The move is the latest push by the department to tap into capabilities and know-how from Silicon Valley and the commercial sector.

The new corps “brings top tech talent into the Army Reserve to bridge the commercial-military tech gap” and is “designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation,” the Army stated in a press release.

On Friday, the service is set to swear-in Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil, Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was previously OpenAI’s chief research officer.

Meta, which owns Facebook, recently announced a new partnership with defense tech company Anduril to develop extended reality (XR) products for soldiers.

OpenAI is the maker of the wildly popular generative AI tool ChatGPT. The Army and the Defense Department writ large are pursuing new genAI tools to boost productivity and efficiency.

Palantir is a major provider of software tools for the DOD — including the Maven Smart System — and is also developing hardware, such as the Army’s AI-enabled TITAN vehicle.

“Det. 201 is an effort to recruit senior tech executives to serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisors. In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems. By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal,” the service stated in Friday’s press release.

The swearing-in of the four new officers “is just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers, showing the next generation how to make a difference in uniform,” per the release.

The Army didn’t provide additional details about how large the detachment will grow to or how fast the service will expand it by bringing in new personnel from the tech sector.

Friday’s announcement comes in the midst of a new Army Transformation Initiative that was launched in recent weeks — which is being spearheaded by Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — that calls for eliminating systems that are deemed obsolete for soldiers on the battlefield in the future and procuring “dual-use” capabilities. Driscoll has advocated for buying more commercial off-the-shelf tech, among other reforms.

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“I think we’ve done a pretty good job of changing some of the incentive structures for our industry partner teammates. What we are now working through — and you’ll see quite a bit from the Department of the Navy on this in the next week — is changing the incentives for our acquisition teammates. We’re going to incentivize those contracting officers, those program officers, to go commercial,” Navy program manager Artem Sherbinin said Tuesday at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+ Expo.

Sherbinin previously served as an engineering officer, navigator, and air defense planner onboard guided missile cruisers and destroyers. He was also the inaugural chief technology officer at the Navy’s Task Force Hopper.

After the panel, he told DefenseScoop that, in the current environment, acquisition program managers are assessed based on “cost, schedule, and performance” — and “performance refers to meeting requirements documents.”

Those input metrics being so sharply focused on compliance at times can prevent the Navy’s purchasers from taking on risks that are often associated with existing and emerging technologies. 

“We want to shift to an output- and outcomes-based approach for measuring success. We are going to outline some of those metrics in an upcoming ‘Commercial Acquisitions First’ memo, as well as subsequent trainings for the acquisitions workforce,” Sherbinin told DefenseScoop.

This new plan for procurement incentives is set to drop at a time when Navy officials are pursuing a large-scale modernization effort that prioritizes the optimization of strategic capability investments, and aligns with the Trump administration’s vision to position the government to operate in a more efficient manner.

At the AI+ Expo, Sherbinin also said the forthcoming acquisition incentives stem from two primary motivators: internal statistics and the pacing threat of China.

“We believe a conflict over Taiwan with China is likely inside of between 2027 and the early 2030s — we have publicly stated that, our service chief and our secretary of the Navy have reiterated that constantly. If we’re serious about that, the Navy is actually going to have 13 less warships between now and 2027, which means the only thing that’s going to come between now and then is new software. And so how we buy new software has to change, right? This is something that we’re going to buy off-the-shelf. It’s not something we’re going to create in a government lab,” he said. “And so we have to reincentivize how our acquisitions workforce thinks through procurement.”

He pointed to recent defense data that revealed the Navy accounts for the smallest percentage of new procuring capability from new entrants in the defense industrial base of any of the Pentagon’s departments. 

“We account for the smallest percentage of other transaction authority contracts, and so we’re looking to incentivize those numbers to go up,” Sherbinin said.

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The move came as the Pentagon and the Space Force increasingly looks to commercial providers for space capabilities, including those that use spacecraft in LEO.

The new awards, issued July 18, were facilitated by Space Systems Command’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office, DISA noted in a release on Friday.

“According to Space Systems Command, this multiple award contract model is a first for government SATCOM procurement and can deliver capabilities to the warfighter faster and at lower cost,” per the release.

The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts are part of a contracting vehicle with a total cumulative value of $900 million across a five-year period of performance, with one five-year option.

The strategy will allow the Pentagon and other federal agencies — as well as international partners — to “procure fully managed satellite-based services and capabilities for all domains (space, air, land, maritime and cyber) with a consistent, quality-backed, low-latency offering,” per the release.

Bidding for the initiative was intense and the Defense Department received 25 proposals from industry. Following a full and open competition, the following vendors were awarded: ARINC; Artel; Capella Federal; BlackSky Geospatial Solutions; DRS Global Enterprise Solutions; Hughes Network Systems; Inmarsat Government; KGS; Intelsat General Communications; OneWeb Technologies; PAR Government; RiteNet Corporation; Satcom Direct Government; SpaceX; Trace Systems; and UltiSat.

According to Space Systems Command, services under the contracts may include high-speed broadband, synthetic aperture radar imaging, space domain awareness, alternative positioning, navigation and timing, and others.

Updated on July 25, at 3:50 PM: This story has been updated to include additional details from Space Systems Command about the services that could be provided under the contracting vehicle.

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The House Appropriations Committee, through a provision in its fiscal 2024 defense spending bill, is recommending investing slightly more than $1 billion to “begin deliberately fielding a hedge portfolio” of capabilities from nontraditional sources within one to three years.

“This hedge portfolio of many smart, affordable, modular, and sustainable systems could include, but is not limited to, low-cost, light-logistics multi-domain drones, satellites, and munitions; agile communications, compute, and sensor nodes; and artificial intelligence agents and users. It could create asymmetric advantage to support combatant command operational challenges like contested logistics, electronic warfare, resilient communications, Joint All-Domain Command and Control, and weapon and platform capacity,” per the legislation.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) — which was established in Silicon Valley in 2015 by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter to Pentagon connect with innovators in the tech sector and acquire new commercial solutions — would be responsible for executing the funding in cooperation with the combatant commands and the Joint Staff, with support from service nontraditional innovation fielding enterprises.

During his time at the helm of DIU, which ended last year, Brown helped develop the hedge strategy concept, which would be underpinned by an architecture of systems and tools that are small, low cost, unmanned, scalable, and “smarter” than many of the systems that are currently fielded.

“I’m pleased to say that the House Appropriations Committee, HAC-D, has actually incorporated this language, and provided a billion dollars to get started. So I hope the Senate will be equally enthused about it. We’ll see. But that would give us a tremendous boost,” he said this week during a panel at the Modern Day Marine conference.

Brown suggested the capabilities acquired with these funds would be cost-effective and save lives.

“We can’t continue to produce evermore exquisite platforms. We know that we can’t afford that, even with a trillion-dollar defense budget. Unmanned gives us a way to produce things at lower cost and send things on missions that we wouldn’t want to send people into,” he said.

The House and Senate appropriations bills must be reconciled before they can go to the president’s desk for approval. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet approved a fiscal 2024 defense appropriations bill.

On the sidelines of the conference, DefenseScoop asked Brown if $1 billion would be sufficient to fully execute the hedge strategy.

“My gosh, but it’s 10X what DIU had before. 10X. So it’s a big step forward, right?” he said. “Is that enough? No. If you’re employing the hedge strategy, you’d need more than that. But it’s a huge start and certainly a lot to accomplish in one year.”

When asked how much a fully implemented hedge strategy would cost, Brown told DefenseScoop he hadn’t “priced it out” yet.

“We have to see how that construct [proposed by the House] can work. And if I were a lawmaker, I’d want to see some proof points. And I’m sure they will insist on that. And then they could talk about what to do from that point,” he said.

Meanwhile, he sees more opportunities to use Ukraine as an operational test bed for the types of commercially developed systems that would fit in with the hedge strategy.

“Let’s take what they’ve done with … all these technologies, but put it into practice so Ukraine can be a proving ground [to determine] what’s working, what’s not working. So it’s really the combination of all that — the satellite imagery, what’s being done with autonomous systems … There’s so much out there. I’d want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of all those technologies to see how they perform. I’m not going to be naive to think that everything a commercial company produces is going to work in a wartime setting. But this is a great opportunity to see what does work,” he told DefenseScoop.

The Biden administration has provided more than $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including a slew of weapons, using presidential drawdown authority and Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds.

Brown, who is now a partner at Shield Capital, said there needs to be a more robust, dedicated pathway for providing new commercial technologies to Kyiv.

“If you look at what’s on our security assistance list, it’s what’s already in stock or what we’ve already had experience with. Not that that isn’t good, And Ukrainians need that. I mean, [Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment] Bill LaPlante will be the first to say we need more munitions in this war. I agree with him 100%. But what a perfect opportunity to also see what commercial technology could do. And Ukrainians are already using that. So I’d love to see us take just a proportion of the security assistance and dedicate that to commercial technology so we could prove out what works,” Brown told DefenseScoop.

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In the letter, the firms endorse the findings of the Atlantic Council Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption’s interim report, published in April, which suggested that “the United States does not have an innovation problem, but rather an innovation adoption problem.” The commission, led by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Air Force Secretary Deborah James, shared 10 recommendations meant for defense officials, which will be expanded in a final report in September.

“While most critical technologies being developed today reside in the commercial sector, they are not being leveraged at the speed and scale required for us to maintain advantage relative to our competitors. The time required to develop critical technologies to meet the threat later this decade is no longer the obstacle; it is our inability to scale already-developed commercial technologies into production, iterate upon them, and sustain them in the hands of the warfighter. Our window to act decisively is closing every day,” the letter states.

The letter was signed by leaders from Applied Intuition, Anduril Industries, Floodgate, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Haystack, Hermeus, Kleiner Perkins, Lux Capital, Palantir Technologies, Primer Technologies, Shield Capital and Snowpoint Ventures.

“Silicon Valley companies are driving the innovation that will make a difference in a future conflict,” said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, and one of the letter’s signees. “Startups, dual-use companies, and other nontraditional defense contractors want to work with the Department of Defense, but often run into barriers that make it difficult to deliver cutting-edge, commercially-derived capabilities to the warfighter at speed and scale.” 

The companies in the letter highlight four recommendations from the Atlantic Council report that will “enable America’s most innovative organizations to step up support for DOD”:

• Modernize the DOD to align with the 21st century industrial base
• Strengthen the alignment of capital markets to DOD outcomes
• Incentivize tech companies to do business with the DOD
• Establish a bridge fund for demonstrated technologies

“We believe that the implementation of these recommendations, as well as the other six recommendations in the Commission’s Interim Report, will dramatically improve the ability of Silicon Valley to deliver the world’s best technologies to the warfighter,” the letter states. “They will rapidly address the DOD’s critical technology gaps through the most promising emerging technologies, and they will construct agile funding structures that make it far more probable that the best commercial innovation can be integrated into the DoD’s systems at scale.”

On the other hand, if the Pentagon does not take action, it “will have missed a unique
opportunity for genuine reform in the ‘decisive decade,'” the firms wrote. “Our competitors will continue to gain ground on the technological battlefield, and we will squander the advantages that accrue from the freest and most innovative marketplace on earth.”

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The TIDE 2023 gathering, slated for Aug. 30 at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia, will be set up like a trade show and attendees may have opportunities to display and showcase their prototypes, according to a Department of Defense request for information posted on Sam.gov.

“The DoD and U.S. interagency partners use TIDE to gain situational awareness and understanding of the state-of-play of innovative technologies in a specified focus area to inform decision-making that enhances strategic and operational capabilities. TIDE 2023 seeks to discover emerging capabilities that may produce surprising impacts during future conflicts,” per the RFI.

More specifically, the Pentagon is on the hunt for “unknown” capabilities as well as “unanticipated” applications for commercial tech.

“Technology advances at a difficult pace for anyone to track, introducing novel solutions capable of previously un-heard of applications. TIDE 2023 is seeking innovative prototypes that may improve current military capabilities or unlock new approaches that are not feasible with existing technologies,” the RFI states.

Additionally, the DOD is interested in “leveraging proven existing commercially available technologies and applying them asymmetrically to achieve previously unforeseen impacts. This technology may include repurposing algorithms or sensors, modifying autonomous vehicles for new payloads, or using novel materials and chemistries for new applications.”

The department also seeks innovations — such as novel materials and manufacturing processes, or improvements in artificial intelligence and autonomy — that would enable the deployment of capabilities “at a scale or speed that challenges the adversary’s ability to react,” according to the special notice.

Moreover, the Pentagon is looking for solutions to counter adversaries’ technologies, such as tools that would disrupt their sensors, communications, or other capabilities across warfighting domains including air, land, sea, space, cyberspace, or the electromagnetic spectrum.

Technology developers in industry, academia and government that hope to be invited to participate in TIDE 2023, can respond to the RFI and submit applications describing their innovations. Responses are due by June 16.

Participation in the event could lead to “follow-on collaboration, support for further development, and/or fielding of matured capabilities,” per the RFI.

The Office of Innovation and Modernization, which is sponsoring TIDE 2023, is a component of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

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“The analytics that we’re buying are being used to identify, monitor and track fishing vessels in real-time to identify bad actors, describe their patterns, and inform international engagements and patrol operations. We can create trends and share those with foreign mission partners,” Jared Newton, technical executive of NGA’s Source Commercial Operations Group, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview.

Considered an escalating global concern by many experts, IUU activity — and the potential collapse of certain fish stocks associated with it — is placing millions of people at risk of losing access to their primary food sources. The activities are often linked to organized crime and forced labor. And people who live in developing countries are the most vulnerable to being impacted by IUU harms. 

“If you go read press articles, you’re regularly seeing those regional news media outlets talking about sustainability, and that threat to their country. These types of fishing operations are putting at risk their standard of life and living,” Michael Kurey, a program manager for enhanced domain awareness, recently explained. 

NGA as an agency stations itself in places where its customers — like military commands — are housed. Kurey is based in Miami, Florida, near U.S. Southern Command’s headquarters. Several years ago, his team began incorporating some of those commercial data and analytics resources acquired via NGA’s Source Commercial Operations Group into an application called Enhanced Domain Awareness, or EDA.

In separate interviews, Newton and Kurey briefed DefenseScoop on how EDA is evolving and expanding to supply a growing list of government and military entities with a consolidated, near real-time strategic picture of IUU fishing activities in waters where they can be extremely difficult to trace.

‘The beauty’ of this technology

President Biden said IUU fishing undermines U.S. national security and is “among the greatest threats to ocean health,” in a policy memorandum released last year — through which he directed federal agencies to pursue a variety of actions to help spot and stop it. 

“Long story short, IUU is a global problem. There are actors that fish illegally or skirt the line of legality globally,” Newton explained. 

Sometimes, actions or trends in one region shed light on activities in others as well. 

“I’ll come out and say it — yes — we’ve seen Chinese vessels indicating activity that is considered IUU. I will say, though, the challenge of IUU in general is that ‘illegal’ is paired with ‘unregulated,’ so there are things that are very clearly against law and in some things that kind of skirt the lines,” Newton said. 

But “the beauty of commercial analytics and geointelligence,” in his view, is that they provide an “avenue to openly track and communicate when international rules are being skirted or broken.”

The data and associated, sophisticated services that NGA’s Source Commercial Operations Group buys for Defense Department use can be derived from automation and artificial intelligence. That’s “a very different approach than you’ll probably hear with some of the other defense organizations that focus exclusively almost on acquiring algorithms and ingesting them into government operations,” Newton said — though he also noted that NGA additionally does that “at an agency level.”

The vendor and subcontractor the commercial operations group purchases data and services from broadly apply AI and machine learning to monitor and surveil an area that’s approximately the size of around 34 million square kilometers.

“And they are integrating satellite imagery data, terrestrial AIS, which is transponder data that ships broadcast, company registry and ownership information, vessel spec databases, nautical charts — a variety of different sources — to characterize what individual entities are doing within that space. So the AI is able to identify the high-probability ‘bad actors’ by applying historic knowledge of what the entities in the space are doing over time,” Newton said. 

Sometimes, vessels participating in IUU activities turn off their communication systems to essentially hide themselves from capabilities that are made to track them.

“That’s what we call a dark target,” Newton explained.

“They typically do that before they go and do something nasty. Where the AI kind of helps is because it’s pulling from a variety of different sources to include imagery. Those alerts can then tip an imaging sensor to then try and maintain custody of that vessel,” he said.

NGA, according to Newton, “obviously has to apply algorithms or eyeballs to every image pixel” that is brought into the agency’s secure assets.

“Just to give you a sense of the scale and how much we’re talking about — there’s around 470 U.S. own space-based remote sensing systems that are available today. And that’s going to expand to around 1,400 by 2030, we expect. So globally, there’s about a seven-fold increase in those systems. So the limiting factor isn’t how much of the Earth we can observe or how often — it’s how quickly we can derive insights from that data. And so that’s where, of course, AI and automation comes in. It helps us increase the speed and our capability to react to military and human humanitarian response efforts,” he explained.

With that in mind, NGA recently began scaling its Economic Indicator Monitoring contract, which is now essentially the agency’s model for buying commercial computer vision data. Newton confirmed that NGA recently increased the funding ceiling for that contract, with the explicit intent to “buy more commercial analytics.”

Although he couldn’t get into specifics, Newton also spotlighted a particular maturing project to help combat IUU that stems back to efforts being steered by U.S. Southern Command that relies on such industry-produced analytics. 

The command is bringing the data, imagery and alerts NGA acquires commercially — and a range of other government and open-source datasets — into a curated IUU fishing reference database. 

That information can further be pulled into the EDA platform to display a strategic picture of such activities and trends, organized reports, and to ultimately perform mission briefs and patrol operations led by Southcom and its international partners. 

“We’re always looking at ways to provide more data, better and faster” as this work progresses, Newton noted. “So, we’re looking at doing a data integration and modernization study for illegal fishing with our partners in Southcom, so that we can get them data even faster than what we’re giving them.”

In an update via email this week, an NGA spokesperson told DefenseScoop that ​​”the modernization study for Southcom EDA will kick off early this summer and will run over several weeks.”

For the effort, the agency will be collaborating with the military command and vendors “to develop technical recommendations for improving timeliness,” the official said.

A ‘partner-enabling’ environment

The overarching concept for EDA was in some ways born out of nearly seven years of lessons Kurey learned while embedded with Southcom through its partnership with NGA. 

“Those formulated around either command exercises or world events — particularly humanitarian assistance and disaster relief task forces — so things like earthquakes and hurricanes,” he explained.

There was an apparent need to better organize the complex, convoluted data and information through models or other means to then report to all echelons of government. 

“So think tactical, operational, strategic — and the same piece of data can inform all three potentially different means behind it,” Kurey said.

The “wheels were moving” there, he added, before the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced. Then, a governmentwide need for secure but unclassified working environments — and EDA’s unique capabilities that allow partner nations to collaborate and share data-driven insights — accelerated the platform’s development.

Today, the program continues to evolve, informing national security operations beyond the realm of IUU fishing.

“When you log into EDA, whether it is on the U.S. side or the partner-nation side, many of the projects that you’ll see in there revolve around different priority lines of effort,” Kurey explained. For Southcom, besides IUU “you’ll find other things like counter-narcotics missions, and things like that. But it’s all encompassing, and you’ll find information and data and projects that I mentioned before will support a tactical environment, operational environment, or strategic messaging,” he said.

Still, within the “partner-enabling environment of EDA,” Kurey noted, IUU fishing activities are top of mind. Often, when he speaks to U.S. military allies and partners at international engagements, “the IUU fishing topic is usually the first thing brought up in the room — it’s the icebreaker,” he said.

To Kurey, projects like this with EDA have significance because they “drive those conversations with data versus speculation.” 

The models that are running within the environment “fuse on-the-fly either dynamic or static data provided through relationships” NGA has with non-governmental organizations and its own organic and acquired information sources, he added. And “all of this gets fed into data-driven models that spit out and inform visualizations within EDA.”

It’s no secret that China’s distant water fishing fleets, sometimes associated with IUU practices, have been growing exponentially over the last decade.

“The numbers are unknown, in the sense that they range from 4,000 to 15,000-plus vessels. I mean, that’s a lot of noise. How do you refine and narrow the aperture of where you’re looking and what you’re looking at and why you’re looking at them to drive action?” Kurey said. 

“The military talks about how intelligence drives operations. So, [EDA] is an example,” he noted.

As the platform continues to mature and blossom, now other combatant commands — including U.S. Northern Command, European Command and Indo-Pacific Command — are beginning to explore how they can integrate it into their own initiatives for data organization and support.  

“We’re in the process of discussing with them what requirements they may have and guiding them on how to implement them,” Kurey confirmed.

Though there’s still a lot to be realized with the EDA platform, in his view it marks one major mechanism through which the government is “posturing for that AI future.”

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And in 2023, DIU fully expects to build on that momentum, acting Director Mike Madsen told DefenseScoop in conjunction with the report’s release.

“DIU continues to see an uptick in the number of projects and organizations understanding the need to modernize and change. With the increased FY23 appropriations DIU received, we plan to hire more acquisition officers and program managers to meet this need,” he said.

Established by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015, DIU was developed to harness the investment and speed of advances in industry-made tech to ultimately help the military more rapidly deploy cutting-edge systems. Since then, the organization has formed outposts in several U.S. tech hubs. 

Madsen — an Air Force veteran, decorated combat pilot and former legislative liaison — was temporarily promoted to serve as acting director of DIU when Mike Brown opted to depart last summer following 4 years steering the organization. Before that, Madsen was DIU’s deputy director and director of strategic engagement. 

In his view, DIU demonstrated value for both its DOD and commercial partners in 2022.

“What we started a few years ago — starting focused Defense and Commercial Engagement Teams — has paid dividends,” Madsen said.

While the Defense Engagement Team focuses on the transition planning at the beginning of the project and coordinates across the services, combatant commands and others on prototypes and transitions, DIU’s Commercial Engagement Team “keeps their fingers on the pulse of commercial technology around the” U.S. and globe, Madsen said. The team also works with commercial partners to ensure they know how to work best with the DOD. 

“Looking back on 2022, which brought the history-making delivery of all strategic reviews in an integrated way — it all points to the need to respond to the rapid pace of innovation,” he told DefenseScoop.

In its 20-page year-in-review on accomplishments in 2022, released publicly on Wednesday, officials note that “a commercial solution transitions when the prototype successfully completes and results in a production or service contract” with a DOD or federal entity — and that such transitions are what enable the department to field and operationalize a capability.

In 2022, 17 commercial solutions transitioned to DOD end-users via DIU, the report states. Madsen noted that that is “up more than 50% from” fiscal 2021.  

Officials posted 36 solicitations on DIU.mil during fiscal 2022 and in response to those received 1,636 commercial proposals — its highest number of annual submissions to date. In total, 81 new prototype other transaction contracts were awarded and the innovation agency obligated $204.8 million in prototype funds.

“DIU provides a framework for the department to innovate at speed and scale — and it has the numbers to prove it,” Madsen said.

Of importance, the unit is also designed with a strategic responsibility to increase the number of first-time and non-traditional vendors the military collaborates with. 

“In FY22, 86% of our awards were non-traditional and 73% were awarded to small businesses, with 33% first-time DOD vendors,” the acting director said.

In the annual review, DIU officials shed light on a number of prototypes and emerging capabilities that were transitioned to Pentagon components via its artificial intelligence, cyber, space, and other portfolios. They also provide details on companies that received previous DIU approvals and have now been leveraged to provide commercial remote sensing, small drones and other technologies to the Ukrainian military. 

“Ukraine has shown the importance of dual-use emerging technologies and the changing nature of warfare,” Madsen said, noting that “this might be the first time a country leader has called companies for help to leverage [and] purchase technologies on the ground and in the sky.” 

“Commercial imagery, autonomous drones, communication tools, and social media are being democratized and used in new ways. Modernization is critical and commercial technology and their ability to scale is something that DIU continues to champion across the department,” he added. 

It’s still early into fiscal 2023, but Madsen repeatedly said his team is already continuing to streamline processes — and with increased funding, officials plan to bring in more acquisition help. 

“Although we focus on awarding contracts in 60 to 90 days, in fiscal year 2022, DIU averaged 142 days from problem identification to solicitation,” he noted.

DIU, according to Madsen, has also had the same level of civilian and military staff since it was founded in 2015. 

“With the increased 2023 appropriations, we plan to increase our acquisition and [project management] functions to meet the current workload demands and help fund any priority projects that will have impact across the DOD that may be facing a delay in transition,” he said. 

The unit’s newest portfolio encompasses energy technologies. So far, 18 prototypes are underway, and Madsen is hopeful some will transition to DOD customers this fiscal year.

“In addition, we just renamed our cyber portfolio to ‘Cyber and Telecommunications,’ so we will be sharing additional information in the coming month,” he told DefenseScoop. 

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That role will mark a temporary promotion for Madsen, who currently serves as DIU’s deputy director and director of strategic engagement. 

Formed by the Pentagon in 2015, the unit is designed to strategically accelerate the military’s adoption of commercial technologies. It is headquartered in Silicon Valley and runs outposts in multiple U.S. tech hubs. 

Brown, a former CEO-turned-White House Innovation Fellow, has headed DIU for the last four years. He surprised many when he announced plans to depart this year when his term ends, despite an option to stay on.

“As deputy director, Mike Madsen will be acting director of DIU until a new person is identified and takes the helm of the organization,” a DIU spokesperson told FedScoop on Monday. Madsen “will stay in place to help in the transition until his [term as an appointed Highly Qualified Expert within the DOD] expires in 8 months.”

DIU’s next director will likely enter the position with expertise from the commercial sector, as Brown had. 

Madsen “is not putting his name in for consideration for [permanent] director of DIU,” the spokesperson said.

Applicants competing to take his reins as DIU’s next permanent director were required to submit materials to the Defense Department by mid-August. That review process is ongoing and will likely take at least a month, the DIU spokesperson told FedScoop.

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