Signed by Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo, the new directive also includes three commodity focus areas that will allow the service to concentrate its initial efforts to adopt digital engineering tools more broadly.

During a keynote speech Tuesday at AFCEA NOVA’s DOD Enterprise IT Day, Camarillo emphasized that digital engineering will be the new standard in how the Army develops and sustains its capabilities.

“It enables our ability to identify requirements tradeoffs earlier in the process, to plan more adequately for sustainment of both hardware and software,” he said. “It identifies cost drivers in the operation of weapon systems in the future, and it helps us to identify and mitigate technical risks through more robust modeling and simulation and the development of digital twins.”

Digital engineering uses advanced modeling, simulation and data analytics to design, analyze and advance complex systems at all lifecycle stages — from early development of new prototypes to sustainment of already fielded platforms. Because it is widely adopted in the private and commercial sectors, many of the Army’s programs are already utilizing the techniques today.

Now, the service wants to standardize and streamline digital engineering practices throughout the Army via four lines of effort outlined in the new policy.

The first will be to designate three unique focus areas — ground vehicles, aviation platforms and sensors — to act as “centers of gravity” for the Army’s digital engineering adoption. The department chose the commodity areas based on the high maturity level of digital engineering techniques already demonstrated for each capability, Camarillo said.

For example, the XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle (MICV) program — the Army’s effort to replace its M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle — is receiving digital engineering artifacts as part of its development. Similar digital design work is being executed in the service’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) effort, he noted.

“We are looking to benefit from that utilization of digital engineering tools to be able to help establish the right processes in the Army, the right training, and how we adapt our institutional approach to be able to accommodate more digital engineering,” Camarillo said. 

Another line of effort will have the department identify a handful of efforts to serve as pathfinder programs. The pathfinders will represent the range of the development cycle to fully understand how digital engineering can be adopted at all stages — from using digital environments to conduct early design of new systems to creating new digital twins of legacy programs to better inform sustainment efforts, he added.

“The goal here is to think about how do you change our processes. If you’re doing a preliminary design review of a system in development, or if you’re doing the need to identify cost-driving parts for a legacy system, how do you get after that?” Camarillo said.

In addition, the Army plans to develop implementation standards to ensure interoperability through another line of effort. Rather than license one or two digital engineering tools, the service wants to take a “commodity-focused approach” and interface with the entire vendor base developing digital engineering tools. This will allow the service to “focus much more on what are those standards — focused on things like interoperability and cybersecurity, for example — to be able to understand how we can work with those teams to help evolve those capabilities and those standards over time,” Camarillo said.

That means the Army will need to standardize its approach to contracting so it can effectively communicate to industry the exact digital engineering tools it needs, he added.

The final line of effort is dedicated to developing the Army’s workforce and ensuring they have adequate training to execute on the new policy. The service also plans to work with industry and conduct “talent exchanges” to permeate best practices from both the private and public sectors over time, Camarillo noted.

While the digital engineering policy is a critical step in the Army’s digital transformation efforts, Camarillo emphasized there is still work to be done to ensure its effectiveness.

“We know that we have to continue to modernize IT infrastructure across our posts and stations, and we’re looking for effective and creative ways to do it. We also know that our tactical network remains a significant challenge,” he said.

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Earlier this week, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces released draft language for the fiscal 2025 Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act. A provision would mandate the creation of a Drone Corps that would be given primary responsibility for programs, projects and activities involving small and medium unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS weapons.

The organization would be tasked to serve as a “command center” for Army operations involving these types of systems; help integrate the systems with forces that have not traditionally used such platforms; conduct research, development, testing and evaluation of technologies; and provide personnel with specialized training.

Additionally, it would be directed to carry out programs to attract and retain personnel with relevant expertise, develop strategies and capabilities to counter drones, and “perform such other functions relating to unmanned aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems as the Secretary determines appropriate,” according to the draft legislation.

The secretary of the Army would be responsible for appointing the chief of the Drone Corps.

Army leaders are keen on modernizing the service’s UAS and counter-UAS capabilities as they look to introduce next-generation platforms into the force and address growing threats.

“I did see the language in the initial draft of the House bill. And I would say that it’s animated, I think, by a recognition that you know this is a very real threat. It is a problem that the Department [of Defense] and the Army in particular have to confront. And so we … share that urgency and we definitely share that focus,” Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said Friday during an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

However, standing up a new drone branch like the one being proposed, wouldn’t be the best way to address the problem and might be counterproductive, he suggested.

“My view is that, you know, creating a corps or other institutional kind of structures to kind of get after it, in some way could take away some focus from some of the things that … we’re actually doing. It’s important in my view to get after giving units, you know, these [commercial off-the-shelf] UAS capabilities to let them experiment. I want to better understand the TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] about how they’re going to employ them at different echelons and to be able to understand, you know, how that affects the way that our formations will fight,” he said.

Camarillo noted that the Army is pursuing a concept called “transforming in contact,” which aims to use unit rotations to help determine what technologies and configurations its forces will need, including UAS and counter-UAS tools.

Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is a strong proponent of the effort and has highlighted the need for the service to boost its prowess in these areas.

“One of the things we’re doing is experimenting with some of our brigades right now to kind of give them not only these launched effects and COTS UAVs, but to allow them to kind of figure out and train how they would use them … And really what it is it’s taking three brigades that are deploying or going to large-scale exercises, and giving them these types of kit so they have an opportunity to figure out how would they employ them. It will give us a tremendous amount of feedback,” Camarillo said.

These initiatives and others that the Army is pursuing, are more likely to yield benefits from an operational and acquisition perspective than creating a Drone Corps, he suggested.

“Things that we’re doing, like transformation in contact or some of the experiments that we’re performing today are critically important. I think the institutional implications of it to me are secondary at this point, as opposed to figuring out how we’re going to employ the technology, what technology works the best, and most importantly, do we have our buying processes in place in order to be able to get there,” Camarillo said. “Having a branch or, you know, a [Center of Excellence] or anything like that — it’s not going to help us buy anything faster or get us more resources against this problem set.”

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“We have got to have a network, a future network that is adaptable, which means every program in my portfolio has got to embrace that adaptability. Some of the technologies and capabilities … [in the portfolio] didn’t exist two years ago,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical, said Thursday at the Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. “I can’t have a five-year contract with industry that doesn’t acknowledge this rapid pace of innovation, this need for our commanders to adapt their network. That, I think, is the challenge between us and industry to get to those flexible and adaptable contracts and means of doing business.”

In certain areas and portfolios, the Army wants to have the flexibility to insert new capabilities as the threat changes and technology matures. This also means adjusting fielding models from total Army to just select units.

“For some capabilities that we need, those [traditional] buying models [of fielding across the entire Army] will not get us what we need quickly enough. But the good news is that we’ve started changing some of our approach and innovating the way that we acquire them in critical areas,” Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said at the conference this week. “I always like to point out, this started out several years ago with our tactical network, where we began developing a tranche buy approach through capability set fielding where vendors would compete for successive lots of production — and we would enable those team of vendors to be able to continue to iterate and upgrade capabilities over time and we had about a two-year cycle.”

The Army’s network portfolio has been ahead of this curve for some time with its capability set paradigm, which provided technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery.

As the Army is looking to continue to make changes and tweaks to its network architecture, officials have noted they will need certain capabilities to be adaptable and tailorable for formation, echelon and theater. As the Army is moving away from the capability set paradigm, it will look to insert technology on a more frequent, iterative basis.

More flexible buying and fielding

Camarillo has discussed previously the need for an updated model not based on the traditional, hardware-centric approach.

During his appearance this week at the Global Force Symposium, he provided more details regarding the need to adjust within the Army and work with industry.

“The reality is that our processes are designed around two relatively fixed constraints. The first is the two-year appropriations process and second, the limits of how long it takes to run the competitive contracting process, which, you know, is required by law. We can work on flexibility in both of these, but in reality, we have to design strategies for a subset of the capabilities that we need that utilizes creative approaches around both of these hard constraints,” he said.

“I know that most of our industry partners that rely on traditional buying models, might think that some of this is a big shift. Some programs may only be profitable once you achieve a large run of production over several years. But if the Army is going to keep changing its technologies and if it’s going to adopt new innovation, we need to ensure that there is incentives in place to continue to invest in the new generation of capabilities that we need. Changing our buying models is really not just a luxury, it’s actually an imperative in order to deliver the warfighter what they need,” he added.

Camarillo noted there is a “quiet revolution” inside the Army where for some systems, the entire force doesn’t have to be fielded. Instead, different capabilities, units and formations can be fielded over time.

One of the recent successes includes unmanned aerial systems.

“We’ve innovated the buying models [of small commercial UAS] to keep pace with the rapid rate of innovation. For example, using more capability-based requirements and multiple award task order contracts to ensure that multiple vendors can keep innovating and compete for task orders,” Camarillo said.

Additionally, smaller production quantities can be attractive.

“As we look at smaller production quantities of certain items, we have to be willing to accept higher costs in order to keep pace with the investment required to upgrade them,” Camarillo said. “All of this for some could be new and it could be uncomfortable, but I think it can definitely work. There are significant upsides, I think, both for industry and certainly for the Army to adapting our buying models to keep pace with the changes.”

As-a-service

The other paradigm the Army is adopting is the as-a-service and on-demand model.

“We’ll continue to do research on radio-as-a-service looking at our mission command capabilities, modeling what we’ve done already on the SATCOM terminal side where we’re no longer buying individual terminals, we’re paying for it on an as-a-service basis,” Camarillo said.

The network community has initially embraced this model, especially SATCOM-as-as-service given its maturity in the commercial space.

“I think that’s a much more mature option. I think the industry is much more mature, there’s a much more robust commercial demand. I think we’re going to much more aggressively pursue SATCOM now,” Kitz said at the conference.

In September, the Army issued awards to two companies under a pilot effort for SATCOM as a managed service to help inform a potential way ahead and possibly broader strategy for as-a-service models.

The Army is looking into other as-a-service models such as counter-UAS for fixed sites and the possibility of a radio-as-a-service effort, with a potential award expected soon.

“We want to engage with industry on where is our return on investment if we go to an as-a-service model,” Kitz said. “What the Army wants to get to is an on-demand model. We want units to use the radios that they’re being given and then when they need capacity, we have an on-demand model to do that.”

He noted that he’s observed situations where units aren’t using the radios they’ve been given, in some instances, using less than 50 percent of the radios they’re equipped with at combat training center rotations.

“Nobody wants to be in the business of giving radios to units that are not going to necessarily leverage all those radios,” Kitz said. “There’s a lot that goes into the relationship with industry in this as-a-service model. And I really see what the [undersecretary] talked about today, what we’re going after with this pilot program is a dialogue with industry. Where are the breakpoints, how can we make sure we give these commanders the radios they need to deploy now and the radios that they need when they need capacity to increase?”

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Giving soldiers additional capabilities to protect themselves against threats from above is a top modernization for the service. American troops in the Middle East under U.S. Central Command have repeatedly come under attack.

“The world awoke to this threat after Oct. 7 of last year [when adversary UAS assaults ramped up in the Middle East after the Israel-Hamas conflict intensified], but the Army has been under attack for years in Centcom. We have worked very quietly in a lot of ways with our industry partners, a whole range of them to provide on the ground counter-UAS capabilities over a number of years starting before I arrived. That is paying off now in combat. So while we have taken losses — this is a conflict — we would have taken a lot more if that work hadn’t been done by my predecessor and then my team since I arrived to get more stuff to Centcom. And we have to keep going on that even faster,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, said last week at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference.

Gen. Randy George, the chief of staff, suggested that long-term force planning will also need to account for drone threats.

“One of the big things that we are focused on with this new Army structure document is how are we going to have to fight in the future … We know we’re going to need more counter-UAS batteries and more counter-UAS inside of our formation. So we are focused on that,” he said at the McAleese event.

On Monday, the Army released its budget request for the next fiscal year.

“I do want to mention a continued emphasis on counter-small UAS capabilities,” Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo told reporters during a budget preview ahead of the official rollout.

The funding plan includes $447 million for related programs, according to the Army, including money for the mobile and fixed-site LIDS family of systems. The acronym LIDS stands for “low, slow, small UAS integrated defeat system.”

LIDS capabilities include a suite of sensors, command-and-control tools and weapons designed to detect, track and take out enemy drones that are in the Group 1-3 categories of unmanned aerial systems.

For mobile LIDS, the service wants $82.5 million for procurement and $6.6 million for research, development, test and evaluation. For fixed-site LIDS, it’s requesting $26.4 million for procurement and $20.2 million for RDT&E.

It also seeks $116.3 million to procure Coyote interceptors (plus $10.3 million for RDT&E), $33.6 million for “C-UAS effectors,” and $28.5 million for procurement related to “ground readiness.”

The Army request also includes $140 million for research and development of various directed energy systems, according to Camarillo. For example, the service wants $31.6 million for RDT&E for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) high-energy laser, $4 million for RDT&E for the IFPC high-power microwave, and $88.5 million for RDT&E of a mobile short-range air defense (M-SHORAD) directed energy capability.

The Army is also requesting more than $500 million for counter-drone tech as part of a larger supplemental funding package for fiscal 2024.

“Our investments in critical munitions as well as counter-small UAS are two good examples of where we are dependent not only on the base budget, but the supplemental to get where we need to go to,” Camarillo told reporters.

Army officials see opportunities for tech insertion to improve existing capabilities.

“We’ve been developing counter-UAS systems for a number of years and fielding a lot — primarily to Centcom. The Coyote missile, for example, was started as a counter-UAS missile. That’s one of the most effective ones we have right now. So you will see additional funding for those things. However, it’s not a locked configuration … There’s not like a new program [transitioning from R&D into production in 2025], but I think if you compare what we want to buy in ‘25 for FS-LIDS to what we bought two years ago, it’s different and better. So there’s also a big supplemental aspect to our counter-UAS plans in the near term … That would be enormously helpful,” Bush told DefenseScoop during the budget preview with reporters.

“The big increases in dollars are those supplemental things and also two rapid acquisition contracts we awarded after Oct. 7 to increase production of two different interceptors in response to, you know, the situation in the Middle East. So I think we don’t want to wait ’til FY ’25. So, you know, we need that procurement now. And then, as the situation evolves, you know, this could be a running conversation with Congress about potential need for additional counter-UAS investments in the near term, not just in ’25,” he added.

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The far-reaching policy — which addresses requirements, testing, procurement, sustainment and personnel — immediately went into effect, and it comes amid a broader push for accelerating digital modernization across the U.S. military.

“We’re learning from current conflicts — including in Ukraine — that the Army’s success on future battlefields will depend on our ability to rapidly update software and disseminate it to the operational force,” Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement. “Software development must be a source of our military advantage and the Army’s new software policy will ensure we have the right processes in place to inject innovation quickly and achieve a digital transformation of our warfighting capabilities.”

Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo added that traditional approaches aren’t up to snuff.

“This policy represents a significant effort to comprehensively adjust our legacy software development processes in line with private sector best practices,” he said in a statement.

According to a release summarizing major elements of the new directive, software-based systems “will no longer follow the traditional process in which a system transitions to sustainment once development is complete. In line with industry best practices, these systems will instead plan for continuous improvement and development over the entirety of the lifecycle. This change recognizes that modern software development is never complete.”

The policy also calls for maximizing use of the Pentagon’s software acquisition pathway — which was instituted in 2020 by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord — flexible strategies such as “modular contracting,” and contract types that allow for “refinement of the requirements as the software evolves and user needs change.”

Soldiers are expected to have major input in the development of those requirements, which are to be written as “high level needs statements” rather than “prescriptive requirements documents.”

The Army intends to streamline testing of new capabilities and cybersecurity validation processes, including for obtaining authority to operate on the service’s networks.

Meanwhile, the service is looking to boost its organic software development know-how and make it more widely available across the department.

To that end, the Army is standing up a new Digital Capabilities Contracting Center of Excellence at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, that is expected to be fully operational in September.

According to a release issued last year by the program executive office for enterprise information systems, the new center of excellence is expected to serve as a model for agile procurement of digital tools and be tasked with “sharing playbooks” on best contracting practices with other contracting organizations.

Additionally, a new “software management and response team” at Army headquarters will aid enterprise-wide efforts.

The Army also has a software factory in Austin, Texas, which is a pilot effort that allows soldiers to train other soldiers in coding.

The service will explore additional ways to recruit, retain and upskill people with software talent, according to the policy announcement.

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In the industrial model that the military has traditionally operated within, programs and capabilities were mostly hardware based and in a fixed manner that took many years to produce with little room for adjustments along the way or once fielded.

Given the highly dynamic operating environment the military will find itself in against sophisticated threats – and the fact much of what the Pentagon is now fielding is underpinned by software — the Army wants more flexibility.

“I also want to say that we’ve got to look ahead to experimenting with different buying models. Here’s the problem we fundamentally have: Look back to 2016, 2017, where there was a lot of discussion about acquisition reform — it was about how do you get to production faster on new critical technology,” Gabe Camarillo, the undersecretary of the Army, said Thursday at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference.  

The challenge now, he explained, is what happens if forces must continuously upgrade that technology and shift gears after they get on an initial production contract.

“That presents some tension,” he said, “because the model right now, which is industrial, every company, every vendor is assuming a long production sale … But at the same time, we need to be able to pivot as quickly as we need to as the pace of technology changes.”

“We also need to figure out how do we reallocate the costs and risks associated with rapidly evolving hardware and software upgrades, especially as all of our weapons systems are now software defined?” Camarillo added.

The Army has exercised some of this flexibility in the past, most specifically beginning with its tactical network modernizations dating back to 2017.

At that time, the Army determined its network was not survivable against sophisticated threats, stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and it unveiled a new paradigm that sought to be more iterative and flexible. As it moved to modernize its network — called the integrated tactical network, which consisted of a combination of program of record and commercial-off-the-shelf tools — it developed what it described as capability sets, as a means of providing technologies to units every two years, each building upon the previous delivery.

Under these capability sets, the Army heavily leveraged middle tier acquisition and sought a flexible approach where as newer, more affordable or more flexible capabilities became available, the Army could pivot its approach to insert those new technologies.

Camarillo noted they are looking at exploring more as-a-service models across the Army. He referenced enterprise software as a prime example as well as satellite communications as-a-service — for which the Army inked a contract recently — and a potential radio as-a-service effort.

“Buying that and experimenting with that as a service where we don’t necessarily have to buy the same terminal and the same piece of hardware equipment, but we can essentially provide a revenue stream over time and share that risk with industry,” he said.

Camarillo told reporters on the sidelines of the conference that while he doesn’t need new authorities from Congress, the key is being clear with industry.

“We just need to make sure that where we are very transparent with industry is in those portfolios, can we come up with a buying model that makes the most sense?” he said. “I’ll just point out SATCOM terminals. That’s a great example. There are significant amounts of investment. But there’s also a lot of customers in that supplier base … Can we just provide you an as-a-service revenue stream and you guys provide us the upgraded hardware and software over time?”

This transparency is important as industry develops investment strategies and production models based on the government’s approach and contracting model. The Army must ensure industry can support that and isn’t caught off guard, otherwise it potentially won’t be able to meet the demand or provide the capabilities that soldiers need.

In line with these efforts, the Army is also looking at its ability to reprogram funds.

“In the absence of flexible funding, the mechanism we have is a reprogramming, which we do a lot of over the course of the year to be able to meet those adapting requirements and emerging technologies. We do a lot of that and we’ve been doing a lot of that for many, many years,” Camarillo told reporters. “How effective it can be, I think just depends on, again, it’s on us to be able to explain what the needs are.”

Lack of proper funding from Congress is what hamstrings the Army the most, he suggested.

“What challenges us more than anything is when you’re in a [continuing resolution] for more than half of the year, you can’t reprogram. You can have the most flexible funding you want to have, but if you can’t use it, or you don’t have it at the right levels, it’s a conversation that really stops dead in its tracks,” he said.

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The Army’s major review of its electronic warfare capabilities will help inform upcoming budget and program planning, the service’s undersecretary said.

Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo initiated what’s referred to as an electronic warfare capability portfolio review as a means of identifying gaps and investment needs. The Army divested much of its EW arsenal after the Cold War — and given the resurgence in spectrum capabilities necessary for success on future battlefields, now is the time to undertake a full examination.

“Unlike, for example, aviation or ground combat vehicles, there’s no clear single proponent for [electronic warfare] in the Army,” Camarillo told reporters at the annual AUSA conference. “It’s shared, obviously, between a variety of organizations … We’re looking to bring that community together to relook the entire portfolio from the beginning to the end.”

The Army wants to better understand what it is currently investing in and what gaps exist at what echelons.

“We recognize that EW is an area that the Army has probably made limited investment in as a capability during two decades of counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan … As we look at the Army’s role as part of a joint force, globally employed, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, it’s time for us to relook what are the threats, what’s the state of technology,” Camarillo said. “We know what programs we’re investing in today, but where are there gaps, how would we like to address and mitigate some of those gaps? … We want to look at the EW portfolio and figure out where we need to place investment and what areas we can potentially accelerate.”

There is no timeline for when the review is expected to wrap up, but Camarillo said components are set to come back in the near term with deliverables and time frames, with his hope being to inform the development of the program objective memorandum (POM) for fiscal 2026, which officials will be working on next year. The EW review is not expected to be completed in time to inform the POM for fiscal 2025, which is shaping the budget request that will likely be released in a few months.

Brig. Gen. Wayne “Ed” Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said in a statement that the review is “a critical part of the Army’s ongoing efforts to ensure the delivery of EW capabilities to address the current and emerging threats of large-scale combat operations.”

Officials have described a layered approach for electronic warfare based on region and echelon, noting the solution will not be singular.

“You can’t view our EW capabilities a single solution. It’s going to require a layered approach with multiple programs,” Ken Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber within PEO IEW&S, told DefenseScoop at the AUSA conference. “I think everything we’re doing right now is still relevant to that fight and we may need to tweak a few things. And definitely there’s some gaps that we need to fill and we’re anxious to get at those.”

The Army still does not possess a fielded program-of-record jammer capability, relying for several years on quick-reaction tools that sought to close gaps that U.S. military forces faced in the field. The service is also set to field other tools aimed at visualizing and planning operations within this invisible environment.

Continued quick-reaction fielding, experimentation and testing of systems will help inform concepts and strategies needed for the Army as a whole as well as certain critical units, such as the Multi-Domain Task Forces. MDTFs are designed to be in constant contact with adversaries during the so-called competition phase of conflict, and be capable of conducting deep sensing and long-range precision fires.

Strayer said his office has been working with 1^st MDTF, which was established in 2017 and is focused on the Indo-Pacific theater. He acknowledged that they’re still developing their mission profile and as a result, the program office is trying to understand how it can provide capabilities to help that unit shape the battlefield in the Pacific.

“What we haven’t seen yet and been put together is a holistic strategy on how do we equip them for the fight, because they’re still learning,” he said.

The Army is still doing a lot of learning and exercise support through quick-reaction capabilities, to include spectrum analyzer tools and unmanned sensors.

Editor’s note: Click here to read part two of this series, which describes the variety of electronic warfare capabilities the Army is building and where they are in their development.

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He also hinted at the potential establishment of new Army-led hubs to help personnel across the huge enterprise more rapidly and iteratively develop and design needed products, and also simulate real-world environments and scenarios digitally to inform future decision-making.

“One of the things that we realize is that we probably need to create what I call ‘centers of excellence’ in a couple of different areas, so that we don’t create one approach for the entire Army. [It’s] very different deviation by ground systems, intel systems and sensors — they all have very different needs and requirements as it relates to digital engineering. So, we’re looking to come up with a tailored approach as we explore,” Camarillo said during a panel at the annual AUSA conference. 

Functioning as the Army’s chief operating and management officer, Camarillo has many critical responsibilities, including leading the branch’s enterprise management and business operations as well as budget development and execution. He noted that the Army has taken “some steps in this direction” towards a digital engineering-driven future — including one associated with having digital artifacts from all vendors in its XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle program and another related to future vertical lift pursuits.

“But when I came into the role, I said, ‘How do we take some more decisive steps to move forward on it?’” Camarillo explained.

In his view, “digital engineering is another buzzword” that can mean many different things to different people. 

From “full-scale digital twins that enable us to rapidly iterate on software all the way to how do I have cloud-based tools that allow me to share [files securely] across different users? You know, very, very different things across the spectrum — but the important thing is that the Army has to take some decisive steps towards beginning this more broad adoption of digital engineering capabilities,” Camarillo said.

The undersecretary confirmed he’s been working closely with other Army leaders to produce this new strategy, including Jennifer Swanson, the deputy assistant secretary for data, engineering and software. 

According to Camarillo: “We’ve done a lot of market research. We’ve talked to a lot of industry. We’ve learned what teams are doing. And I’ll say that there’s a couple of different elements to it.”

The first, he said, is generating a list of programs that could serve as pathfinders to showcase what adoption will really look like. Another key part of the strategy will encompass opportunities around upskilling and training the workforce on how to use such tools — and test, evaluation and requirements.

Data governance and protection will also be a main feature of the guiding document, though he didn’t share more details.

“So, I’m excited, and we will be putting that out here I think in the near term. So, stay tuned. But it is kind of a way for us to take that next big step to enable this,” Camarillo said. 

In a briefing with reporters later on Tuesday, the undersecretary confirmed that he anticipates the policy to come out before the end of the calendar year.

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In what is called a capability portfolio review, Gabe Camarillo has directed the Army to examine potential gaps and priority investments in its electronic warfare portfolio.

“Undersecretary Camarillo directed a review of the Army’s position within the Department of Defense’s electronic warfare efforts to identify gaps, priorities and investment opportunities,” an Army spokesperson told DefenseScoop. “As the Army shifts its focus from counterterrorism to large-scale combat operations, we will continue to assess and invest in capabilities to ensure the service effectively supports the Joint Force in any contingency operation.”

Following the Cold War and during the counterterrorism fight, the Army – along with much of the joint force – divested much of its electronic warfare capabilities. During those counter-insurgency fights, the Army used blunt jamming tools to thwart improvised explosive devices, which, in turn, inadvertently jammed friendly systems.

In the years since Russia first entered Ukraine in 2014, the Army has been rapidly seeking to modernize its arsenal to keep pace with Russia and other advanced actors across the world who have seized on America’s divestment in the spectrum and sought to bolster their own prowess and capabilities.

Camarillo has previously explained that electronic warfare “is something that definitely keeps me up at night.”

To keep pace with adversaries, Camarillo has stressed the need to embrace open systems, which will enable the Army to be able to rapidly update capabilities as threats present themselves and rapidly integrate them on platforms.

“What I was also impressed by was really the adoption of the CMOSS open systems architecture approach for all of our capabilities in the portfolio. I think that really unlocks limitless potential,” he told reporters last year, referring to the Army’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (C5ISR)/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards. “To me, it is a challenge in the future, not just in terms of providing the defensive and offensive capabilities, but also integrating them onto the wide range of platforms that the Army has.”

The Army currently has no fielded program-of-record jammers – relying for years on quick reaction capabilities developed to address capability gaps in Europe. It is working to develop a bevy of capabilities to include airborne platforms as well as vehicle-mounted and dismounted systems that span the tactical sphere as well as long-range. Despite taking several years of development, with program-of-record systems slated to field in the next year, Camarillo told reporters he is largely pleased with the Army’s progress but noted that there is more work to do, adding “there’s always room for us to improve the speed and acceleration at which we can turn out capabilities.”

The Army is also undergoing what is known internally as the 120-day study initiated by the principal cyber adviser to examine funding and resourcing priorities for cyber capabilities along with other information-related systems including electronic warfare. The study aims to examine capabilities, policies, formations and concepts to inform future investments.

Camarillo along with the vice chief of staff previously directed a capability portfolio review of the Army’s network with similar aims to the electronic warfare examination. That review studied requirements and capabilities to get a handle on what the Army was prioritizing and investing in to make better-informed decisions in the future.

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The spending blueprint for accelerating digital transformation was based on reviews of the force’s capability portfolios, Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo said during a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Monday when the budget was rolled out.

“If we’re going to be able to fight for more multi-domain operations and to execute the national defense strategy, we have to be able to unlock data, ensure that we have the right skills in place, and to develop the right tools … at the pace that we need them moving forward,” Camarillo said. “There has been a concerted effort over this last year to relook our entire network spend across the Army through a series of capability portfolio reviews. And what that did was allow us to align our FY ‘24 investments in a way that will help us to achieve foundational gains to enable us to accelerate our digital transformation.”

The spending request includes $439 billion to implement the zero-trust cybersecurity model, as well as $95 million for “defensive cyber tools,” according to Army budget documents. The zero-trust paradigm requires organizations to continuously validate network users, devices and data to protect them from threats.

The investments would build and enhance the zero-trust architecture through endpoint security; fund the deployment of identity, credential and access management (ICAM) to support Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and audit; accelerate SIPR modernization for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; and buy “defensive cyber operations tools.”

Another $469 million would go toward “unlocking access to data” by resourcing the transition to the cloud and other upgrades to the service’s digital environment. About $333 million of that would fund central tools and services for application, development, modernization, cloud migration, and Enterprise Cloud Management Agency (ECMA) support. The other $136 million would be invested in Army data platforms, Application Programming Interface (API) management and data catalogs, to “enable decision through an open data environment,” according to budget documents.

Camarillo referenced the “fix our computers” complaints that have been voiced by DOD personnel, noting that the 2024 budget blueprint includes “significant investment in order to retire technical debt that has accumulated over many years across the DOD, but certainly within the Army, to upgrade user experience and also experiment with pilots that might make it easier for soldiers and civilians in the Army to be able to use the right tools in a way that is very effective for that.”

That includes $394 million for initiatives such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and to replace aging IT infrastructure.

The Army is also looking to better leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning, not just for warfighting capabilities but also on the enterprise side of the house to improve back-office operations and how the service does business, Camarillo noted.

Service budget documents highlight $283 million to fund research and development for “enhanced autonomy experimentation” and program activities enabled by AI and machine learning, including for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV), robotic combat vehicles, Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), and “smarter sensors” with edge processing.

The Army also wants $639 million for cryptography modernization including accelerating its tactical radio cryptographic modernization compliance timelines, and supporting the NSA’s “Raise the Bar” strategy for “cross-domain solution integration into critical combat platforms,” per the documents.

Additional money would go toward “upskilling” the workforce.

“There are funded investments to upskill our workforce to bring in software development expertise, cyber expertise within the Army, and to ensure that we’ve got people who have an understanding of the types of best practices that industry employs to help us steer and guide our efforts within the Army,” Camarillo said.

The service wants software development architects with experience in agile software development and commercial sector best practices, as well as acquisition officials educated on key topics such as agile development, cloud, data science, AI and machine learning, per the budget documents.

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