Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, Musk has spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency’s push across the federal government to find “waste, fraud and abuse,” slash certain types of spending and cut the workforce. A DOGE team was set up at the Pentagon — as well as other federal agencies — to implement those efforts.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President  @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote Wednesday night in a post on X, the social media platform that he owns. “The  @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

In a sign that DOGE’s influence will continue at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a new directive this week giving those personnel more oversight of contracting efforts.

“The Department of Defense (DoD) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team will have the opportunity to provide input on all unclassified contracts. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD(A&S)), or its designee, will coordinate with DOGE to ensure that the opportunity for review of the Performance Work Statement/Statement of Work, accompanying estimates, deliverable descriptions, and requirements approval/validation documents, occurs when the requirements package is provided to a DoD contracting office to initiate a procurement or prior to the package being provided to a non-DoD assisting agency (e.g., General Services Administration),” Hegseth wrote in a May 27 memo to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, and DOD agency and field activity directors.

“DOGE will also have the opportunity to review any requirements packages for change orders or supplemental agreement modifications to unclassified contracts that result in an increase in the contract price, prior to said modifications. Requirements for procurement actions already in process (i.e., accepted by a contracting activity or a non-DoD assisting agency for execution, but a contract has not been awarded), as of the date of this memorandum, shall also be made available for review,” he added.

Perhaps to mitigate delays, Hegseth’s directive notes that if the DOD DOGE team doesn’t provide input within two business days of receiving a review package, the procurement should “proceed as normal.”

It’s not immediately clear exactly what will happen to a procurement effort if DOGE raises concerns during the review process. Hegseth has directed the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to create a workflow process with DOGE within two weeks of the issuance of his memo.

The SecDef noted that certain types of requirements packages — including those that support emergency and contingency operations, ops with performance outside the U.S. and its territories, and those that have an estimated total contract value of less than $1 million — will initially be exempted from the new review process.

In a video released Wednesday on X, Hegseth said the Pentagon had already saved more than $10 billion working with DOGE on previous efforts to review spending, including from a “line-by-line audit of over 50 contract vehicles.”

“And we’re just getting started,” he added.

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CMMC is the Pentagon’s ambitious framework to more thoroughly assess and accredit any contractors that handle its controlled unclassified information (CUI) on their systems, ensuring they meet certain National Institutes of Standards and Technology cybersecurity requirements included in NIST 800-171 and 800-172. After reforming the program in 2021, the DOD has been working on a final rule that will mandate those contractors that work with the department’s CUI be CMMC certified, or risk losing its business.

Under the proposed rule published in the Federal Register on Dec. 26, contractors must achieve a specified cybersecurity level by the time of contract award. However, assessment requirements might not be applicable in certain cases.

“Once CMMC requirements have been implemented in the [Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement], the solicitation will identify the specific CMMC Level required for that procurement,” the proposed rule states. “To implement a phased transition, selection of a CMMC Level will be based upon careful consideration of market research and the likelihood of a robust competitive market of prospective offerors capable of meeting the requirement. In some scenarios, DoD may elect to waive application of CMMC third party assessment requirements to a particular procurement. In such cases, the solicitation will not include a CMMC assessment requirement. Such waivers may be requested and approved by the Department in accordance with DoD’s internal policies and procedures.”

It would permit program managers “to seek approval to waive inclusion of CMMC requirements in solicitations that involve disclosure or creation of [federal contract information] or CUI as part of the contract effort. Such waivers will be requested and approved by DoD in accordance with internal policies, procedures, and approval requirements.”

The document does not spell out the internal processes or requirements for granting waivers.

An interim rule issued in 2020 did not include those waiver provisions.

The proposed final rule released Tuesday notes that the Pentagon received feedback about previous CMMC proposals.

“Many commenters were concerned about the lack of waivers or [plan of action and milestones]. Several commenters commented that not allowing waivers is impractical and will impact the ability of businesses to qualify for contract award,” it states.

In 2021, the Pentagon indicated that its plans for CMMC 2.0 included the development of “a selective, time-bound waiver process, if needed and approved.” However, it did not specify that program managers would be responsible for requesting waivers.

The Pentagon is seeking public feedback on the proposed rule. Comments are due by Feb. 26, 2024.

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The effort is being spearheaded by the program executive office for enterprise information systems, and it comes as the service is pursuing a wide-ranging IT modernization agenda.

The first group to get the new Army Contract Writing System (ACWS) includes 104 contracting personnel at 29 locations. The next rollout — slated for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which begins Oct. 1 — will add about 350 users from Army Contracting Command and the National Guard, according to a press release.

The ACWS is intended to replace the Standard Procurement System/Procurement Desktop-Defense and the Procurement Automated Data and Document System. And it will also be integrated with the Virtual Contracting Enterprise, General Fund Enterprise Business System, Corps of Engineers Financial Management System and the Logistics Modernization Program, according to the Army.

The goal is to provide “a single enterprise writing and management system” for the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement and facilitate contracting, per the release.

With the initial version of the platform, users will be able to generate solicitation, award and modification documents in Uniform Contract Format; generate procurement data standard-compliant transactions; import vendors from the System for Award Management; link to the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment Clause Logic Service to complete required clause interviews; receive purchase requests from the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System; and connect to the Federal Procurement Data System to complete contract action reports, according to the Army.

In a statement, Steve Edsall, ACWS product lead at program executive office for enterprise information systems, said the deployment “marks the beginning of a new era of Army contract writing.”

Officials plan to upgrade ACWS based on user input.

“We’re proud to provide significantly improved integrated contract writing capabilities for the contracting workforce, enabling them to work faster and more efficiently to help the Army meet its mission,” Deputy Assistance Secretary of the Army for Procurement Megan Dake said in a statement. “We owe our teammates this, and we’ll continue to get feedback and work with the product manager to improve the system as more capability is rolled out to [the] larger organization.”

The service’s procurement enterprise is vast. For example, Army Contracting Command has more than 6,000 military and civilian employees and executes more than 165,000 contract actions each fiscal year, according to its website.

Officials are also looking to share ACWS-related tech with other Department of Defense components.

The Army “partnered with the Defense Logistics Agency to host and manage the software environment, providing significant cost savings for the program. This strategy also enables future opportunities for shared capability development with the Navy, Air Force and DLA — and provides an opportunity to replace legacy systems earlier,” per the release.

The Army certainly isn’t the only DOD component looking for technologies to improve the contract writing process. The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office is exploring a tool called “Acqbot” that uses artificial intelligence to generate text. The prototype is part of the CDAO’s Tradewind initiative.

“We’re asking questions like, can an AI or can a bot write a contract? Like, is that possible?” Bonnie Evangelista, Tradewind execution lead, said at the ATARC federal IT modernization summit earlier this year. “Can vendors write proposals on their phones? … Those are like big, bold statements and those are the things that like from a practitioners’ perspective and contracting — those are the things we’re considering.”

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The “Acqbot” prototype is part of the CDAO’s Tradewind initiative.

“Speed to contract in my functional lane is extremely important. And I think it’s going to be a differentiator in whatever cyber wars are going to happen in the next couple [or] few years,” Bonnie Evangelista, Tradewind execution lead, said at the ATARC federal IT modernization summit on Wednesday. “We’re working on a prototype, it’s an AI-powered contract writing capability. So we have a working prototype … We want to see if we can break the mold and break the glass ceiling from an acquisition perspective.”

The aim is to accelerate workflows to help get emerging technology into the hands of service members faster.

“We’re asking questions like, can an AI or can a bot write a contract? Like, is that possible?” she said. “Can vendors write proposals on their phones? … Those are like big, bold statements and those are the things that like from a practitioners’ perspective and contracting — those are the things we’re considering.”

The prototype can help generate text, similar to the way ChatGPT operates, according to Evangelista. However, as the Defense Department experiments with the technology for contract writing, there’s still a person in the loop.

“There’s a human reviewing and validating the text at every point in the process. But the tool is going to help generate certain text to help inform your problem statement. And then that’s just the beginning of the workflow,” she explained. “We have the workflow going all the way from problem statement to helping to generate what we call ‘the call to industry.’” The hope is that industry can also “respond in that workflow” and the AI can generate the contract.

The CDAO is working to train the model to create problem statements based on descriptive inputs.

“I don’t think it’s gonna take a massive amount of data to nuance or train the model. But I will say that we don’t expect, you know, we don’t expect glory overnight,” Evangelista said. “This is something where we’re hoping if we can continue to prove the concept and then create a demand or a demand signal for this type of tool, that’s where we can make it optimize the technology … [and] we’ve given it a chance to be enduring.”

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The Navy’s 5^th Fleet has been experimenting with this concept for Task Force 59, which is using unmanned surface vessels equipped with cameras to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in the waters near the Middle East. The commander of 5^th Fleet, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, has referred to this deployment model as CONOCO — contractor-owned, contractor-operated, with Navy oversight. That will be the near-term model for Task Force 59, he told DefenseScoop and other reporters in October.

During an interview with DefenseScoop on the sidelines of ASNE’s Combat Systems Symposium on Wednesday, Del Toro said contractor-owned drones could help the sea service overcome acquisition challenges and keep pace with technological change.

“As we try to tackle the challenge of getting over this valley of death [in the acquisition system], and as we look at the rapidly changing pace of technology as it evolves, I think that that’s a model that has to be taken under consideration without question,” he said. The term “valley of death” in Pentagon parlance refers to failures in moving U.S. military capabilities into production and fielding.

“That’s not to suggest that it will all be contractor-owned, but where it does make sense where it can actually result in a more efficient, effective model for deployment, I think it does make sense to do that. And so I’m open to that consideration,” he added.

Del Toro and other Navy leaders are gung-ho about creating new “mesh networks” of unmanned systems enabled by artificial intelligence, the cloud and other supporting technologies.

“I think part of the key to success [in leveraging robotic platforms] is building — is the mesh network itself, right. So having it built in an open architecture sort of way where people can feed into that mesh, regardless of what specific technology they use on their unmanned platform. But they can actually feed into it so that can be fully collaborative and integrated with, you know, our Navy, our manned ships and other unmanned technology as well,” he said.

In the early stages of moving toward a “hybrid fleet” of manned and uncrewed platforms, robotic vessels are expected to be used for ISR-type missions and for cuing manned platforms. Eventually, the sea service envisions deploying large unmanned surface vessels that carry missiles or other weapons.

The contractor-owned model would be more suited toward ISR or other non-lethal activities, Del Toro suggested.

“When it comes to unmanned platforms that actually have weapons on them, the U.S. government will own those and control those unquestionably. So let me make that perfectly clear absolutely. But in the ones that don’t have weapons systems on them, that are just unmanned platforms, then there’s no reason why contractors can’t actually own this — sort of like a software-as-a-service model,” he told DefenseScoop.

During his remarks to attendees at the ASNE conference, Del Toro noted that the U.S. Saildrone systems that Iran temporarily captured last year were contractor owned.

“If you look at Saildrone, for example, we don’t own the actual platforms. All the data is in the cloud. But we actually don’t own the platform or the camera that goes on the Saildrone. So if it’s actually captured by an adversary, like the Iranians tried to do … there’s no data loss, right. So, it’s going to require a whole new way of thinking about how to use this technology to our advantage,” he said.

Del Toro sees a “really bright” future for uncrewed systems.

However, “it does come with challenges that have to be paid attention to before we actually go to sort of full production of those particular individual unmanned technologies … But it also demands a whole different way of thinking, right. Because it’s about taking a piece of gear that the government may or may not own,” he said, noting the operational experimentation with Saildrone tech.

Developing concepts of operation for drones and training personnel to leverage the technology will also be critical aspects of moving toward a hybrid fleet, he noted.

Senior officials have been highlighting industrial base issues that hinder the expansion of the Navy’s fleet of manned platforms, including shipbuilding delays, shipyard capacity shortfalls and workforce challenges. DefenseScoop asked Del Toro if he expects the Navy will run into similar problems as uncrewed systems move into production.

“Some of those issues will be there as well, too. But I think what’s exciting too is that a lot of these platforms are smaller — so I hope it actually increases the ability to bring in smaller shipyards that will be able to also compete for some of these contracts and increase our supply chain in a much greater way. Because we need more competition in the shipbuilding industry. There’s no question about that. We need smaller shipyards to, you know, to rise and start building some of these capabilities that we’re going to need in the future,” he said.

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