Ahead of the announcement, Army officials told reporters that they’re looking to change the software buying model.

“The direction we’re moving in right now in the Army is this is going to be one of many enterprise licensing agreements that we’re looking at entering into,” Army Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga told a small group of reporters ahead of the announcement. “I think the big thing to think about is, as kind of we move forward, we’re finding some things, we have a lot of big software packages that are out there. They’ve been bought over several years, several program offices, several commands, [but we’re] not getting a lot of parity across the board on how they’re being delivered, right? Adding a lot of complexity to the environment. And we’ve been thinking through a couple things, right? One is, how do we reduce the complexity, right? So lower overhead to acquire capability, especially software. That’s kind of the first kind of tenet.”

The next piece, he said, is to figure out how to “make it a lot easier to acquire said software, right?” 

“I think the traditional model of, hey, we’re just buying software licenses and services … in combos kind of doesn’t work in this new environment and the way that things are being delivered,” Garciga said. “So how do we add enough fidelity, right, and an approach where folks can really get the software the way they need it?” 

The final piece, one that Garciga said he as the Army CIO cares “very much about,” is reducing cost. “How do we get better buying power across the board?” he said.

The 10-year deal with Palantir is worth up to $10 billion, although Army officials noted that they’re not committed to spending that much money. The move will consolidate 75 contract vehicles as the Army looks to streamline things, they said.

“This really has been our first kind of separate sense to go in and really get a large ELA. This is one of many. But our intent is to continue to move down this path, right, to really focus on reducing that complexity, adding agility to how we buy, right, and then the last piece … which is save taxpayer dollars as much as we can,” Garciga said.

The service is in talks with other vendors for similar types of arrangements.

“We have a couple of others that are teed up that we’re either already in negotiation with or starting the conversation to start negotiations with to do this across the board,” Garciga said.

A key aim of the initiative is to get better deals from a unit cost perspective. In the civilian side of the federal government, the General Services Administration is leading a similar effort to maximize government buying power for software licenses called OneGov.

“What I see across contracts is, hey, if I have more than one contract with the same vendor, have I bought the same thing more than once in a different way or at a different price? And just from a common-sense perspective, does that really make sense?” Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command, told reporters.

“Starting with Palantir and as we look at other ones, we’re looking at, hey, it makes sense to make sure … we’re getting the best discounts. So just like economies of scale buy, right? If I buy one widget, it costs X amount. If I buy 100, I should get a discount. And the more I buy at scale, the more of a discount I should [get]. And also …  just in general, across this whole initiative, we’ll look at, well, how are you selling this elsewhere? Should there be clauses in the contract that say, hey, you know, if you try and sell it somewhere else, we need to come back here and look at what the rate is on this and get a discount,” Moyer said.

She noted that the Army isn’t actually obligating $10 billion to Palantir, but the deal recognizes potential growth for the services and goods that are on that contract with the multibillion-dollar ceiling. While there is a minimum spend requirement on the contracts, the Army has no obligation to buy more than it sees fit across its enterprise. 

The Army is also trying to avoid vendor lock as it shakes up its buying practices.

“The other really important thing to note there is competition for future programs and things like that will still continue to happen. So, for example, if on all these ELAs — name the vendor — if we’re specifically talking about Palantir, if Palantir chooses to compete on, you know, whatever program or weapon system in there, the chosen awardee they happen to be at, then we would obviously leverage this agreement [to get] economies of scale discounts, buys, right, that makes the volume,” Moyer said. “We would leverage our buying power in the Army to get maximum discounts. So those are probably, from a contracting perspective, the things that … we really want to make sure that we hit home, which is robust competition is still a thing.”

The Army also wants to make sure it doesn’t overbuy and acquire licenses it doesn’t need.

Officials used a food analogy, comparing previous software buying practices to all-you-can-eat buffets or combo deals where customers essentially pay for things they might not consume.

“As we look at the way we’ve done kind of historical contracting … we typically will, kind of sometimes overbuy, because we’re trying to kind of calculate what expected growth is and whatnot. So this [enterprise agreement] is meant to help shape that, to say we’re buying just in time into that growth pattern, right? So, instead of saying, OK, I need 100 licenses, I only have to buy 50 now based on the real usage versus buy 100 because that’s where we have to fix a contract that’s meant to be for a longer period of time. So shifting that mentality is to say, OK, now we could just do just in time, kind of delivery of services,” Gabe Chiulli, chief technology officer for Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency, told reporters.

Officials want a more flexible range of options, sort of like an a la carte menu where they can just pick exactly what they want.

Garciga said early efforts to set the stage for the new model began during the previous administration, but he suggested that the focus on improving software acquisition at the Defense Department under the Trump administration has provided additional momentum.

“We have been working on this since November of last year. And I think that there was just an inherent understanding, you know, almost two years ago now that we needed to start moving in this direction with a handful of our vendors,” he said. “There’s been a lot of prep work and foundation being laid to have this conversation. If anything, what I’d say is the change in the environment has allowed us to move a little bit faster than we would have normally, and I think, a willing acceptance by a lot of our commercial partners to rethink the way that they integrate and work with us in the government and what our contractual agreements are going to look like moving forward. So I think … we’ve had a little bit of a catalyst over the last like quarter and a half that’s just be able to get this like really over the hump, to get a really good deal for the Army.”

Moyer said the new way of doing things will also improve transparency into what the Army is buying.

“It’s easy [to keep track] when you buy things that you can see, right? When you buy a tank, right, you can probably see the brand of the wheels on it. It’s pretty, pretty easy. Well, when you build, you know, a weapon system that might have some software in it, and that software vendor — name the vendor — is a subcontractor, we don’t always have visibility on who those are. So I think this initiative in general will provide us visibility into how often are we buying the same software that is essentially a component or a subcontractor through somebody else,” Moyer told reporters.

The Army, as a huge organization that buys a ton of software, should be able to get better deals, Garciga suggested.

“When I look across the landscape, there’s … both software and hardware procurements that we’re doing out there with major IT companies where it would be advantageous to get an enterprise agreement just to get value at scale, right? I mean, think [about] the Army [having] 1.3 million people, right? I mean, we’ve got more endpoints than some countries do,” he said.

The Army is also looking to prevent middlemen from jacking up costs for software.

“What the enterprise agreement allows us to do is to get a much better kind of understanding when we do actually compete new work on what some of those baseline costs are going to be, because we’re kind of making it so folks have to use the enterprise agreement to buy the software, as opposed to what we’ve seen traditionally, which is like, hey, somebody’s going to go out buy this, and then a company is going to go buy it … and bump our cost up considerably for the same piece of software at scale. So I think our intent, like from especially from the CIO’s office, is to focus on where we have a considerable amount of use across Army commands and Army programs, can we engage with those companies to get value at scale, right, and in no way to get in the way of competition,” Garciga said.

ELAs are also seen as a way to help the Army keep pace with fast-moving software developments.

“We don’t want to be in the business of just buying this big block of software and then, you know, three years from now, we’re trying to figure out how to modernize that. No, on the contrary, I think this puts us in a much better position to be able to get that refresh happening organically from the commercial space. And again, it’s about flexibility too, right? It’s having that CLIN [contract line item number] structure that really allows us to as things grow and shrink, have the opportunity to adjust those levers and those rheostats to get us to kind of a baseline,” Garciga said.

He continued: “The next big step, right, and I think we’re going to see this with a lot of our vendors, is this idea of, like, hardware as a service and hardware subscriptions. I think we’re going to see that come in, too. That’s one that we’re working especially for fixed and garrison locations, is where do we have opportunities to rethink where traditionally we’ve done bulk buys and then, you know, five years later, we’re trying to figure out why we can’t lifecycle maintenance it. Now we’re going to kind of as a service, right? And we’ll work with the vendor to make sure that happens. But on the software side, yeah, definitely this is a lot easier.”

Moyer said under the enterprise agreement framework, the Army would be in a position to negotiate better deals over time.

“The other thing that you know we’re working across all the enterprise agreements we’re looking at is, once we get to X number every year … then we’re going to potentially negotiate on all these either A, a true up, or B, a discount for the next year,” she said.

Garciga noted that in the past, the Army has sometimes lost the space to negotiate.

“What we’re seeing right now is, how do you build a vehicle that allows you to … true up, true down, right as the environment changes?” he told reporters. “The larger we get, the bigger the discount. And we may be here for, like, you know, X amount, and then, you know, if we go to the next level up, we’ll get an even bigger discount, right? So I think that that’s going to be the big thing, is continuing that negotiation.”

Another important aspect of the enterprise agreement framework is that it will give the Army flexibility to jump around from a capability-acquisition perspective, he noted.

“If we want to move to the next major … platform that we want to do an enterprise agreement with, and we want to get off the one we’re on, we can gracefully exit that without having kind of put a lot of capital in front that we can’t recover,” Garciga said.

Moyer said the enterprise agreements will have minimum guarantees.

“Once you meet that, you don’t ever have to use that contract again. So if any point it doesn’t make sense … to use that vehicle, there’s somebody different or better, we could always do something different,” she told DefenseScoop. “But … just using my own common sense, why wouldn’t I try and get the best deal for as long as possible and write things in there like maximum discount buys, matching commercial prices, right? So, like, not necessarily for this specific EA, but just a general EA.”

There are many vendors out there that the Army could have enterprise agreements with, officials told DefenseScoop. And, there could be opportunities for the other services or DOD writ large to pursue these types of agreements.

“The service CIOs are all talking and we’re talking with DOD CIO,” Garciga told DefenseScoop. “If you’re already a year into your negotiation, like, we’re gonna put our requirements in and you finish up. If we’re a year into our negotiation and we’re like about to award, like, hey, we’ll get your requirements agreement. So I think we’re really at this point, I think the whole department is really pushing harder to move in this direction. So this [deal with Palantir] is just one of our first off the chute kind of big ones.”

The other services could potentially piggyback off the Army.

“There are discussions that are currently ongoing and … they’ll figure out what makes sense for them,” Moyer told DefenseScoop. “But we will position ourselves to make sure that, you know, if we can use taxpayer dollars in the most efficient way possible to get the biggest discount for any of these enterprise agreements we’re working, that is what we’re going to do.”

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There have been directives from top levels of Army leadership to cut down on business systems and automate capabilities where possible.

“It’s a big push right now from the secretary and the chief is, hey, do we need all of these systems, why do we have them?” CIO Leonel Garciga said during a presentation Wednesday at the Potomac Officers Club’s Army Summit. “A lot of it is a process. Lot of it is, ‘we’ve had it for the last two decades, sir.’ Some of it is really old.”

Unveiled at the end of April, the Army Transformation Initiative is a top-down effort to improve how the service operates by shrinking headquarters elements, becoming leaner, slashing programs that aren’t efficient and changing how money is spent.

The goal is to cut obsolete programs and systems that don’t contribute to success on the modern battlefield.

“The Army is trying to change as fast as we are seeing the operational environment change as well as the technological environment change. Army Transformation Initiative is actually our response to that and how can we go about doing that,” Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, deputy chief of staff, G-8, said at Wednesday’s summit. “You’re going to start to see what we are trying to do and how we are trying to move faster to respond to that operational environment. No longer can we wait for the next [Program Objective Memorandum], for the next budget cycle. We have to be able to change now and change at the pace that is required of us as a force … It’s also about structure, and what we’re trying to do is eliminate waste and obsolete programs. You’re going to see a lot of different change inside of our equipping programs. You’re going to see a lot of different change inside of our force structure. We’re paying for this, largely, mostly ourselves.”

Garciga noted that for him as CIO, ATI means rethinking the way they deliver capability across the board, but officials are still working through that.

Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George have both asserted that the Army wants to buy commercial where possible and try to get out of the paradigm of developing long-yielding programs of record — all in an effort to speed capability to field.

“The model is going to change and I think that’s — I keep stressing this idea of our traditional model of full stack, bespoke capabilities, just going to tell you that’s pretty much dead,” Garciga said. “There’s very few areas where it’s like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense, we should probably do that. Almost holistically, across the board, as we triage just functions that are happening across the enterprise, more and more, what we’re seeing is, hey, we can just do this here, let’s go get that done. Starting to think about what that model looks like, it’s really, really important.”

Garciga also noted that the undersecretary recently signed a memo directing major Army organizations to submit three human-intensive processes to the CIO to focus on how to either automate them, augment them with artificial intelligence or machine learning, or get rid of them entirely.

“Lots of cuts, dynamic workforce shaping, it’s a little different right now. How do we make up for some of those losses and still provide capability and take this opportunity to actually relook and rethink things that we’re doing in the Army right now to deliver capabilities?” Garciga said. “I think this is really important, long time overdue. It really took the stress on the system to get really serious about, oh my god, we still have to do the mission, how do we really look at doing this more efficiently? Big push, so next 20 days, we’re going to see a lot of churn on that.”

These new initiatives could provide big opportunities for the defense industrial base to support the Army, Garciga said, charging audience members to start thinking about how their organizations can contribute.

Members of Congress, on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, have been frustrated so far with the Army regarding the rollout of the broader transformation initiative. While there has been widespread support for the underlying notion of the effort, service leaders have yet to transmit any documents related to ATI, to include analysis for how the decisions to cut programs were made, or how officials will make funding and program decisions in the future.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense earlier this week that in the next 10 days, lawmakers can expect to see documentation.

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After developing close relationships with Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center (AvMC) and additional offices based in Huntsville, Alabama, officials are in early stages of developing a plan that will allow hardware-centric programs to leverage continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, Army CIO Leonel Garciga told DefenseScoop. The goal is to have a firm idea of how the service can approve the frameworks and have a testing infrastructure developed within the next 12 to 18 months.

“We’re moving down that path and in very nascent conversations, starting with the ground system folks who have a very similar requirement,” Garciga said recently in an exclusive interview. “They’re [saying], ‘Hey, if you guys could do this for the aviation guys and for the missile folks, why can’t you do this for us?’”

The effort is part of a larger ongoing initiative to streamline the Army’s cATO processes and improve how the service deploys software onto its networks, first outlined in the Army’s software directive published in 2024. The service kick-started work last fall with two pilot efforts intended to inform eventual service-wide guidance to approving cATO frameworks. 

As the Pentagon becomes increasingly dependent on software-based capabilities, organizations have sought to transition away from traditional ATO frameworks encumbered by administrative processes and manual paperwork that can take months to complete. In comparison, a continuous ATO leverages automated monitoring and security controls to ensure that CI/CD pipelines deploying software onto networks remain compliant.

“It takes this idea of paper shuffling and moving it around to experts and makes it readily available for folks to make decisions as new software is developed, … just based on the tools that are out there and what the threat position of the network they’re falling on looks like,” Garciga said.

The Army is initially focusing on accelerating programs and systems that are more mature than others, meaning their cybersecurity professionals, processes and technologies are aligned so that it’s easier to approve a CI/CD pipeline tailored for that specific program, Garciga explained. That means those programs can serve as a leading edge for the service, allowing for others to leverage that work and build their own maturity.

“We’re in the maturing stage, and we’re really focused around some small pilot programs — both programs of record within a program executive office and some commands — that have some maturity, so that we can build out that foundational approach,” he said.

But programs with hardware-in-the-middle present a number of extra challenges to getting a cATO, as many Army systems operate using customized software that doesn’t have an existing parallel in the commercial sector the service can work off of, Garciga noted.

Approving a CI/CD pipeline for those systems would require the Army to inject themselves at the vendor’s site or purchase all of the equipment again so officials can test and integrate it somewhere else, he said.

“We’re really focused on tackling the hard model first, which has been — I have it all at the vendor site, how do I share data back and forth as software gets built to validate it and test it before I put it on a kit?” Garciga said. “That’s been one that we’ve been spending quite a bit of time on, because that has been truly one of the bigger challenges and one of the big rocks that we want to slay.”

Another issue the CIO pointed to is that hardware-centric platforms often integrate with several other internal and external systems, and updating that enabling software would require either physical or simulated testing to ensure interoperability.

“There’s a technical integration between two systems that software is written on,” he said. “We have to have a way to write that software fast, put it in there and still test that maneuverability piece without having to physically go on a tank and do it every single time.”

To that end, Garciga’s team has been working alongside personnel from the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology to develop a comprehensive, cloud-based test harness where different programs can validate their software. The service wants to have that platform up and running by the third quarter of 2025.

As for the service’s two ongoing pilot cATO efforts, Garciga said they’ve shown promise and that the Army is still capturing lessons learned as it moves to work with other programs. He noted that offices have come forward with a higher maturity than they initially expected, and he anticipates a continued growth of people approved for CI/CD pipelines.

“What we’re working on right now is we have about seven folks in the hopper that we’re going to walk the dog and certify their CI/CD approach,” Garciga said. “We really want to focus on having teams come and be able to explain how they have their cybersecurity people integrated into the process, and evaluate the skillset and maturity level so, as they’re developing code on these systems, we have a firm understanding that the people, process [and] technology piece is mature enough to get to what is a cATO.”

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One such capability is edge computing and cloud. Once a prominent fixture for buzzword bingo, where government and industry types opined on deploying, the service is beginning to take a slightly different view on who will need these technologies and how feasible it will be to deliver them given the speed of war in the future.

“Somebody asked me the other day about ‘we need to scale this cloud thing all the way at the tactical edge.’ I was like, ‘to do what?’ … That’s not how the Army fights,” Leonel Garciga, Army chief information officer, said Friday at AFCEA’s Northern Virginia Chapter Army IT Day. “If we’re learning anything in Ukraine is these micro things that are happening, you’re not going to be doing that in the cloud, you’re not going to be scaling all these services. I think we really need to start focusing on building that [concept of operation] of how we’ve got to fight, so it can drive the right capabilities at echelon.”

Garciga added that the Defense Department needs to understand how it’s going to fight in the future and build capabilities that are needed at echelon and at the tactical edge. That also means determining what the edge is, which will vary across theaters, units, services and agencies.

“Broader, across the department, the Navy is going to look a little different, that’s a thing. Air Force is going to look a little different. Combat support agencies [are] going to look a little different. I think at echelon, what we call ‘edge’ matters,” he said.

Using the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as an example of a combat support agency, Garciga noted that NGA’s edge is a region.

The Army has been trying to simplify its network and remove complexity from smaller units so they can be unburdened to focus on fighting rather than running the network.

Saddling them with more edge capabilities could run counter to that initiative.

“We need to be very, very, very careful in this space to not do the opposite of what we’re trying to do as an Army, which is reduce complexity at the tactical” level, Garciga said. “It’s like somebody came here, they said, ‘oh we got to do this at BCT, or we got to push this data all the way down to the platoon.’ I’m like, ‘isn’t that the opposite of where we’re going as an Army?’ We have made a conscious decision to reduce complexity, why are we bringing complexity back down?”

Other officials explained how the Army is working to define what the edge is, who needs what capabilities, and what their roles are.

“I think it depends on your role. Like maybe future ops, current ops in the brigade or in a company, if that’s their role, maybe they need edge compute. We’ve got to stop thinking of the Army as everybody has. It’s what is your role — and then you get that on-demand capability. I think that’s what we’ve got to experiment with,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for command, control, communications and network, told DefenseScoop on the sidelines of the event. “If you’re a battalion commander and you have a company of small form factor [unmanned aerial systems] that’s collecting data, they may need edge compute in order to collect and process that data — whereas the other companies may be running patrol or perimeter security, they may not necessarily need edge compute. Thinking about roles in a tactical formation may help us get to some of these decisions about edge compute and what the edge compute means operationally.”

Kitz said the Army will be experimenting with what edge compute could look like at the Project Convergence Capstone 5 event later this year. Questions officials will be seeking to answer include: what data would soldiers have access to and how is it secured it?

Those questions and answers will factor into the ongoing development of one of the service’s top initiatives, Next Generation Command and Control, a completely new approach to how the Army plans to operate on the battlefield that aims to provide commanders and units with a better path to information, data and command and control through agile and software-based architectures.

According to Kitz, as that effort rolls out, the next questions will be: what can the Army put at the platoon level or the company level and beyond, to determine at what echelons would small form factor compute look like and what transport can be taken advantage of?

Officials conducting NGC2 experimentation efforts have stated that they are defining the platoon level as the tactical edge.

“We can’t go back to the cloud for everything that we’re going to do. It won’t be available. We started thinking through all right, what are we going to need to be able to process at the tactical edge, once again, defining the platoon as that tactical edge?” Col. Mike Kaloostian, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at Army Futures Command, said at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting last month. “What can we do? What new edge compute capabilities, what low [size, weight and power], high-capacity edge compute capabilities exist so we can experiment and just learn from right now, and we can deploy those micro services to the edge? We can host and process certain data flows and data sets at the edge and see, and just ensure that we are not always going back to the cloud for everything and further driving down the latency.”

As part of the experimentation efforts, Kitz reiterated that the Army will embark upon exploring what the edge looks like, because “I don’t know that we know the answer to that.”

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Known as Project Athena, the pilot aims to evaluate the use cases and cost models of commercially available genAI tech that can be used to support the service’s back-end office work. The effort is being led by the Army’s Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga alongside the Office of Enterprise Management (OEM). The assessment is slated to end in April, after which the department hopes to create a list of capabilities that can be purchased by various service components based on their needs and mission requirements.

“We’re going to assess different tools so that we can equip Army organizations with information. What capabilities should you consider based on your use cases? What is the cost model and what do you need to know about that?” Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, said Tuesday during a roundtable with reporters.

The goal for Project Athena isn’t to choose a single generative AI platform and mandate its use across the service, but rather provide options for Army offices that detail the pros and cons of each capability — including their different features, use cases, cost models and deployment architectures, Swanson said.

Over the last year, the Army and others at the Pentagon have worked to understand how emerging genAI platforms that leverage large language models (LLMs) can be integrated into the department.

While some efforts have looked into the technology’s applicability for warfighting functions, the most immediately promising use cases are those that support daily business operations. In October, the service announced a new pilot dubbed #CalibrateAI focused on simplifying repetitive and arduous tasks, that has since been brought under Project Athena.

“We really wanted to focus on where we had this opportunity to employ capability at scale, get some of those use cases operating [and] look at some different models,” Garciga said during the roundtable. He added that Project Athena is evaluating a range of tools — from commercial-off-the-shelf software that can be deployed on existing environments to niche, integrated LLMs for existing capabilities.

Garciga noted that generative AI has been very useful in supporting the Army’s legal teams, public affairs offices and recruiting efforts. The technology has also shown promise in assessing documents related to requests for information (RFI) and sifting through the Pentagon’s vast inventory of policy documents, Swanson added.

Because funding for the genAI tools will come from individual Army organizations that choose to purchase them, a large part of Project Athena has been dedicated to informing leaders about the actual cost of implementing the capabilities — which can require additional cloud compute and storage infrastructure that might become too expensive for some offices to manage. 

“We want to make sure that we’re informing them from the standpoint of, this is really what you need to consider when you’re spending that money to make sure that we’re getting the best deal for the Army, and to make sure that we are aware of all the bills that may come with tools,” Swanson said.

Some genAI tools and platforms are already operationalized, accredited and on the network through Project Athena, according to Garciga. Once the pilot concludes in April, the Army plans to publish guidance based on lessons learned that were documented through the effort and work on what the service needs to do at the enterprise level moving forward.

“We want to throw stuff on the network and just operationalize it, but a lot of this has also been, what does this mean from an enterprise perspective? How do I hook up identities to it? How do we work on where we put the data?” Garciga said. “We could get that a little bit standardized so it makes sense.”

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The effort, dubbed #CalibrateAI, comes on the heels of other efforts — such as #DefendAI, #BreakAI and #CounterAI — that have been launched as the service pursues a 500-day implementation plan for adopting these types of technologies and overcoming some of the challenges associated with them.

“Gen AI models present unique and exciting opportunities for the Army. These models have the potential to transform mission processes by automating and executing certain tasks with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Commanders and senior leaders should encourage the use of Gen AI tools for their appropriate use cases,” Army CIO Leonel Garciga said in a directive issued to the department in June.

Generative AI systems can create new content — such as text, images, audio and video — based on the data they’ve been trained on and human prompts. ChatGPT, a popular large language model, is one prominent example.

While a lot of focus in the defense community is on how artificial intelligence could aid and enable U.S. military operations on the battlefield, officials are also keen on employing the technology for back-office functions and to handle some of the drudge work that humans have previously had to perform.

On Friday, Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, announced the launch of #CalibrateAI, which will “explore innovative applications” of the tech for Army acquisition activities.

The initiative will use a “cutting-edge” capability developed by the non-profit LMI at no cost to the Army, according to officials.

The tool, which is intended to “simplify repetitive and time-consuming tasks,” will use data analytics, machine learning and natural language processing to “deliver tailored responses that are highly relevant to specific topics, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of information retrieval and analysis,” the Army stated in a press release.

However, officials are also concerned about ensuring the security and accuracy of the Defense Department’s data and the outputs of gen AI tools.

In his June memo, Garciga noted that these technologies present unique challenges with regard to data privacy, security and control over the generated content. “Therefore, their use should be carefully evaluated and monitored,” he wrote.

The #CalibrateAI capability will be deployed in an Impact Level 5 (IL5) secure cloud environment and be able to handle controlled unclassified information (CUI) data. It includes customizable user-access controls to protect “need-to-know” info, per the release.

The Army is worried about potential hallucinations, a trend seen in other generative artificial intelligence systems that have been launched in the commercial sector. For example, large language models sometimes yield responses to user inputs that are factually inaccurate or otherwise problematic.

Recognizing these potential pitfalls, the new pilot will also focus on “identifying and calling out potential ‘hallucinations’ or erroneous outputs, thereby increasing the reliability of AI-generated content,” according to the release.

“By using off-the-shelf AI tools and leveraging cross-service authority-to-operate reciprocity granted by DoD CIO, #CalibrateAI will explore how we increase productivity while enhancing the accuracy of information,” Swanson said in a statement. “The ability to query curated document sets for generating new content, along with providing citations, will ensure that our outputs are not only accurate but also easily fact-checked.”

The broad goals of the pilot for the acquisition community include increasing productivity, improving accuracy, promoting innovation, and identifying a cost-effective route for wider adoption of the technology. According to officials, that will be achieved by using AI tools to collate, curate and generate critical information relevant to acquisition activities, implementing mechanisms to provide citations, and promoting the exploration of novel applications of artificial intelligence in acquisition.

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Speaking during a panel Wednesday at the annual AUSA conference, Army CIO Leonel Garciga said the upcoming memo — set to release in the next two weeks — will approve two continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. One will be for the Army’s Nett Warrior program of record at program executive office soldier, and a second will be for the defensive cyber operations (DCO) under PEO intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, which develops capabilities for Army Cyber Command.

“So, two different views and two different operating models, but the intent here is to get their CI/CD pipelines approved,” Garciga said, adding that around eight more programs have expressed interest in getting the green light for similar frameworks. 

The memo comes on the heels of the Army’s new focus on implementing modern software development and acquisition practices via its new software directive, published in March. Along with overarching guidance to improve the service’s approach to developing and delivering software, the directive calls on the Army to transition to continuous ATO processes. 

“One of the tasks in the software directive — besides just more generalized risk management framework and cybersecurity reform — was really like, can we get to this point to put out guidance for cATO?” Garciga said. “There hasn’t really been any guidance, right? It’s still the traditional checklist. So we’re taking the new digital process and using our great industrial-age processes to overlay on top of them. [That] doesn’t end well for most of us.”

Organizations across the Pentagon have been looking to implement continuous ATO frameworks due to a growing reliance on software-based warfighting systems. By using automated monitoring and security controls to ensure compliance, a continuous ATO grants IT systems permission to operate on a network without the need for reauthorization — an often lengthy process that can stifle modernization.

Along with the two CI/CD pipeline pilots, the upcoming memo will lay the initial foundation for the Army’s transition to cATO processes and establish requirements for accredited frameworks, Garciga said.

“The first level is identifying and saying, ‘Hey look, if you meet these requirements — whether you’re a department asset, an Army asset or even a commercial asset — if you meet these requirements, we’ll approve these platforms to be used,’” he said. “We got to make sure that they’re platforms that are safe to operate on, they got to meet the minimum requirements break.”

The goal is to work with different Army program offices and ensure they can have new code for their systems delivered securely, and in a manner that is tailored for their specific programs.

“Some programs may just not need to have a full CI/CD pipeline, and we’ve got to acknowledge that, right? So the plan is … as folks come in, we walk through what their pipeline is. And it’s not a checklist, it’s about [concept of operations],” Garciga said.

As the service works through the first two pilot efforts, the Army CIO will begin looking at how to integrate cATO processes for larger weapon systems programs, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), Garciga noted.

“Because that’s where we’re talking major dollars and major effects, right? Getting a new firing table out there in a couple of hours is a big deal. So, how do we get that? That is our next pilot effort, is working with the program over there to work on some of these problems, to have a hardware-in-the-middle approach,” he said.

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Developed by Ask Sage, the generative AI platform will be implemented onto the Army’s cloud environment known as cArmy. According to a company press release, the capability leverages Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI — a suite of artificial intelligence services that allows users to apply OpenAI models onto preexisting data. The platform will be available to users up to an Impact Level 5 environment often used for highly sensitive military information, according to the firm.

“It’s a great privilege to bring Generative AI to the cARMY cloud at IL5, where it is the most needed, and where leaders have been truly visionary in their focus on tangible, secure use cases for the technology,” Ask Sage CEO Nic Chaillan said in a statement. “The announcement is just the beginning of Generative AI’s momentum in the DoD — dozens of defense and civilian agencies are set to follow the U.S. Army’s lead and accelerate their Generative AI adoption.”

Generative AI is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses large language models to generate content based on prompts and data they are trained on. The Army’s deployment of the tool will begin with 400 new user accounts, with a goal to expand to enterprise-wide use, according to Ask Sage.

Organizations across the Defense Department continue to experiment with and adopt these types of capabilities, ranging from day-to-day to tactical operations. Recently, the Air Force launched its own experimental chatbot powered by generative AI — dubbed NIPRGPT — as a way to test the technology on the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet).

The Army’s integration of generative AI in its cloud environment comes just after the service issued a new directive in June on how the service should develop, deploy and use large language models. Signed by Army Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga, the memorandum provides guidance to military personnel and generative AI developers on how they should use the emerging technology, as well as the potential risks in doing so.

“Gen AI tools have been widely adopted due to their high performance and ease of use. However, they also present unique challenges in terms of data privacy, security, and control over the generated content. Therefore, their use should be carefully evaluated and monitored,” the directive stated.

The Army has also been improving its cloud environment and recently introduced a new version of the infrastructure in response to demand for more cloud services. Known as cArmy 2.0, the follow-on capability looks to integrate new features made possible by recent cloud modernization efforts and introduce automation and simplicity into the environment.

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The service has identified two existing Army programs that will be the first to receive cATOs, Army Chief Information Officer Leonel Garciga told DefenseScoop on Tuesday during a roundtable with reporters. The goal is to execute a four-step implementation plan over the next few months, and for the two pilots to receive cATOs by the end of the summer, he said. 

While he was unable to detail which Army programs would be part of the pilot effort, Garciga said both “are production-level systems and they are delivering to production right now. They are mature, these are not [research-and-development] programs. They’re not training, they’re not testing, these are programs that are up and running and operational today.”

Due to the growing reliance on software-based systems, organizations across the Pentagon have sought to improve the ATO process without slowing down innovation. A continuous ATO grants IT systems permission to operate without needing to be reauthorized — an often lengthy process that has been known to stifle modernization efforts — by implementing automated monitoring and security controls to ensure compliance from the early stages of development.

Much like others at the Defense Department, the Army is still at the beginning stages of reforming how it uses cATOs, Garciga said. The two pilots will be used to inform the service’s larger policy guidance on cATOs that is underway.

Overall, the Army is tracking seven programs doing DevSecOps that could be a good pool of candidates to receive a continuous ATO, Garciga said.

“I feel very confident that by the end of this year, we could potentially have up to seven programs that have certified [continuous integration and continuous deployment] pipelines,” he said.

The pilots come as the Army looks to implement modern software development and acquisition practices through its new software directive, published in March. The guidance implements a number of changes aimed at improving its approach to software, including a directive that calls on the Army to transition from the traditional ATO to a continuous ATO process.

As part of the four-step plan, the Army will first provide guidance that outlines what the accredited framework will need to look like — a document that will be out in “the next two weeks” for its first two pilot programs, Garciga said. Then, the service will provide additional guidance to the force on configuration management and release management for DevSecOps, he added.

“Once you have the first two, that builds the foundation for you to say, ‘Hey, this is what a [DevSecOps] pipeline looks like, and this is the bare minimum that you need to get it certified.’ Once that’s done and you have all that together, then we’re going to put out guidance that says, ‘This is how you get your cATO,’” Garciga explained.

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The new version of the Army’s cloud services infrastructure — dubbed cArmy 2.0 — aims to build upon the foundations of recent cloud modernization efforts and make key improvements to them, Army CIO Leonel Garciga said Tuesday during a webinar broadcasted by Federal News Network.

A new landing zone for cArmy 2.0 will be available in April, he said.

The move to the revamped environment comes after the Army took a “tactical pause” over the last couple of months to reevaluate its cloud delivery model, he noted.

“Like most traditional folks in enterprise’s big move to the cloud, we raced in some areas, we made some mistakes, we did some things that made sense at the time that don’t make as much sense now,” Garciga said. “And as new cloud services have become available in the regions across all of our [cybersecurity service providers], it’s really caused us to rethink some of the technical work that’s been done.”

As part of a larger push across the Defense Department to embrace the cloud, the Army stood up its Enterprise Cloud Management Office (ECMO) in 2019 and introduced cArmy the following year. According to the service, cArmy is a multi- and hybrid-cloud ecosystem that provides tenants with common cloud shared services in a secure ecosystem. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure currently serve as services providers for the cloud environment.

After evaluating how cArmy has performed over the last three years, the Army wants the follow-on version to offer more agility for users — especially as the department continues to experience more demand for cloud services.

Garciga said a key goal for cArmy 2.0 is to introduce automation and simplicity into the cloud architecture to improve overall delivery.

“Those core services that tenants are receiving are going to be way easier to execute moving forward, as opposed to right now where it’s a little clunky,” he said.

The Army also wants to use automation to streamline onboarding services for new customers, as well as making sure to provide as much critical information to users as soon as possible, Garciga noted.

“What does the environment look like? What do our images look like? What baseline managed services are we delivering as an Army to you, the tenant? Getting that out is hugely important,” Garciga said. “Our focus is going to be making sure that we make that available to all the folks that are coming into the environment.”

In addition, cArmy 2.0 will focus on platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud deployments — rather than infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Doing so reduces the overall delivery timeframe, he said.

Along with the new version of cArmy, Garciga also emphasized that his department is still embracing the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) as it pivots away from using the Army’s own cloud service provider reseller, known as Cloud Account Management Optimization (CAMO). At the moment, the Army has two contracts moving through the JWCC pipeline, he said.

“We continue to use this mix of [Commercial Cloud Enterprise] on the intel side and for some workloads, and definitely CAMO for unclassified workloads and our existing workloads as we really get that footprint set up in JWCC,” Garciga said.

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