Two programs suggest the Pentagon is getting better at buying technology

Two new reports suggest that the Pentagon may have finally learned how to buy technology at lower cost quickly, at least when it comes to AI-driven capabilities.

One report looks at the Maven Smart System, or MSS, part of Maven, a system for rapidly analyzing and sharing intelligence. Palantir currently has the prime contract and is looking to expand the number of users from hundreds to thousands. But the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, working with as many as 70 companies in a DevSecOps environment, played a key role in developing the system through a series of exercises called Scarlet Dragon. Emelia Probasco, a Senior Fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, describes how MSS works in a report out this week. 

“It can access sensor data from diverse sources, apply computer vision algorithms to help soldiers identify and choose military targets, and then provide workflow support that enables a request to be approved by the chain of command in order to strike a target. It can also serve as a repository where battle damage assessments can be stored, as well as provide a map of the location of friendly forces and targets,” the report states. 

Without this software, the Army elements that coordinate service and joint fires—do not have easy access to sensor and image data from commercial and military satellites, something service officials have long sought. 

Probasco argues this was an important organizational feat, more than a technical one. MSS had senior leaders who championed the program, a mature technology, and direct access to developers and testers. And perhaps most importantly, officials used flexible approaches to risk-management and funding. But the key ingredient was the involvement of leaders who understood three things: the power of artificial intelligence, the needs of the United States military, and the bureaucratic ins and outs of contracts—particularly the sorts of contracts that tech companies need, as opposed to the ones the Defense Department prefers. 

“Pentagon leaders have hailed the importance of ‘dual-lingual’ leaders who understand emerging technologies and the military to help bridge the gap between technical opportunities and operational needs,” the report says. “Our case study highlighted a third ‘language’ that was critical to the successful development of Scarlet Dragon: contracting and acquisition.”

A second report published last week by CSIS highlights the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program—essentially an armed drone battle-buddy for fighter jets—as a potential way forward for future aircraft procurement. The Pentagon has requested $8.9 billion in funding for the program over the next five years, “a massive increase over what the DOD was previously spending on the precursor efforts to CCA,” Greg Allen writes in the recent report, co-written with Isaac Goldston. By making CCA a program of record so early, the Defense Department was able to avoid years of delays and possible cancellations. 

In this effort, the Air Force also changed how it approaches acquisition, by ditching “requirements were written so narrowly as to limit innovative proposals from industry, and that competition was closed off too early in the program life cycle to keep pushing industry aggressively forward,” they write. 

More importantly, the Air Force took a counter-intuitive approach to hardware and software development: building them separately, so companies that are good at aerospace design could participate in building the plane, and companies with AI and autonomy tech could build the software.

“In the past, major acquisition programs run by hardware-first defense contractors have frequently been delayed due to software challenges,” they write. “Separating the acquisition for hardware and software has several benefits for the government…It allows the national security customer to pursue the most compelling options in both aspects of the program. Were this not the case, the government might pick a suboptimal software provider because it found the hardware offering especially compelling—or vice versa.”

The CCA program is structured so more entrants can participate as time goes on, rather than just one contractor carrying a huge incumbent advantage. The program has a “focus on preserving continuous competition and opportunities for new entrants. While Anduril and General Atomics were selected to move forward with government funding and support, companies that lost this most recent phase of competition will still be eligible to compete for the upcoming production contract.”

Still, the plans to field only about 100 CCAs before 2029 shows that the Pentagon still has serious work to do if it is to increase production of new weapons and lower the costs.

“The United States’ edge over China in commercial manufacturing is—like the military domain—strongest in producing low numbers of expensive exquisite systems, like the ultra-precise machines that power semiconductor factories around the world,” Allen and Goldston write. “The CCA program and others like it, such as the Replicator initiative, show that the DOD is trying to change and maintain its competitiveness in a new military technology equilibrium where mass once again matters.”