU’s team of embeds currently based there “to discuss key initiatives, including Replicator,” a Defense Department spokesperson confirmed in an email on Friday.

“Beck and the DIU team also visited the Hawaii Defense Innovation OnRamp Hub, and met with a large group of commercial tech and DOD partners from Hawaii and elsewhere,” they told DefenseScoop. 

DIU was first launched in 2015 to help Pentagon components field commercial technologies to the military more quickly and less costly than traditional government buying methods allowed.

Since then, the unit has blossomed to build foundational bridges between DOD and the tech sector, and simultaneously accelerated dual-use prototypes. Now — under Beck’s leadership — it’s been elevated and received major funding and staffing boosts to further evolve into what he calls “DIU 3.0”.

Through this new strategic approach, the innovation hub is embedding members of its team “at the most critical nodes of warfighter demand in order to identify priorities, and maximize the opportunities for commercially derived technologies to close capability gaps with the focus, speed, and scale required to deter major conflict or win if forced to fight,” the DOD spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Beck visits Indo-Pacom “frequently in support of DIU’s ongoing work” to realize his new 3.0 strategy, they said. 

“The DIU team is focused on bringing the commercial technology in artificial intelligence, autonomy, space, human systems, energy, cyber/telecom, and emerging areas like quantum to bear in support of Indo-Pacom’s most critical priorities, including the Joint Fires Network among other efforts,” the spokesperson added.

DIU is also a major contributor in the Pentagon’s plans to carry out Replicator. 

Via the first stage of that high-stakes initiative, DOD seeks to rapidly field thousands of multi-domain autonomous systems by August 2025 to offset China’s massive military buildup. Due to its geographic area of responsibility, Indo-Pacom is considered the Pentagon’s main, early deployer of Replicator systems.

In response to questions from DefenseScoop, the DOD spokesperson declined to elaborate on any details of the Replicator-centered discussions Beck, Paparo and their teams held this week.

However, regarding the broader subject of autonomy they did confirm that “during the visit, the team participated in live testing of maritime domain capabilities” as part of DIU’s Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicles program supporting the U.S. Navy. 

“LDUUV is a great example of speed to capability, as the effort started last July with our Navy partners, and just one year later is already conducting live testing with operational users,” the spokesperson said. “Developing undersea warfare capabilities of the kind highlighted by LDUUV is just one effort in DIU’s broader autonomy portfolio of projects, which provide novel commercial solutions to the warfighter.”

Separately this week — back around the unit’s headquarters in Mountain View, California — other DIU leaders also hosted what the official called “a synchronization of Office of the Secretary of Defense-level and Service test and evaluation components.”

The ultimate aim of that event was to “to organize and execute a development and operational testing and evaluation roadmap in the [unmanned systems space], taking advantage of the rapid pace of commercial hardware and software development in support of this critical priority,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

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Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven “Bucky” Butow has been appointed military deputy for DIU, effective June 1, the organization announced Monday.

The unit, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has outposts in other major tech hubs around the United States, aims to connect the Pentagon with non-traditional vendors and accelerate the department’s adoption of commercial technologies with military applications. Its major focus areas include AI, autonomy, cyber and telecom, emerging tech, energy, human systems and space. It’s also supporting the department’s Replicator initiative.

In his new role, Butow “will lead more than 75 Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Guardians representing active and reserve components of the U.S. armed forces. Collectively, these service members, along with their civilian counterparts, execute DIU’s strategic vision as a national mission force for innovation supporting the combatant commands, the joint force, allies and global partners,” according to a release.

Butow is only the second general officer or flag officer to hold this position. Rear Adm. Daniel “Brian” Hendrickson, now retired, had the job during DIU’s early years. After Hendrickson’s departure, the unit had the authorization but no funded billet for the military deputy role. Now it does, according to officials.

Butow isn’t a newcomer to DIU. He first joined the organization in 2015, the year it was established by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. He served as the unit’s West Coast military lead and also helped set up the organization’s operating locations in Mountain View, California, Boston and Austin, Texas. Additionally, he served as the inaugural space portfolio director, according to the announcement.

While serving in his new role as military deputy, Butow will retain his position as commander of the California Air National Guard.

His appointment is the latest in a series of recent changes to DIU leadership.

About a year ago, Doug Beck was sworn in as the unit’s new director. Last fall, the organization announced that Aditi Kuma would serve as the new deputy director for strategy, policy and national security partnerships, and Kirstin Riesbeck as the new deputy director for people, finance and management. In April, it announced that Liz Young McNally had been tapped to serve as the new deputy director for commercial operations.

The unit has been adding personnel as part of Beck’s strategic vision dubbed “DIU 3.0,” which is focused on better scaling the adoption of commercial tech across the military. Beck reports directly to the secretary of defense.

“As a member of the reserve component, Major General Bucky Butow possesses the dual fluency as both an experienced military leader and technologist with significant experience working with the commercial technology sector,” Beck said in a statement. “Bucky’s experience helping lead the Department’s leveraging of commercial space technology and experience in integrating and fielding new and emergent commercial technology will help to create asymmetric advantage for the joint force and allied warfighters.”

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DIU Director Doug Beck and retired Vice Adm. Ann Rondeau, president of NPS, briefed DefenseScoop on this new MOU and what it means for each of their hubs, after co-signing the official document during a ceremony on the sidelines of the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference.

“This is about putting the concrete pipes in place that make it easy for us to move ideas, people and even money, to be able to make things happen at speed. Both of these organizations, in very different ways, are made up of incredible talent. And this is about helping that talent to come together and solve problems, and it’s also about making it possible for that talent to flow seamlessly back and forth, as appropriate, between the organizations and to the rest of the fleet — and really the rest of the department — in order to help solve problems down the road,” Beck told DefenseScoop.

Generally in the U.S. government, MOUs are legally non-binding agreements that describe the intentions, roles and responsibilities of the agencies involved and the partners they opt to formally cooperate with.  

DIU and NPS jointly aim to “accelerate adoption of commercial dual-use technology solutions, while enhancing the advanced education of defense leaders necessary to employ them,” officials wrote in an announcement about the new agreement.

After signing the document at the conference, Beck and Rondeau told DefenseScoop about how some of their staff have already been embarking on “talent exchanges” through which they embed inside their partner’s organization.

“We’ve got people on our team at DIU already — in the last month — that are coming aboard from NPS. And I envision us doing a lot more of that over time, because that both will help us to cross-pollinate now, but even more importantly, it helps us to develop that talent for the long-term force,” Beck said.

Rondeau reiterated that this MOU does not mark the beginning of strategic collaboration between the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley-headquartered innovation hub and the Navy’s flagship technical graduate school that she leads.

“We’ve been doing this now for a while. So we are talking about fellowships, we are talking about experimentation — we have a lot of that going on. And we’re talking about [conducting] some prototyping and some sandboxing. And then there’s this whole notion about helping us with the mindset and the culture of naval innovation that will walk into the Naval Innovation Center once it’s built,” Rondeau said, referring to the in-the-works education facility first unveiled by Navy executives in late 2022.

The retired three-star noted that she’s looking forward to continuing the discussions she’s been having with Beck since he left Apple last year to take the helm of DIU. 

While he spent much of his career at the tech sector giant, Beck also simultaneously served as a Navy Reserve captain and previously taught as an adjunct lecturer at NPS.

He told DefenseScoop that the hands-on collaboration that will be underpinned by this new MOU fits into his overarching plan to help the Pentagon and its components “learn to think differently about risk” as they enter this next chapter that he’s conceptualized as “DIU 3.0.” 

Broadly, DIU 3.0 seeks to deliver military technology prototypes at the speed necessary to deliver the strategic effect required by contemporary warfare.

“When I came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the things that I realized was that most of what I spent my entire career thinking of as ‘risk’ really isn’t — it was uncertainty. Risk is risk to the mission, risk to force, and strategic risk for the nation. And what we have to do is ensure that we are taking the right kinds of risks — process risks, financial risks and reputational risks so that we avoid transferring that into real risk for the sailors, soldiers, airmen, guardians and Marines who are going to fight the wars if we are unable to deter them. And so that really is what this is all about,” Beck said. 

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