“JWCC requires highly skilled services to support office operations, and the delivery of modern enterprise cloud services and related technologies. These services must include technical expertise in cloud engineering, cybersecurity, financial management, program execution support, and technical writing through direct support of system owners and technical experts regarding various challenges with migration to the cloud and leveraging commercial cloud technologies,” officials wrote. 

The Department of Defense awarded its highly-anticipated enterprise cloud contract to Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in late 2022. 

JWCC marks a key element in the DOD’s push for digital modernization, and the original contract has a ceiling of $9 billion. Officials have been somewhat tight-lipped about JWCC progress since the program’s inception — but as of August 2024, the Pentagon had awarded just under $1 billion in task orders to vendors competing for the enterprise cloud initiative.

This latest defense cloud-enabling information request was published by DISA’s Hosting and Compute Directorate, which is responsible for managing the JWCC contract vehicle.

“This is a SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE to determine the availability and technical capability of 8(a) certified small businesses to provide the required products and/or services,” officials wrote.

Such companies have gone through and been verified by a federal government-run federal contracting and training program designed for experienced small business owners who are considered socially and economically disadvantaged. 

In Thursday’s notice, DISA officials list and define associated in-demand capabilities across three categories: Cloud Infrastructure and Engineering; Cybersecurity and Risk Management; and Infrastructure and Software Engineering.

The work is envisioned to be performed at DISA facilities inside and outside of the continental U.S. The anticipated period of performance is a 1-month transition period, an 11-month base period, and four 12-month option periods.

Businesses that aim to respond must submit information including a brief capabilities statement to an email included in the notice, by July 31.

Earlier this year, DISA unveiled plans to roll out a follow-on to the current enterprise cloud vehicle — named JWCC Next — likely in 2026. A DISA spokesperson declined to answer questions Thursday regarding the motivation behind this new sources sought notice, or how it fits into the agency’s vision for JWCC Next.

“As standard practice, DISA cannot discuss open solicitations posted on SAM.gov or other sites, as it could violate established procurement regulations and policies. Therefore, we have nothing to add at this time,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

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The move comes as the Pentagon is pumping billions of dollars into cloud and AI programs with plans to spend more in the coming years to boost its digital modernization and give new tools to warfighters and back-office workers.

The Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act of 2025 was reintroduced in the Senate by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and introduced in the House by Reps. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., Pat Fallon, R-Texas, and Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., according to a press release issued Thursday by Warren’s office.

Warren and Schmitt are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Jacobs, Fallon and Deluzio are members of the House Armed Services Committee.

The bill “would ensure that DoD’s new contracts protect competition in the AI and cloud computing markets, instead of giving an unfair advantage to a few big players,” per the release.

If enacted, the Pentagon would be required to have a competitive award process for each procurement of cloud computing, data infrastructure and foundation model solutions when contracting with vendors that have entered into contracts totaling $50 million or more with the department in any of the five previous fiscal years.

Additionally, it directs department leaders to pursue modular open systems approaches, mitigate barriers to entry faced by small businesses and nontraditional contractors, and prioritize multi-cloud technology “unless doing so is infeasible or presents a substantial danger to national security.”

The Pentagon would also have to keep lawmakers updated.

“Not later than January 15, 25 2027, and annually thereafter for four years, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report assessing the competition, innovation, barriers to entry, and concentrations of market power or market share in the AI space for each period covered by the report … The report shall also include recommendations of appropriate legislative and administrative action,” the bill states.

Lawmakers also aim to protect data.

The legislation calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) to update or promulgate provisions of the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to ensure that government-furnished data “provided for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services to the Department of Defense, is not disclosed or used without proper authorization” — and that such data “cannot be used to train or improve the functionality of commercial products offered by a covered provider without express authorization by the Department of Defense.”

Government-furnished data stored on vendor systems “for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services” must also be “appropriately protected from other data on such systems.”

Violation of these provisions would be subject to penalties, including fines and contract termination.

However, the legislation allows for DOD component acquisition executives to issue exemptions if they determine that doing so is “necessary for national security.” The acquisition execs would be required to notify the CDAO about each exemption and provide a justification for the move.

“It’s a mistake to let Silicon Valley monopolize our AI and cloud computing tools because it doesn’t just stifle innovation, it increases costs and threatens our national security,” Warren said in a statement. “Our bill will make sure the military can access cutting-edge tools and will keep our markets strong and our information secure.”

In the press release from Warren’s office, Schmitt warned against “allowing a select group of companies to dominate the awards process,” adding that the Defense Department should adopt policies that create opportunities for emerging AI defense companies.

Jacobs said in a statement that competition “always pushes the limits of creativity, innovation, and excellence – whether in AI or any other field. That’s why the Department of Defense needs to prioritize competition in its AI and cloud computing contracts to ensure we deploy the best technologies to protect and strengthen our national security.”

Deluzio added that enacting the legislation would help “protect data and public money from the failures of concentrated power” and “promote real competition” in the defense tech sector.

“By relying on free market principles, the Department of Defense can help ensure competition and innovation when it comes to the bidding process for government AI and cloud contracts,” Fallon stated in the release. “Due to the varied cyber threats facing our nation today, we must also ensure that AI and cloud related data is secure when it is held exclusively by the federal government. For these reasons, the Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act is the next step forward Congress must take in the interest of US national security.”

Warren and Schmitt introduced similar legislation in December during the previous session of Congress, but it was never enacted.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is looking to bring more companies into the fold for AI, cloud and other digital capabilities.

“Competition in the marketplace enables the government to acquire the best solutions at lower cost to the taxpayer. As agencies seek to accelerate the adoption of AI-enabled services, they must pay careful attention to vendor sourcing, data portability, and long-term interoperability to avoid significant and costly dependencies on a single vendor,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote to department and agency heads in an April memo.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo in March directing all Defense Department components to embrace a rapid software acquisition pathway and use commercial solutions openings and other transaction authority to speed up the procurement of digital tools for warfighters.

“When we take that software pathway mechanism and we combine it with innovation that [the Defense Innovation Unit] has been working in commercial solutions openings, or CSOs, and other transaction authorities, OTAs, we get to the point where now we can expose the programs, the software programs, to nontraditional and commercial software developers, while we simultaneously … lower the barrier for those nontraditional and commercial software developers to get into defense programs of record,” a senior defense official told reporters during a background briefing in March regarding Hegseth’s directive.

The Office of the DOD Chief Information Officer recently released an updated software modernization implementation plan. The first goal outlined in the document is to accelerate and scale the Pentagon’s enterprise cloud environment.

At AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference last week, Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise, said the contract vehicle for the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program — under which Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have been competing for task orders — was “suboptimal” for large acquisitions. Officials in the CIO’s office are currently planning for JWCC 2.0, a follow-on phase that aims to add more vendors and different contracting mechanisms to the program.

The DOD has a variety of cloud efforts beyond JWCC. The software modernization implementation plan also calls for the establishment of additional contract options for cloud innovation geared towards smaller vendors and “niche providers.“

“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.

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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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IVAS has been one of the service’s highest-priority modernization initiatives, with Microsoft as the prime contractor. The system — which includes ruggedized headgear and software with night-vision, thermal-sensing and augmented reality capabilities, among others — was inspired by the company’s HoloLens 2 device. The Army aims to use the equipment for training and battlefield operations for dismounted troops. The program was projected to be worth as much as $21.9 billion if it reaches full fruition.

“Through this partnership agreement, and pending Department of Defense approval, Anduril will assume oversight of production, future development of hardware and software, and delivery timelines. This agreement also establishes Microsoft Azure as Anduril’s preferred hyperscale cloud for all workloads related to IVAS and Anduril AI technologies,” the companies said in a joint press release. “Anduril’s mission focus on innovation in defense technology, deep understanding of military requirements, and unique approach to manufacturing defense products will ensure future program development specifically tailored to the evolving needs of the Army as well as production at scale and at lower unit cost.”

The firms have already been teaming on IVAS. In September 2024, Anduril announced that its Lattice platform was being incorporated into the system. Lattice can be employed as a situational awareness tool that uses capabilities such as AI, computer vision, edge computing and sensor fusion to detect, track and classify objects of interest for users, according to a product description.

The Army has been rolling out different variants of IVAS to soldiers for experimentation and to get their feedback on the technology. The latest iteration developed by Microsoft is known as IVAS 1.2. Microsoft had already been making enhancements to IVAS equipment and software, some of which were prompted by soldier complaints about early versions.

The Army requested $255 million from Congress for fiscal 2025 to buy more IVAS systems — including 3,162 IVAS 1.2 heads-up-display platforms — as well as $98 million for research, development, test and evaluation related to the technology.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey previously launched Oculus VR, the startup known for its commercial virtual reality headset which went on to be acquired by Facebook.

“For me, this announcement is deeply personal. Since my pre-Oculus days as a teenager who had the opportunity to do a tiny bit of work on the Army’s BRAVEMIND project, I’ve believed there would be a headset on every soldier long before there is a headset on every civilian. Given that America loses more troops in training than combat, the Squad Immersive Virtual Trainer (SiVT) side of IVAS alone has the potential to save more lives than practically anything else we can imagine building,” Luckey wrote in a blog — titled “Turning Soldiers into Superheroes” — published Tuesday.

Anduril is also building a variety of drones and other high-tech tools, such as “edge data integration services capabilities,” for the Pentagon. In December, it announced that it was forming an alliance with Palantir and a new “consortium” to merge AI capabilities for defense customers.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is touting its ability to deliver cloud capabilities to boost Anduril’s products.

“Microsoft’s advanced cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities will continue to provide a robust backbone for the [IVAS] program, enabling seamless data integration and real-time insights critical to soldier effectiveness. Artificial intelligence will be foundational to all technical innovations for national security missions, and the cloud is essential to successfully delivering AI whenever and wherever it is needed. Through this agreement, Anduril will establish Azure as its preferred hyperscale cloud to support its AI development. Azure, through its commercial, U.S. government and classified clouds, provides high resiliency, sophisticated capabilities, flexibility and advanced security, designed to meet the stringent compliance requirements of the nation’s most sensitive data,” the companies said in a release.

Microsoft is already a major cloud vendor for the Pentagon. It’s one of four companies  — along with Google, Oracle and Amazon Web Services — that were chosen to compete for task orders for the $9 billion enterprise Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) program.

It’s unclear if the DOD will approve the program handover that Microsoft and Anduril are proposing for IVAS.

The new partnership agreement comes at a critical time for the IVAS program. The plan was to transition it to a major capability acquisition pathway no later than October 2025.

However, Army officials are preparing to potentially recompete the IVAS  effort via an initiative known as IVAS Next.

Last month, the service released a request for information for IVAS Next, seeking information from vendors to determine their capabilities to act as a prime contractor in the development and manufacturing of the technology.

“This RFI does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future,” officials noted.

Companies were asked to include information about the design and features of their IVAS Next solution.

“The narrative should cover Heads Up Display (HUD), body-worn compute, night vision capability, company-level communications network, and any software supporting services or systems (e.g., Cloud or Edge computing),” officials wrote.

Vendors were also asked to lay out a program management approach for their IVAS Next solution, including identifying teaming arrangements and key subcontractors and suppliers.

The Microsoft and Anduril announcement was released on the same day that the Army had scheduled a virtual industry day for IVAS Next.

“The purpose of this event is to inform interested companies of the IVAS Next requirements and acquisition path and to hold an open forum for discussion of IVAS Next capability requirements,” officials wrote in a special notice.

Last year, DefenseScoop asked Anduril officials if the company was considering competing as a prime contractor for IVAS Next.

“We’re closely following the developments around IVAS-next and are confident that the combined strengths of Anduril and Microsoft can deliver a solution that enhances both soldier survivability and lethality. We will continue to monitor IVAS-next, and as always, we are committed to positioning ourselves to do what’s best for the warfighter, staying true to our mission of delivering the most effective solutions,” an Anduril spokesperson said.

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Deasy served as the Pentagon CIO during the first Trump administration starting in May 2018 and oversaw a variety of high-profile modernization initiatives.

He was at the helm when the department moved to large-scale telework as employees adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. He established the COVID-19 Telework Readiness Task Force — which included officials from U.S. Cyber Command, Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DODIN), the National Security Agency, Defense Information Systems Agency, Joint Staff, the military services and the CIO’s office — to boost network capacity and deal with what he called an “unprecedented demand for new equipment ranging from tablets, laptops and network equipment to secure devices.”

Those efforts included rolling out tools such as the Commercial Virtual Remote Environment.

During his tenure, the Pentagon stood up the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) to help accelerate the adoption of AI by the Defense Department. The JAIC was later folded — along with several other organizations — into a new Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) during the Biden administration.

The department also adopted a set of AI ethical principles in 2020 while Deasy was CIO, which stated that the U.S. military’s tech in this area must be “responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable and governable.”

At the time, he suggested that those principles could also be relevant to the private sector.

“Having been on both sides, there is nothing in these principles as you read them that are uniquely and only specific to the DOD. Any one of these is absolutely applicable to the private industry as well,” he told reporters during a February 2020 press briefing, according to a DOD transcript. “Am I trying to suggest that we are going to be the leaders in driving out in the corporate world? No. The corporate world will pick up at that and deal with it in the appropriate way. But I think the application of how you could apply these are very applicable to private industry.”

Deasy was an advocate for enterprise cloud efforts, but the department’s ill-fated Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) initiative fizzled during his tenure. The Pentagon later replaced it with the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) program.

When officials released a new data strategy in October 2020, Deasy likened data to “ammunition,” saying in a statement that it was “increasingly central to warfighter advantage on and off the battlefield” and needed to be “persistently available to the men and women of the DOD regardless of echelon or geographic location.”

After leaving the Defense Department in 2021, Deasy started his own advisory company, served on corporate boards and was an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University, according to his LinkedIn profile.

John Sherman succeeded Deasy as Pentagon CIO and served in that position during most of the Biden administration. Last year, Sherman left the department to become dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Leslie Beavers is currently serving as acting DOD CIO.

Prior to his time at the Pentagon, Deasy worked in corporate leadership positions, including in CIO roles for JPMorgan Chase & Co., BP, General Motors, Tyco International and Siemens AG.

In his new role at Boeing, he’ll “oversee all aspects of information technology, information security, and data and analytics” and serve on the firm’s executive council, the company said in a press release.

Boeing is an aerospace giant and a contractor for a variety of major DOD programs.

Deasy will report to Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s president and CEO.

“Dana is a well-respected, global technology leader who has a track record of delivering on innovative technologies across large and complex organizations,” Ortberg said in a statement. “With the need to stay vigilant to protect against cyber threats, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence playing a larger role across all industries, our IT team will have a key role as we focus on meeting our safety and quality goals, delivering reliably for our customers and positioning ourselves for the future.”

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Task Force Lima was stood up last year to help the Defense Department better understand how it can effectively and responsibly leverage gen AI tools such as large language models. Officials have taken lessons learned from that effort and stood up the Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell (AI RCC).

“Over the course of 12 months, Task Force Lima analyzed hundreds of AI workflows and tasks that AI tools could make more efficient or more effective. And we categorized all of those use cases into a smaller set of 15 areas aligned into two big categories: warfighting functions — like command and control [and] decision support — and enterprise management functions like financial management and healthcare information management. Upon completing its work, Task Force Lima submitted a detailed report,” Radha Plumb, head of the department’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO), told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday.

The cell is being stood up to implement those recommendations with the aim of accelerating the delivery of frontier models and next-generation AI capabilities across the department, she said.

The initiative will be led by the CDAO in partnership with the Silicon Valley-headquartered Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

The cell will be charged with identifying and testing technology through rapid experimentation and prototyping, assessing the effectiveness of technology and determining whether it can be scaled and sustained.

“If warranted, we’ll use defined acquisition pathways to scale the technology across the DOD enterprise, and that can be within CDAO, with the military departments or with other key components,” Plumb said.

“This rapid experimentation approach will allow us to test and identify where these cutting-edge technologies can make our forces more lethal and our processes more effective, but equally critically, the AI RCC will define the requirements for enterprise infrastructure … and support scaled AI development that includes compute development environment and AI-ready data,” she added.

The warfighting use cases that the cell will focus on include command and control (C2) and decision support, operational planning, logistics, weapons development and testing, uncrewed and autonomous systems, intelligence activities, information operations and cyber operations, according to a DOD fact sheet.

Enterprise management use cases include financial systems, human resources, enterprise logistics and supply chain, health care information management, legal analysis and compliance, procurement processes, and software development and cybersecurity.

The Pentagon is planning to allocate $100 million from fiscal 2024 and 2025 research, development, test and evaluation funding toward some of the initial efforts, according to Plumb.

Part of the investment will include $35 million for four frontier AI pilots that will kick off “immediately,” according to Plumb. Those will be conducted in partnership with the combatant commands and other DOD organizations in 90-day increments, including via the Global Information Dominance (GIDE) series of experiments.

About $5 million will go toward “rapid user-centric experimentation,” according to a DOD fact sheet.

The CDAO plans to work with DIU to tee up additional pilots “in the near future,” Plumb noted.

In mid-January, the Pentagon also intends to award about $40 million in Small Business Innovation Research contracts to fund generative AI solutions, including from non-traditional vendors. The department is still in the source selection process.

“We’ve received hundreds of responses to our request for solutions to leverage generative AI in specific DOD ecosystems, everything from applying commercial applications to healthcare and financial management to solutions in critical warfighting areas like autonomy,” Plumb said.

Another $20 million will go toward boosting compute and creating digital “sandboxes” to facilitate development, experimentation and testing. The department is taking a multiple cloud approach and plans to lean on major providers working under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability enterprise on that effort. The four vendors with contract spots on the $9 billion JWCC program include Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

“We will have a sandbox with each major cloud provider. We’ll start with two sandboxes that will be available in mid-January with two providers, and then fast-follow with two additional sandboxes on the other two cloud instances by the summer,” Plumb told reporters.

The CDAO chief said she couldn’t provide a specific timeline for when new tech shepherded by the rapid capabilities cell will be ready for deployment, noting that it will depend on the performance of the technologies in testing and experimentation.

“I think industry continues to innovate and improve both the quality and reliability … of their generative AI models, and we’re watching that very closely and in close partnership with our industry innovators. The second piece, though, is … the department has to have its own reliability standards. We talk a lot about responsible AI. What that really means is, do the models perform the way you want them to perform? And do they do they do the things you want them to do? And do they not do things you don’t want them to do?” Plumb said.

“That’s true for all of our platforms and capabilities. We have to do that in weapon systems, we have to do that in our digital solutions, and we have to do that in our hardware. We have a specific set of standards and applications that we apply in the generative AI context to bound the risk and ensure the performance meets the reliability. Part of the pilots, the test and evaluation, and the generative AI-specific responsible toolkit are creating the pathways for that,” she added. “To my mind, this is a really ‘better brakes make faster trains’ approach where we’ve got a toolkit, we’ve got to test the technology, and then we’ve got to rinse and repeat to get it to the reliability level that will allow us to deploy it. That’s going to vary use case by use case, but that’s the approach we’re taking here.”

The risk management framework includes things like authority to operate (ATO) processes — which the Defense Department is trying to streamline — and identity credential and management (ICAM) solutions.

“Those are the tools that let us as a department, continue to review and make sure digital solutions we bring in from the commercial sector meet our cyber requirements and don’t provide threats,” Plumb said.

“There’s a broader set of issues in which we have to think about how we deploy AI into our ecosystems, how we think about data security and the data use in our systems now. That is an ongoing part of our discussions and part of what we want to get after with these [rapid capabilities cell] pilots. How do we bring in the very best commercial technology, marry it with our sort of unique, often classified data, use that for our warfighters, and then be able to scale that? And that is explicitly one of the things we need to work through within the context of these pilots. That’s going to vary a lot depending on what kind of data you’re using. And you can imagine security risks that relate to health information look very different than security risks that relate to cyber information, which in turn look really different than the risks related to autonomous systems. So there is a workflow use case specificity to this. That’s part of the pilot effort,” she said.

As for the leaders of the disbanded Task Force Lima, some will be joining the rapid capabilities cell and others will be working on other priority projects for the CDAO, according to Plumb.

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The Protecting AI and Cloud Competition in Defense Act, introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., strives for “meaningful regulation to limit Big Tech monopolies from elbowing out competitors in the AI and cloud computing markets,” according to a press release issued Thursday by Warren’s office.

“Right now, all of our eggs are in one giant Silicon Valley basket. That doesn’t only stifle innovation, but it’s more expensive and it seriously increases our security risks,” Warren said in a statement. “Our new bill will make sure that as the Department of Defense keeps expanding its use of AI and cloud computing tools, it’s making good deals that will keep our information secure and our government resilient.”

Schmitt in a statement said the bipartisan legislation “will encourage resiliency, interoperability, and innovation.”

Both Warren and Schmitt are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The new bill would require a competitive award process for each procurement of cloud computing, data infrastructure and foundation model solutions — and have Uncle Sam maintain exclusive rights to access and use of all government data — when contracting with vendors that have entered into contracts totaling $50 million or more with the Pentagon in any of the five previous fiscal years.

Contracting provisions would have to prioritize “the appropriate role” for the government with respect to intellectual property and data rights and security, interoperability and auditability requirements; include modular open systems approaches and “appropriate work allocation” and technical boundaries; and consider multi-cloud technology “where feasible and advantageous,” according to the text of the legislation.

In a section about data training and use protection, the bill calls for the secretary of defense to direct the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) to update or promulgate provisions of the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to ensure that government-furnished data “provided for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services to the Department of Defense, is not disclosed or used without proper authorization” by the Pentagon — and that government-furnished data stored on vendor systems “provided for purposes of development and operation of AI products and services” is “appropriately protected from other data on such systems, and is treated in accordance with Department of Defense data decrees and Creating Data Advantage (Open DAGIR) principles.”

Violation of these provisions would be subject to penalties, including fines and contract termination.

However, the legislation would allow for DOD component acquisition executives to issue exemptions if they determine that doing so isn’t “inconsistent with national security.” The acquisition execs would be required to notify the CDAO of the specific provisions exempted, the vendor and program being exempted, and the justification for the move.

The bill also contains reporting requirements.

“Not later than January 15, 2026, and annually thereafter for four years, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report assessing the competition, innovation, barriers to entry, and concentrations of market power or market share in the AI space for each period covered by the report. The report shall also include recommendations of appropriate legislative and administrative action,” the legislation states.

The department would be required to post a publicly releasable version of the reports on a DOD website for transparency purposes.

The introduction of the bill comes as the Pentagon is pumping billions of dollars into cloud and AI projects to acquire cutting-edge capabilities for warfighters and new tools to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of back-office functions.

The press release from Warren’s office noted that the department has already awarded a $9 billion cloud program to Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon.

That initiative, known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), has the tech giants competing for task orders. The Pentagon pivoted away from contracting a single vendor for a previous enterprise cloud capability known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), and instead sought a multi-vendor acquisition approach. When the JWCC program was awarded in December 2022, Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon were seen as the only vendors that could meet the Pentagon’s security requirements for that effort.

However, more recently the Defense Information Systems Agency has been looking to include more cloud service providers and possibly introduce new contracting mechanisms for the next iteration of the program, dubbed JWCC 2.0.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been awarding large contracts to AI vendors such as Palantir, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and Anduril.

Major DOD programs are generally open to industry competition under federal acquisition rules.

The press release from Warren’s office stated that the new bill will “ensure that DoD’s new contracts protect competition in the AI and cloud computing markets, instead of giving an unfair advantage to a few big players.”

It’s currently unclear if the legislation will have enough political support to be enacted. It would have to pass both the Senate and the House and be signed into law by the president before the end of the current term of Congress. Next month, a new Congress and administration will enter office.

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Unlike the conflicts in the Middle East of the last 20 years against a technologically inferior enemy, Pentagon officials anticipate contested and congested digital environments where maintaining connectivity will be difficult — a concept known as DDIL, or denied, disrupted, intermittent and limited, in Defense Department parlance.

“Because the bandwidth that’s available in these pLEO satellite connections to our ground control stations is so big, we’re talking hundreds of megabytes of bandwidth with negligible latency, it makes things possible that you couldn’t do anymore. You don’t need to be persistently connected anymore,” Col. Jason Quinter, commander of Marine Air Control Group 38, said during a webcast Monday hosted by C4ISRNET, adding that this also includes the cloud.

In the past, U.S. troops were used to constant connectivity to higher headquarters or to pass data back and forth. Now, they will have to operate somewhat disconnected at times, but these new technologies are providing more bandwidth in those scenarios.

“pLEO is a game changer … That high amount of bandwidth and that low latency really changes what’s possible on modern networks,” Quinter told DefenseScoop in an Oct. 7 interview. “Because the satellites are in low-Earth orbit, you have significantly less latency than you typically would. What that means is it makes certain things possible that wouldn’t [otherwise] be possible.”

These constellations provide orders of magnitude more bandwidth than traditional program-of-record SATCOM capabilities, where forces would have to aggregate connections together to achieve 12 megabytes. Now, troops can have up to 200 megabytes or more depending on how much officials are willing to spend, allowing unprecedented connectivity and data.

Those constellations are also more resilient given there are more smaller satellites in orbit as opposed to a lower number of exquisite, geosynchronous orbit satellite communications architectures.

“Some of our senior leaders used to refer to those [military satellite constellations] as big, juicy targets for anti-satellite ballistic missiles. With the proliferation of these smaller, flat sats in lower orbit, orders of magnitude — four, five, six — and there’s plans for there to be 10-12,000 of these satellites in lower orbit, there’s inherent survivability in that constellation, just from the sheer numbers,” Quinter said in the webcast.

Those connections, however, are easier to jam, and officials have always been careful to warn that their access must factor into what the military describes as a PACE plan — or primary, alternate, contingency and emergency — depending on the operation.

But the enhanced connectivity those constellations provide will allow forces to operate more dispersed and disconnected on the battlefield, a key tenet as observations from current conflicts indicate static units will be much more vulnerable.

“Once you have that kind of bandwidth, you don’t need to be persistently connected. You could establish a hybrid cloud network,” Quinter said.

Quinter served on the Joint Staff’s J6 team when it was developing the overarching concept for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all the services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix. He noted that during that process, officials used to say the critical requirement to enable that concept is cloud.

Key to realizing that goal is the DOD’s enterprise cloud contract vehicle, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), the Pentagon’s highly anticipated $9 billion effort that replaced the aborted Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program. Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were all awarded under the JWCC program in December 2022 and are competing for task orders. Officials in the past have indicated how important this vehicle is to the CJADC2 concept and enabling connectivity and interoperability of forces across the globe.

“We are working with companies … through their cloud environment and trying to establish that hybrid cloud architecture at the edge of the network, which could persist without a connection over pLEO. You could turn that satellite connection on and off as necessary to be more survivable,” Quinter said.

He noted that as long as units have enough processing power and storage at the edge, they don’t need to be constantly connected. They just need to be able to process the information in the field.

“I say ‘hybrid cloud’ because it needs to be both private and public, like we need to be taking advantage of the prime contractors that are on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract,” he said. “Those will enable us to leverage [a] big data center when we are connected to the enterprise. But we also need to have the hardware at the edge of our network that can handle cloud, hybrid cloud at the edge.”

Quinter noted that the entire DOD is looking at how to get forces to operate more persistently disconnected. He likened a future scenario to submarines that are usually disconnected, but they surface when they need to, download the necessary data and dive back down to resume their patrols.

“We learned that as communicators, that we need to have a PACE plan. You hear other folks from other communities talking a lot more about that now, but I would say that with the technology that’s available right now, you could essentially operate in a no probability to detect, no probability of intercept environment, because hybrid cloud will enable you to do many, many things on the edge of a network that you typically, at least historically, have not been able to do,” Quinter said.

This notion will require a paradigm shift and change in thinking for many service members that have been used to being constantly connected.

“One thing that I have noticed over the last two years in particular, [is] that we have a lot of teaching and educating that we need to do across the force when it comes to cloud,” he said. “I think there’s not enough people that understand how that technology works in particular, which puts us at a disadvantage, because as we’re designing these circuits to install, operate, maintain them in the network in a combat environment, we need to know what’s in the realm possible. I think cloud is not something with that we’re teaching in the schoolhouse yet, but we’re getting there.”

There is a bit of a misconception among many, Quinter added, given cloud is associated with large data centers.

“When people think about cloud, they think about data centers, like back in [the continental U.S.]. In their mind, I think it’s a natural default for most people to think, ‘Well, if I’m not connected to the data center, then how am I using the cloud?’” he said. “That’s what I meant by the level of education that’s required, even across the comm community, for people to understand what is and is not possible when it comes to cloud.”

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In December 2022, the Pentagon awarded Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft contracts spots on the $9 billion JWCC program — an effort that pivoted away from contracting a single vendor for the department’s first enterprise cloud capability under the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), and instead sought a multi-vendor acquisition approach. 

Since then, the department has awarded over $1 billion worth of task orders to vendors on the program, DISA Director Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner said Wednesday. Speaking during a keynote speech at the annual Department of the Air Force Information Technology and Cyberpower conference, Skinner noted the agency is now looking at how to build upon the initial program for its next phase, dubbed JWCC 2.0.

“What I would offer is, what it’s going to bring is even faster commercial cloud capability, greater diversity — where we can hope that we can have even more cloud services providers — and potentially have an option of not having task orders competed,” Skinner said. He did not elaborate on how many additional vendors DISA is considering adding to the program.

Under the current contracting mechanism for JWCC, the four cloud service providers are able to bid on task orders from various Defense Department components. The contract vehicle allows the department to buy commercial cloud capabilities that best fit customers’ needs directly from the service providers.

Skinner noted that moving forward, future JWCC iterations could include both task order competitions as well as a potential indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle as a way to provide “greater diversity and flexibility for the capability that we know we all need and are driving for.”

IDIQ contracts allow the Pentagon to purchase an unspecified amount of products or services under a specific timeframe, enabling the ability to place orders as needed up to a defined maximum amount specified in the initial contract.

DISA has not given a clear timeline on when the requirements for JWCC 2.0 will be released. Former DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman previously told DefenseScoop that he directed his office to conduct an after-action review of the entire JWCC effort prior to his departure in June.

“While I’m a huge fan of it, I know it’s not perfect,” he said. “What can we do better for JWCC 2.0? Are there things we can put into place to make [software-as-a-service] offerings easier to manage?”

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The JOE effort started in 2023, and the technology has already been put in place at key U.S. military hubs in the Asia-Pacific. DISA is also moving forward with another initiative to deploy the Stratus private cloud at overseas locations.

“OCONUS cloud is both a vehicle for the public cloud to have a joint operational edge — which we call JOE — and there’s also OCONUS Stratus, which we have out in the Pacific, and we also now are just about done with deploying in Europe,” Jeff Marshall, acting director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Hosting and Compute Center, said Tuesday at an event hosted by Defense One.

“The whole concept is real simple. As you’re in a region outside of the continental United States, you start to have network latency in getting to your data … and you start to see performance drag with the things that you’re trying to accomplish. And when you’re talking about mission partners with mission-critical activities going on in the Pacific or in Europe, you really can’t have those performance degradations. So what these products allow the mission partners to do is actually host their most critical applications closer to them, [with] less latency, and they’re able to get their missions accomplished,” he said.

In June, then Defense Department CIO John Sherman told DefenseScoop in an exit interview that a JOE cloud capability was being set up in Hawaii, another was coming online next in Japan, and the Pentagon was looking at sites in Europe.

It appears that progress has been made on that front.

“We have it deployed in a location and it’s up and running in Hawaii. We’re deploying and it’s in the process of getting prototype workloads on it, and that one is going into Japan. And then we’re also deploying it right now and getting it set up for mission partner prototyping in Europe and out of Germany,” Marshall said.

Hawaii, Japan and Germany each host large U.S. military bases with tens of thousands of personnel and are key overseas hubs for the Defense Department.

Stratus is also up and running in Hawaii and Air Force personnel are already using it, according to Marshall.

While Stratus is a private cloud, JOE is related to the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) offering, which is a public cloud.

In December 2022, cloud service providers Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft were awarded contract spots on the $9 billion JWCC program and are competing for task orders.

“JOE is specific to the JWCC public cloud … contract,” Marshall said. “We’re going to have them set up for each CSP, and once that is going to accomplish mission-critical workloads that work best closer to the mission partners outside of the continental United States, we’ll be able to push them out to those nodes, and then the mission partners will be able to utilize that data quicker.”

Although these cloud initiatives aren’t yet connected to the tactical mission partner environment that the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is setting up to boost interoperability with allies, that is a possibility, Marshall suggested.

“It will be eventually. One of the things that is on our DISA Next strategy, as well as the Fulcrum strategy from DOD, is how to better integrate with mission partner environments as well as coalition environments. So this does allow that to be set up so that we can use those as start points for those types of environments as policy comes out around that, that we can then deploy infrastructure in support of,” he said.

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