The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) this week said it has awarded one-year contracts to three commercial companies that provide artificial intelligence-powered software that automates business management workflows with the goal being to enhance the Defense Department’s visibility into the lifecycle of the unit’s programs.
The companies are expected to provide a minimum viable product before the end of 2025, a DIU spokesperson said.
The values of the prototyping contracts were not disclosed, although GovSignals, who is partnered with Unstructured, said its award has a multi-million-dollar value. The New York City-based company said the award is its first in directly supporting a government agency instead of its current focus on government contractors.
GovSignals said its platform will better manage DIU’s acquisition workflows. DIU said the company’s software also speeds information sharing and adapts to evolving mission requirements.
CORAS, which is based in Northern Virginia, will develop a centralized platform to integrate financial tracking, milestones, and vendor management into one project and financial management system, DIU said.
Pryzm Dynamics will also provide a centralized platform to streamline financial, contract, and project management, report project status, and aid collaboration. The Boston-based company said its “intuitive workflows and expertise in acquisition data integration” will make DIU’s financial and program management more efficient.
“DIU needs accurate and on demand knowledge of the status of our projects to share with DoD leadership, our DoD partners, and Congress,” Jaime Fitzgibbon, DIU AI program manager, said in a statement. “The goal of this project is to transform insight gathering from manual spreadsheet drudgery into an intelligent, responsive system. By harnessing AI and large language models, we’re deploying a solution that not only accelerates the discovery of insights but also establishes accountability through automated precision.”
The contracts for the Enterprise Workflow and Reporting Platform, or eWARP, were awarded in February. At the end of the performance period, DIU could decide to move forward with one or more of the companies, or have them partner, the spokesperson said.
The Government Accountability Office said last week that the National Nuclear Security Administration and six of its management and operating contractors incorrectly reported small business contracts awarded in fiscal 2018-2022.
According to a report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) March 13, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded $1.1 billion of its $16.8 billion small business contract funds to businesses “that did not meet size standards established by the Small Business Administration.”
The report also said that, encompassing another $1.9 billion of the $16.8 billion, NNSA and the contractors could not provide information needed for GAO to determine whether the businesses met the size criteria.
Teresa Robbins, acting administrator for NNSA, concurred with GAO’s recommendations in an agency letter. Robbins said that NNSA would ensure its Small Business Program addresses root causes of errors, which Robbins said was “human input error,” by Oct. 31. She also said the program would work with prime contractors and update the procurement review system.
By Dec. 31, Robbins said NNSA expects to have a process in place to verify vendor size errors have been corrected.
The management and operating contractors the GAO studied from fiscal 2018-2022 included:
Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC, which was the joint-venture contractor for the Pantex Plant and Y-12 National Security Complex at the time.
Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies [HON], which managed and operated Kansas City National Security Campus.
Lawrence Livermore National Security, the joint-venture running Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Mission Support and Test Services, the joint-venture running Nevada National Security Site.
National Technology & Engineering Solutions Of Sandia, the joint venture running Sandia National Laboratories.
Triad National Security, the joint-venture running Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Adak Island, the site of a former Navy base closed in 1997 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, may see military reuse to aid U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific.
The Aleutian island became the site of an Army Air Corps base in August, 1942 after Pearl Harbor and the Japanese occupation of the neighboring islands of Attu and Kiska–the first foreign occupation since the War of 1812 of territory belonging to the continental U.S. The military, citing the Japanese threat, moved hundreds of native Aleutians–the Unangax–to squalid internment camps in southeast Alaska. After the war, Adak transferred to the U.S. Air Force and then the U.S. Navy before a Base Realignment and Closure round shut the Navy base there in 1997 due to the fall of the Soviet Union six years earlier.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) readiness and management support panel, has said that a reopening of the former Adak Naval Air Station and the island’s airfield would mean easier U.S. fighter intercepts of Russian bomber overflights and enhanced deterrence of Russia and China.
“When you’re intercepting strategic bombers, a lot of times our fighters are having to fly over a thousand miles just to get to the end of the ADIZ [Air Defense Identification Zone] to intercept them,” Sullivan said last month at a SASC hearing with U.S. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, the head of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM).
Alaska has Air Force F-22 and F-35 fighters by Lockheed Martin [LMT] at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and Eielson AFB, respectively.
“I would support Adak for sure for maritime and air access and…Deadhorse or a point at the far north part of Alaska, because those missions aren’t only long—a thousand miles or more with five or six or seven air re-fuelings usually at night—but also the harsh conditions, if a pilot should have to eject,” Guillot replied when Sullivan asked him at the hearing whether he supported re-opening Adak and using other locations, such as Utqiagvik in northern Alaska, to aid search and rescue. “Having those forward points…would allow us to pre-position search and rescue aircraft or be able to land there in an emergency, which are capabilities that we just don’t have right now.”
Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) criticized the Department of Government Efficiency last week, around the time DOGE began reviewing contractors to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s franchise.
According to publication Semafor, which broke the story last week, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by President Trump and led by Trump campaign donor Elon Musk, asked the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to justify contractor roles and why they should be kept in one-sentence summaries.
According to Semafor, the DOGE employees at NNSA have to categorize 1,400 support service contract employees as either to keep, to delete, or more information needed.
“Trump asked people if they felt passionately about waste and fraud and efficiency within government, and everyone gets behind that, and then they don’t notice that that’s not what they’re actually trying to fix with what they’re doing when they’re reviewing contracts and they’re firing people,” Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told sister publication TheExchange Monitor last week. “Like I said, they’re looking for who’s easiest to fire, and second, who is least loyal to the Trump agenda.”
Stansbury, ranking member of the new DOGE subcommittee in the House Committee on oversight and Government Reform, also said on the House floor last week that the only reason Trump and the GOP were voting for a continuing resolution to keep the government open until the end of the fiscal year was “so that they can get on with their ‘real agenda.’”
“And you all know what the real agenda is,” Stansbury, whose district abuts Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, said. “The real agenda is that they’re dismantling the federal government. They’re firing tens of thousands of federal workers… they are illegally impounding funds.”
In February, NNSA was thrown through a loop when DOGE employees fired, then rehired, around one-sixth of its workforce.
The New York Times also published a story Monday on the DOGE review of the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous agency in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Canada is turning to Australia for a more than $4 billion Arctic radar for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The Canadian Over-the-Horizon Radar would leverage Australia’s BAE Systems‘ Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), first conceived in 1984 and now consisting of three sites in Australia that provide high frequency, wide area surveillance of ships and aircraft out to 1,800 miles.
Jindalee is an aboriginal term for “bare hills.”
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday that the Canadian-Australian collaboration will develop “Canada’s Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar system, an investment…that will provide early warning radar coverage from threats to the Arctic.”
“A key component of Canada’s NORAD modernization plan, the radar system’s long-range surveillance and threat tracking capabilities will detect and deter threats across the North,” according to Carney’s office. “Collaboration with Australia on this critical technology will further deepen our long-standing bilateral defense relationship, while supporting Canada’s commitment to strengthening North American defenses in partnership with the United States.”
The U.S. Air Force has yet to award a system development contract for its Over-the-Horizon Radar (Defense Daily, Jan. 2).
Section 138 of the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act called for the Air Force to start buying up to six of the radars–the first two to be in the United States.
“The contract for system development has not been awarded due to delays with the military construction environmental impact studies and associated processes to secure the land required,” the Air Force said in December. “The U.S. Air Force is pursuing opportunities to provide an early operational capability consistent with the needs of North American Aerospace Defense/Northern Command [NORTHCOM] requirements. The USAF plans to update the way forward in the FY26 president’s budget.”
Last year, NORTHCOM said that it wanted such radars by 2028 to counter advanced missiles, including hypersonic ones.
NATO allies are seeking to distance themselves from the Trump White House and forge their own defense paths. For his part, Trump has said he wants Canada to be the 51st state.
“Canada is strong,” Carney said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We can stand up for ourselves. We have called out those comments. They’re disrespectful. They’re not helpful, and they will have to stop before we sit down and have a conversation about our broader partnership with the United States.”
On Tuesday, Carney’s office also said that his country “will take on a greater, sustained, and year-round Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) presence in the Arctic–an investment of nearly $420 million to protect our sovereignty across land, air, and sea.”
“With an expansion of its Northern and Arctic operations and training exercises, and the deployment of more personnel, the CAF will be better placed to defend Canada’s Arctic presence and sovereignty – while enabling greater collaboration with NATO allies,” according to Carney’s office.
Anduril Industries, and fellow U.S. startup Shield AI, on Wednesday announced separate partnerships with Singaporean defense agencies aimed at bringing autonomous solutions to the Southeast Asian island nation.
Anduril already has dealings with Singapore but for Shield AI this is a first.
Anduril said its partnership with the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) and the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) leverages the company’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy platform to explore autonomy in manned-unmanned teaming around situational awareness. The unmanned systems are within the RSAF, Anduril said.
The company and Singaporean partners will spend the next year doing simulation demonstrations to examine “collaborative autonomous behaviors” for integration into different autonomous systems.
The partnership is the first for Lattice for Mission Autonomy outside of the U.S. Lattice for Mission Autonomy is an evolution of Anduril’s Lattice operating system, which the company says enables the large-scale integration and use of autonomous systems under human supervision across the mission cycle.
Shield AI said it will work with the RSAF and DSTA to co-develop artificial intelligence for autonomous flight operations of drones. Shield AI’s Hivemind software uses AI to autonomously fly aircraft.
Shield AI said it will leverage its Hivemind Enterprise in its partnership, bringing a suite of tools that go beyond the Hivemind AI pilot to include software products for rapid development, and test and evaluation, “empowering developers to built and own their mission-ready autonomy solutions with unprecedented speed and flexibility.”
Ng Chad-Son, DSTA’s chief executive, said in a statement that “By working with Shield AI and RSAF, we want to drive AI innovation in drones, enhancing flight autonomy and overall effectiveness.” In a separate statement contained in Anduril’s announcement, Chad-Son said AI and autonomy will “complement our conventional systems.”
Both companies announced their partnerships during the Singapore Defence Technology Summit 2025.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) tactical air and land forces panel, said on Tuesday that he recently received a briefing from the U.S. Navy and Air Force on their Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter programs.
“We had a great briefing the other morning,” Wittman told reporters after his address to the McAleese & Associates‘ Defense Programs Conference in Arlington, Va. “I asked the Air Force and Navy to come in. They briefed the president last week too so I think that that capability is necessary, especially because it involves a family of systems concept, and we’re gonna have to be able to operate in some way in that highly contested environment.”
A Trump administration decision is nigh on the military services’ NGAD programs, as DoD finalizes its fiscal 2026 budget request (Defense Daily, Feb. 25). The Navy has called its NGAD effort to replace the service’s Boeing [BA] F/A-18 Super Hornets and Growlers F/A-XX, while the Air Force is looking to replace its Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-22s.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman [NOC] have been competing for F/A-XX, and the Air Force’s field includes the first two companies after Northrop Grumman’s exit in 2023.
The Air Force has wanted to field a mix of manned NGAD sixth generation fighters and unmanned, autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), as part of the NGAD program, but an all autonomous fighter fleet looks to be a technological bridge too far, at least in the near term, and a bridge that the service may not want to cross due to tradition and to the argued benefits of manned platforms when “analog” knife fights become necessary.
The Air Force paused a decision on manned NGAD last year to leave to the incoming Trump team, and former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said a week before the Biden administration left office that manned NGAD would require more than $20 billion extra in research and development funding (Defense Daily, Jan. 13). Kendall also had said his goal was to reduce the estimated unit cost of manned NGAD to that of a Lockheed Martin F-35–a more than $150 million unit cost reduction that the Air Force viewed as a budget exercise and one that is not feasible, though the service continues to examine how to reduce manned NGAD life cycle costs, including for low-observable maintenance.
“My concern has always been this [NGAD] capability is going to occur years and years out in the future,” Wittman said on Tuesday. “I would argue we don’t have the luxury of time. How do we field that capability quickly? These are pretty exquisite systems, but there are also parts of that family of systems, like CCAs, that we can move to the left, and that does even more to enable F-35. F-35 [is] getting up to speed, not as fast as we would like, but it’s gonna get there. We see with a lot of the studies that if you combine an F-35 with modernized capabilities–with a Distributed Aperture System [DAS], with an APG-85 radar–if you combine that with a CCA, all of a sudden that’s a pretty formidable platform in the Indo-Pacific.”
Wittman said last September that it has taken an average of 78 days to test the Northrop Grumman APG-85 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar, which is to replace the F-35’s APG-81, also by Northrop Grumman, and that he has met monthly with Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, to discuss the fighter, including reducing the radar testing time (DefenseDaily, Sept. 4, 2024).
Northrop Grumman also has built the AAQ-37 DAS to provide missile warning and situational awareness to F-35 pilots.
In June, 2018, Lockheed Martin chose Raytheon, now part of RTX [RTX], to build the Electro-Optical DAS, the follow-on to the AAQ-37. Lockheed Martin builds the F-35’s AN/AAQ-40 Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS).
The vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday he believes the final defense topline for an eventual budget reconciliation bill will “end up somewhere north” of $100 billion.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) told reporters he thinks the defense figure will likely fall between the House’s current proposal for $100 billion and the Senate’s for $150 billion, noting he’s argued that a higher topline may be required to offset impacts from the full-year continuing resolution (CR).
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) (center) of Virginia shakes the hand of Brig. Gen. Forrest Poole (right) on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Sept. 10, 2021 (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Scott Jenkins)
“There is a cost of where we’re going right now with what is not being funded under this CR. So if we’re going to catch up in this strategic competition [with China], I think it does create a very cogent argument as to why the number needs to be north of the House number and probably closer to the Senate number. And I think you can make a pretty compelling argument for that,” Wittman said following his remarks at the McAleese Conference in Arlington, Virginia.
President Trump signed the CR on Saturday to avoid a shutdown and keep the government open through the end of September, with the stopgap funding measure having narrowly passed the House last Tuesday with a 217-213 party line vote before the Senate approved the legislation by a 54-46 vote on Friday.
The CR includes a slight boost to defense spending, contains a provision allowing the Pentagon to initiate new start programs and adds $1.5 billion to support the Navy building a potential third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG), while the measure otherwise largely locks in funding at FY ‘24 levels (Defense Daily, March 12).
The House and Senate have both approved separate budget resolutions that set a blueprint for passing Trump administration priorities via the reconciliation process.
The Senate’s version supports a two-step approach to reconciliation that would start with a defense-border security-energy bill, to include $150 billion defense, before taking on a second measure focused on tax and spending cuts (Defense Daily, Feb. 21).
Trump, however, has endorsed the House’s proposal which takes a one-bill, all-encompassing approach that supports $300 billion in total new spending related to defense and border security priorities and includes a $4 trillion debt limit increase and an extension of the 2017 tax cuts instituted by the first Trump term (Defense Daily, Feb. 19).
“It’s really going to revolve around how do you get the two budget resolutions resolved. And those numbers are $100 and 150 [million]. So if I had to guess, I’d say negotiations would probably take place somewhere along those guardrails,” Wittman told reporters.
The reconciliation process would allow the Senate, when the bill gets there, to pass billions of dollars in budget-related Trump administration priorities without requiring the 60-vote threshold needed to break the filibuster, while the House will require a near-unified GOP caucus to support the measure facing likely unanimous Democratic opposition.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters last week that a minimum of $175 billion for defense could be required in the reconciliation bill to mitigate CR impacts (Defense Daily, March 12).
“I understand [Wicker’s] issues there to try to push the issue to get to the higher [number], but it’s all part of the ongoing conversations. We won’t know with any sort of certainty until the differences between the two budget resolutions get worked out,” Wittman told reporters.
The House and Senate’s competing budget resolutions both don’t provide a specific breakdown of how the additional funds should be spent over the four years covered by the pending reconciliation bill, tasking committees to determine how the spending would be authorized.
“The challenge for us is how do we make sure we properly allocate that. I want to assure that when those dollars get operationalized that we prioritize those systems, those capabilities, those capacities that can get to the warfighter the fastest. I’d like to push more resources down to the [combatant commands], more resources down to the operational commands,” Wittman said during his remarks.
Wittman, who chairs the HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, earlier this month discussed the idea of pushing more acquisition authority to the COCOMs and said their unfunded requirements lists highlight where “the threat” is “most immediately identified,” rather than in the longer-term budget planning documents compiled by the services (Defense Daily, March 5).
As HASC takes up looking at how to allocate the defense money in the reconciliation bill, Wittman said he would focus on how to address capability gaps rather than directing it to specific programs.
“Where are the things that we need to close gaps quickly and make sure that we get money to those places,” Wittman said in his remarks. “I want to make sure too that it’s not all about big programs. Obviously, we need to be building submarines, ramping those things up. But it’s also about getting those dollars out there for these attritable, expandable systems.”
Nearly 21,000 Defense Department personnel have opted to voluntarily resign from the civilian workforce and about 6,000 slots open each month are not being filled due to a hiring freeze in effect, senior DoD officials said on Tuesday.
DoD is targeting a 5 to 8 percent reduction in its civilian workforce to save funds that can be applied to mission critical priorities (Defense Daily, Feb. 21).
The “vast majority” of employees that applied for the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) were approved, the officials said on background during a virtual media roundtable. Those employees are on paid leave and will be rolling off the DoD payroll in the last quarter of 2025, they said.
The DRP, also called the “Fork in the Road” initiative, was rolled out by the Trump administration on Jan. 28 and gave federal employees about two weeks to decide whether to resign and still receive full pay and benefits through the rest of the fiscal year or risk being let go as part of job cuts aimed in part at reducing government spending.
The officials said the DoD personnel team worked with the armed services to ensure resignations could be accepted “without negatively impacting the department’s lethality and readiness.”
DoD in February also announced plans to eliminate 5,400 probationary employees, which are personnel typically on the job less than two years. However, a lawsuit filed by the federal employee union AFGE led a federal district court judge to rehire terminated employees at six departments, including DoD. The senior DoD referred questions about the status of the rehiring to the Justice Department, citing ongoing litigation.
Last week a senior Space Force official, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, warned that cutting the DoD civilian workforce will challenge his service’s acquisition offices because they rely heavily on civilians (Defense Daily, March 12). Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, also said there are opportunities for offering early retirements rather than eliminating new hires.
Achieving a 5 to 8 percent reduction in civilian personnel at DoD means eliminating between 50,000 and 60,000 jobs, the officials said.
“So, the number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage,” one official said. “Five to 8 percent reduction is not a drastic one, its one the secretary [of defense] is confident can be done without negatively impacting readiness in order to make sure that our resources are allocated in the right direction.”
The officials did not provide an estimate of the money saved, or expected to be saved, through the workforce reductions.
The House Armed Services Committee will emphasize acquisition reform in its work crafting the next defense policy bill, the panel’s vice chair said Tuesday.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said HASC will specifically look to focus on including policies in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to help get after rapidly fielding innovative technologies, to include those from the Defense Innovative Unit and Office of Strategic Capital pipeline.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) speaks with Culinary Specialist 1st Class Naomi Jackson, assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford‘s (CVN 78) supply department, during a tour of the ship. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Connor D. Loessin)
“We want to make sure we’re doing more to enable places like the Defense Innovation Unit, to get dollars and resources quicker to the [combatant commands]. That’s really where the rubber hits the road. And we want to find different ways to do that. We want to make sure we compress the acquisition cycle,” Wittman said during remarks at the McAleese Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We want to make sure, too, that as technology and innovation comes to the surface, we want to encourage our small companies to be part of the defense industrial base enterprise.”
Wittman, chair of the HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, said both DIU and OSC have shown success in identifying non-traditional firms working on promising technologies, while adding investments need to be increased to deliver that innovation at scale.
“I’m not wed to a particular concept or the other. What I am wed to is we have to make much larger investments to get this innovative technology into the hands of the warfighter,” Wittman told reporters following his remarks.
As HASC continues working toward marking up its version of the FY ‘26 NDAA, Wittman offered a preview of potential acquisition reforms that could be proposed in the months ahead.
“I think we’re going to operationalize, to a greater extent, dollars getting in a faster way down to the operational level,” Wittman said. “Our challenge in acquisition reform is going to be how do we make sure we get technology, we get the ability to close the gap with the Chinese, in a much faster way into the hands of the warfighter.”
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the HASC chair, has previously said the panel is planning to hold hearings on DoD acquisition reform to get after fielding innovation faster to inform its NDAA work (Defense Daily, Jan. 15).
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has previously detailed his own wide-ranging proposal for improving the Pentagon’s acquisition process, to include “aggressively” cutting regulations, reducing reliance on cost-plus contracts and implementing budgeting reform (Defense Daily, Jan. 6).
