The command’s research-and-development budget proposal includes $117.2 million under a portfolio called “Data and Sensors.” In last year’s budget release, the command anticipated spending just $20.8 million in FY26 in the future years defense program for that same portfolio. The fiscal 2025 request for the portfolio was $21 million.

According to budget justification documents, the increased funding would go toward cyber mission monitoring capabilities for the Department of Defense Information Network and expand operational technology asset installation at other Indo-Pacom defense critical infrastructure networks and systems. Moreover, the budget activity continues whole-of-government collaboration and coordination for sensor deployment, data sharing and lessons learned, and includes an expanded submarine cable landing monitoring capability, sensor placement in key networks and maintenance of automated alert capabilities to operators.

The documents also note that beginning in fiscal 2024 the DOD added funds within the portfolio for Indo-Pacom’s regional component of the National Defense Strategy to maintain and restore a comparative military advantage. Cybercom added resources and manpower to support the maturation and fielding of monitoring capabilities to hunt and trap adversaries across the DODIN’s priority edge devices and procure new hardware.

The portfolio’s enhanced sensing efforts are part of the larger Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a key effort to provide funding carveouts for Indo-Pacom to bolster its posture relative to China, and expand low-level network sensing and defense for key networks in the region, the documents state.

More specifically, the enhanced sensing investments in Cybercom’s budget request portfolio include support for specialized Indo-Pacom Low-Level Network Sensing and Defense capability, data feed, analytic resources and increased efforts to discover and characterize adversary networks — all of which are necessary to maintain or restore comparative military advantage and reduce risk of contingency plans in support of U.S. national security interests, according to the documents.

The investments have already supported the transition of existing DOD projects to Cybercom and expansion of new sensing and data analytic tools to strengthen the cyberspace defensive posture of Indo-Pacom networks, with a specific focus on defense critical infrastructure in Guam.

The budget touts examples of this, including the employment of over 3,000 operational technology assets that resulted in a 52 percent reduction in malicious and anomalous behavior in the environment and a 32 percent decrease in known vulnerabilities to key assets such as firewalls, switches and routers, to achieve 76 percent adherence to MOSAICS frameworks in industrial control systems.

Cybercom’s cyber protection teams — defensive teams focused on hunting adversaries within the network — performed 31 threat-hunting missions and investigated 58 additional artifacts across multiple networks, informed by the investments made in the portfolio. Those teams worked with local defenders within Indo-Pacom to bolster their tactics, techniques and procedures.

The command noted that that the work established real-time insight into the submarine cable landing in Guam to effectively monitor network traffic transiting to and from the island, including automated alert and visual interface tools for operators.

The scope is also different from the previous budget request, in which Cybercom articulated that most of the portfolio spending would go towards deployable sensors and the “fly away” kits that the command’s cyber protection teams use. Those teams sometimes deploy to sites locally that incur breaches — hence the need for specialized kits.

The funding for 2025, according to previous budget documents, was partially planned to go towards downselecting awardees for Joint Cyber Hunt Kits, standardized fly-away kits for both cyber protection teams and hunt-forward missions that involve physically sending teams to foreign countries to hunt for threats on their networks at the invitation of host nations.

Cybercom’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal moved funding for the Joint Cyber Hunt Kits to the procurement portion. A prototype effort was slated to be completed in June 2025, and a review of the capability was expected completed by August 2025 with a production award scheduled for FY26, the documents state.

In DOD parlance, China is the pacing threat. It has become more brazen in intrusions and probes into U.S. and defense networks, particularly in maritime or port environments to potentially limit an American military mobilization response if Chinese leaders decide to invade Taiwan.

Guam, a key U.S. military outpost, has been a top target for Beijing in recent years. Chinese hackers targeted critical infrastructure there, burrowing deep inside a couple of years ago and startling experts who referred to it as one of the largest cyber espionage campaigns against America.  

The group that conducted the operation has been referred to as Volt Typhoon, one of a number of cyber players from China that have been discovered in U.S. networks, troubling American officials. Volt Typhoon was discovered inside U.S. critical infrastructure using a technique in the cybersecurity world called “living off the land,” which means it’s using legitimate tools organic to the systems for malicious purposes.

What has particularly alarmed officials regarding Volt Typhoon is the paradigm shift of Chinese threats moving from espionage and intellectual property theft to holding critical infrastructure at risk.

In fiscal 2026, Cybercom plans to field hardware security capabilities and support sustainment of existing capabilities installed in fiscal 2024 and 2025, according the budget documents. It will also seek to implement improved or additional tools and tradecraft to keep pace with the dynamic and evolving threat landscape.

The 2026 funding request aims to complete full asset inventory to operational technology assets on Guam defense critical infrastructure for comprehensive and enduring monitoring to reduce malicious activity, address known vulnerabilities and ensure adherence to MOSAICS framework for industrial control systems, the documents state.

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“This progress moves us closer to bi-directional, real-time data flow between the tactical edge and operational and strategic decision-makers,” CDAO officials wrote.

In response to questions about the document’s contents, a defense official confirmed on Wednesday that the office, in partnership with the joint force, recently closed out the thirteenth iteration of its Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE) series, which unfolded in conjunction with the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 5 (PC-C5) event.

GIDE is rooted in the Defense Department’s aims to get new technologies and equipment into the hands of warfighters for iterative testing and refinement through distributed, digital experiments, sprints and military service-led exercises like PC-C5.

Early versions of the GIDE series launched in 2020 and were facilitated by U.S. Northern Command. But in 2022, Pentagon leadership under the Biden administration tasked the CDAO with revamping the effort to strategically enable capabilities that could help realize the U.S. military’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control warfighting construct. 

Since then, GIDE experiments have generally run approximately every 90 days.

In the CDAO document summarizing multiple takeaways from GIDE 13, officials wrote that PC-C5 “served as the first major exercise venue to demonstrate” the EDM line of effort, which the office awarded a production other transaction agreement for in fall 2024.

“EDM is a government-owned technology stack that enables tactical-level data distribution in disadvantaged, disconnected, intermittent and limited — or DDIL — communications environments through a resilient nodal architecture,” they wrote.

A defense official told DefenseScoop that the CDAO is deploying EDM nodes to tactical users and other key locations to ultimately assess the fusion of operational and tactical data and C2 capabilities.

In the EDM context, nodes essentially refer to physical points within the network that are typically near end users or information sources, where data is captured, processed, or stored. This allows for distributed, decentralized data transmission that could underpin future edge computing missions.

“Edge Data Mesh enables data integration and exchange across multiple networks and data formats, including in denied and degraded communications environments,” the defense official said.

“Core to this effort is the commitment to interoperability using Open DAGIR principles and deployed architectures. The government-owned software development kit allows rapid integration of mature and emerging systems and applications with the EDM architecture,” they added. 

Project Convergence is an Army-led experimentation venue that enables personnel from across the U.S. military services and key allies to train together and collaboratively work out various concepts for integration. Army officials have been transparent about their aims to see new capabilities stay with commands for continued use after Capstone 5. 

In the CDAO document, officials stated that the “Scenario B” portion of PC-C5 provided participants with “a critical opportunity to test and develop EDM interoperability with other mission command platforms in field conditions — which remained behind following the exercise’s completion and will continue to provide resilient tactical data transport in the [area of responsibility].”

Activities associated with that scenario were conducted in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. They involved tech experiments with all of the service components at the combatant command level.

“We continue to demonstrate that one of the most effective ways to advance modern [command and control, or C2] capability is to exercise and experiment how we fight — on live networks, with live data, with daily users — and leaving behind capability after every exercise,” CDAO officials wrote.

Some of the other “wins” from GIDE 13 listed in the document include demonstrating the integration of third-party software into DOD’s data infrastructure, and integrating multiple third-party generative AI capabilities into existing operational contexts. 

“This significantly accelerates warfighters’ ability to process complex information, especially across maneuver, intelligence, fires, and logistics workflows, shortening decision-loops and ensuring we achieve decision advantage,” the document states.

The defense official did not answer DefenseScoop’s questions regarding the makers and use cases of those genAI assets that were tested in the GIDE 13 and PC-C5 experiments last month.

“GIDE events have incorporated GenAI capabilities supporting a variety of workflows. These capabilities are a subset of GIDE’s mission command software suite, supporting [combatant commands] outside GIDE experimentation, so operators can continue to refine how they use them without waiting for the next experiment,” the defense official said.

They confirmed that GIDE 14 will take place during the upcoming iteration of Pacific Sentry and “Joint Exercise SoCal in Indo-Pacom.”

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Pending accreditation, the chatbot will be deployed to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and allow users to experiment with genAI models on the Secure Internet Protocol Router (SIPRNet), Jeff Marshall, director of DISA’s Hosting and Compute Center, said during a webinar broadcast Tuesday by Federal News Network. The platform is currently in the accreditation stage and is expected to open up “within the next month or so,” Marshall noted.

The capability was developed in close collaboration with the Air Force Research Lab, which launched its own experimental generative AI chatbot for the Department of the Air Force on unclassified networks — dubbed NIPRGPT — last year. Similar to AFRL’s program, AFRL and DISA are using the effort to evaluate and expedite delivery of commercial AI tools, but the agency’s initiative will be in classified realms, Marshall said.

“We’re not trying to deploy this on our own. We’re not trying to make it a production system. This is [a research-and-development] system that we’re using for Indo-Pacom in order to test large language models overseas,” he said.

Across the Pentagon, organizations have looked to capitalize on commercial large language models and other artificial intelligence capabilities. Although there have been various efforts over the last few years — ranging from task forces to experimental platforms — the department is still learning how the technology can be best used to improve back-office and tactical operations.

Marshall noted that DISA’s SIPR-based LLM will largely help “facilitate that demand signal of, what does an Indo-Pacom commander need and want to utilize AI for? And then, how do we then shape that to what industry can actually provide for us at scale?”

DISA plans to host the chatbot on one of the two Joint Operational Edge (JOE) cloud environments it has deployed to the Pacific. Initiated in 2023, the JOE cloud effort seeks to stand up commercial cloud environments at the agency’s overseas data centers, allowing DISA to place cloud-native applications in locations outside of the continental United States. Along with JOE, the agency is also providing its private cloud capability known as Stratus to areas overseas.

To date, DISA has put two JOE cloud nodes at Indo-Pacom and one at U.S. European Command, and will soon deploy another node in Southwest Asia, Marshall said.

Moving forward, DISA is looking to potentially provide additional JOE cloud environments in Europe in order to support operations for U.S. Africa Command, which is headquartered in Germany. But Marshall emphasized the agency is doing so while balancing demand signals with available resources.

“Let’s don’t just throw it all out there one time and hope that it sticks to the wall,” he said. “We’re taking in the demand signal, we’re making sure that there is a valid need that supports us doing the deployment and then, of course, there’s a budget to cover it.”

Updated on March 26, 2025, at 10:35 AM: This story has been updated to clarify AFRL’s role in the new chatbot initiative and to remove “acting” from Jeff Marshall’s job title.

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Project Convergence Capstone 5, hosted by the Army, is an experimentation venue for all the U.S. military services and key allies to train alongside each other and test concepts for integration. This is in line with one of the Pentagon’s top priorities called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. The word “combined” in the parlance of CJADC2, refers to bringing foreign partners into the mix.

This year’s event will expand upon previous iterations, taking place in two scenarios: one in March at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, focused on enabling operations at the corps and below level along with joint and international partners, and the other in April along with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to exercise at the combatant command level with all service components.

The Indo-Pacific portion will be much more expansive than what the military did as part of last year’s Project Convergence capstone event.

“Last year, I said we had fake Guam, we had a simulation built that we had something we were defending and all the things that went along with it. This year, we’re taking all that stuff we did in tents at Camp Pendleton [in California] and we’re going to the Pacific. We’ll be operating out of Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Japan and Australia,” Brig. Gen. Zachary Miller, commander of Joint Modernization Command, said in an interview. “We’ll be doing the same type of things, but it’ll be at actual operational distances across the International Date Line, using the actual live networks. We’ll have all the live intelligence data, plus the simulation wrap that we put on it to do all the key activities, defense of Guam, offensive and defensive activities, etc.”

Miller said the Pacific portion is focused on transitioning from crisis to conflict — using a familiar real-world scenario of defending of U.S. and coalition territory, a nod to China’s ambitions to take Taiwan — involving theater-level offensive activity, such as strikes on maritime targets and land targets, while forces are continuing to try to gain intelligence and information about the enemy and defend themselves from adversary volleys.

At Fort Irwin, the exercise will be focused on more tactical operations that go beyond the day-one portion of conflict at the theater level once land, air, sea and special ops forces are introduced. This could be a Pacific or European scenario, Miller noted, as the technology the military is testing will be agnostic to theater.

As part of the exercise, there will be what Miller described as “leave behind” capabilities.

“When we’re done with this … everything from cross-combatant command coordination to target effector pairing at lower echelons, they will have capabilities they will keep that they will be able to fight with on the Indo-Pacom warfighting network. That’s a big deal,” Miller said.

Those leave-behind capabilities fall into two broad categories. The first is related to the minimum viable CJADC2 product that deals with cross-combatant command coordination and collaboration. This is focused on how forces make rapid decisions and understand resources across all the combatant commands in conjunction with the Joint Staff and senior policymakers in the nation’s capital.

This coordination across combat commands is another key difference in this year’s Project Convergence. It’s not just Indo-Pacom, but there will be a total of six combatant commands that are at some point touching the exercise. Officials recognize that a war in one combatant command’s area of responsibility will likely have global implications.

Those collaboration tools span around six or seven workflows, Miller said, which include the Maven Smart System as well as asset visibility and intelligence. There are also machine learning models that are built-in to help provide coordination and situational awareness across the various geographic regions.

The capability provides “the connective tissue so that we don’t have, when something happens, four different combatant commands producing PowerPoint presentations about what their recommendations are, that then the Joint Staff or somebody else has to somehow try to put together,” Miller said. “That’s a time-consuming process and the information gets stale in a hurry.”

The second set of capabilities is focused on the ability to conduct offensive actions from across all the services and coalition partners using any sensor available.

Most importantly, this capability is looking at how to strike heavily protected formations and targets.

“We have to understand, again, what are the totality of the effects we need? Some of it is we need this types of missiles or we this types of subsurface things,” Miller said. “Another part of it is things like how do we bring an enemy out of [emissions control] so we can make sure we know where they are for sure, [and] how we fuse different forms of intelligence rapidly.”

Officials are using the actual maritime strike concept from Indo-Pacom for the scenario.

Army objectives

When it comes to testing out Army-specific objectives for Project Convergence, Miller said the entire basis for the event is built around the forthcoming Army warfighting concept. The event will be based on a much more coherent scenario for how senior leaders think the Army will fight in the 2030 to 2040 timeframe.

Miller outlined four primary warfighting notions they’ll seek to explore during Capstone 5. The first is expanded maneuver aimed at how the joint force is thinking about time and space in all domains. Second is cross-domain fires, involving how to shoot and create effects across all domains of warfare. Third is formation-based layered protection, which is the idea of how to protect units in all domains, such as the electromagnetic spectrum, dispersion of command posts and countering unmanned aerial systems. Last is command and control and counter-C2, or preventing the adversary from being able to command their forces.

To test this out, the Army is looking at a battlefield framework that goes from corps all the way down to the platoon level.

The initiative will provide a unique opportunity to test an operational concept at the corps level in ways the Army typically hasn’t before.

Corps exercises are traditionally done at the command post level and are simulated. However, Project Convergence is providing a holistic training opportunity at all echelons similar to a combat training center rotation. Those events are typically focused on brigades and are the most realistic combat scenarios the Army can create for units to train. Project Convergence will essentially be a combat training center rotation for corps and below as opposed to last year’s event, which saw independent pockets of experimentation — such as medical — separate from other operations.

The Army will also be looking at how to do maneuver in a multi-dimensional aspect, to include within the electromagnetic spectrum.

While the Army can’t replicate all these dimensions and capabilities at the National Training Center, it has built a robust simulation environment intended to overwhelm participants with what they might expect during large-scale combat against a sophisticated nation-state adversary.

“If you’re in a command post, what you’re going to have in front of you is a very, very detailed, hectic, confusing picture of what is going on in the air and on the ground for any friendly and enemy UAS systems. Everybody’s trying to jam everybody else. One-way attack munitions. All the same time we’re trying to fire rockets and cannons through that space. We’re trying to fly manned [and] unmanned rotary-wing aircraft. We’re trying to resupply. All of the stuff that has to happen to do an operation,” Miller said. “How we think about planning and operating in that space is huge. We have technologies that are brought in to help us make sense of all that. We’re very focused on making sure commanders and staffs understand what they look like in the electromagnetic spectrum and what their vulnerabilities are [and] at the same time what the enemy’s vulnerabilities are. That’s a big focus.”

They’ll also be focusing on robotics and human-robot formations, particularly for breaching, to ensure human soldiers aren’t the first forces in contact with the adversary.

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DIU — a Silicon Valley-headquartered organization which has embedded personnel at Indo-Pacom and Eucom to help tackle some of the combatant commands’ tech-related challenges.

On Wednesday, DIU announced that Scale AI was awarded a prototype contract for the new Thunderforge capability, which will include the company’s agentic applications, Anduril’s Lattice software platform and Microsoft’s large language model technology.

“The Thunderforge technology solution will provide AI-assisted planning capabilities, decision support tools, and automated workflows, enabling military planners to navigate evolving operational environments. By leveraging advanced large language models (LLMs), AI-driven simulations, and interactive agent-based wargaming, Thunderforge will enhance how the U.S. military prepares for and executes operations,” the unit said in a release.

DIU issued a solicitation for the program last year via its commercial solutions opening contracting mechanism.

“The joint planning process is complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Planners and other staff members must synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources, consider multiple courses of action (COA), and produce detailed operational plans and orders – often under significant time pressure. As the operational environment becomes more complex and dynamic, there is a need to accelerate and enhance joint planning capabilities while maintaining rigor and human judgment,” the document stated.

In a statement Wednesday, Bryce Goodman, Thunderforge program lead and contractor with DIU, noted that current military planning processes rely on decades-old technology and methodologies.

The U.S. military wants new tech that can quickly ingest, process and summarize large volumes of information relevant to military planning; identify key insights, patterns and relationships; produce draft operations plans, concept plans and operations orders; and perform automated wargaming of courses of action and provide comparative analysis of advantages, disadvantages and risks.

“Our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense. Working together with DIU, Combatant Commands, and our industry partners, we will lead the Joint Force in integrating AI into operational decision-making. DIU’s enhanced speed will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage,” Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang said in a statement.

According to DIU, initial deployments of the system to Indo-Pacom and Eucom are expected to support “mission-critical” planning activities such as campaign development, theater-wide resource allocation and strategic assessment.

If the tech meets expectations, plans call for scaling the Thunderforge capability across the U.S. military’s combatant commands in the future.

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“Our cooperation continues to grow. That means deepened information-sharing, combined maritime activities, joint training and capacity building. And we can do even more in the future,” Austin told American and Philippine reporters in a press briefing.

This marked Austin’s second stop in the Philippines during his fourth trip to the island nation — the most any U.S. defense secretary has made to that country to date. At the press briefing, Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro said Austin requested to pay a personal visit to WESCOM on this stopover.

On the ground at the headquarters, his team toured the C2 Fusion Center and observed in-development drone and interoperability technologies that the two militaries are jointly refining. That center is one of several built by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in the Philippines to enhance information-sharing and collaboration.

“I just watched the Philippine Navy demonstrate the capabilities of a T-12 unmanned surface vessel. The T-12 is one of several unmanned capabilities funded and delivered this year through U.S. security assistance,” Austin said.

On the sidelines of that event, U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Logan Hampton briefed DefenseScoop on some of the intricacies of that platform.

“It’s made by Martac, which is a U.S. company, and it’s called the Mantas. It’s a 12-foot unmanned surface vessel. It has redundant comm pathways for over-the-horizon and local — so, line of sight. Then it has autonomous avoidance, and then it has a clear camera for a [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or ISR] payload,” Hampton said.

The drones are primarily deployed to help increase the military forces’ maritime domain awareness. They operate as a sort of littoral monitoring station that can be sent out and then feed back data and imagery to inform commanders about operations and incursions at sea.

When equipped with all the add-on assets and packages available, according to Hampton, the USVs can reach a range of about 30 nautical miles.

“So this unit is a developmental unit. They have four of those — two of them in ISR configuration, two in a sonar configuration. One of them is actually on the water in Oyster Bay here that’s conducting surveys now. And they have a larger vessel — that’s a T-38 — that’s a 38-footer that it’s in [Subic Bay right now], and it’s being controlled by these two operators here. So, both boats that are on the water right now are being controlled by Phil Navy personnel [who are] USV operators,” the staff sergeant told DefenseScoop.

Notably, the USVs are enabled partially via Starlink capabilities powered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites, which Hampton called “a force multiplier.”

“It makes everything easier — very plug-and-play. You can see there’s a mini Starlink right there that’s powering them right now, for the internet … as they’re controlling from afar. And then there is a maritime Starlink on each of the vessels and this Fusion Center being ran by Starlink. So, it’s pretty useful,” Hampton said.

In Hampton’s view, this work is a strong example of how the U.S. and Philippine militaries are facilitating pathways to strengthen inoperability in real-world missions.

“We’re doing AAR — or after-action reviews — and we’re just, together, on the Philippines and U.S. side, just trying to develop this as quick as possible,” he said.

Hampton expected to be stationed in Palawan and working in this capacity until sometime in the first quarter of 2025. However, he emphasized that — while this is all unfolding in partnership with American forces — these are strictly the Philippines’ capabilities.

“We don’t control them. We are partners, and we help them with enhanced cooperability and integration. But this is theirs. So, I can’t tell them, like, ‘Hey, go do this. Go do that.’ It’s all about building relationships and working by, with and through the partners. And it’s their show. We’re just here to support,” Hampton said.

Later, at the press briefing, Austin confirmed that “many more platforms like this” will likely be delivered to the Philippines in the near term — particularly through the $500 million in foreign military financing he announced during his last visit to the nation.

The military allies are currently puzzling out the platforms and capabilities the U.S. will supply — but officials suggested an early focus will be on cyber and asymmetric capabilities.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to help [Teodoro] increase his domain awareness, his ability to protect his sovereign territory and his interests — and cyber plays a critical role in that respect. You saw evidence of that earlier today when the T-12  was on display out there. And the … T-12, as you know, a fundamental part of that is the ability to command and control that using cyber capabilities. We have to protect those capabilities,” Austin told DefenseScoop.

“And we have to ensure that also that as we acquire more of these systems, that our supply chains are protected, and that we meet the demands as conditions change and things evolve,” he added.

Building on that, Teodoro told DefenseScoop that his national government is in the process of developing convergence measures to protect the country’s critical infrastructure, domestic supply chains and telecommunication systems from vulnerabilities that they could face now and in the future.

In response to questions from Philippines-based reporters, the defense secretaries said that they could not speculate on whether these and other high-stakes U.S.-Philippines joint military pursuits will carry on after Donald Trump is inaugurated as America’s next president in January.

“But I believe that this will remain an important country to us for many, many years. And the strength of our alliance, I think, will transcend changes of administration going forward,” Austin said.

Teodoro noted that the U.S. is a treaty ally, so his nation “would like certainty or guarantee with our bilateral relations.”

“But we should feel also on the other side of the coin, equally, with our anticipating of the possible and what will happen [with regard to the] United States next year, we should be calling out what [Chinese President Xi Jinping] is thinking about in so far as China is concerned — because the alternative factor, a positive factor, which has caused this alliance to be as robust as it is, is Chinese overreach and aggression in this party of the world,” Teodoro said.

Amid intensifying coercion in and around the South China Sea, he further said that Chinese military personnel have increasingly been denying his nation access to its exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea.

“They have really placed a lot of these pseudo-military vessels disguised as Coast Guard vessels, hence, maritime vessels in the areas of the West Sea. And they have been very aggressive in their information operations against the Philippines,” Teodoro said.

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The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General issued a memorandum Monday to multiple military and civilian components solidifying its official plans for the new review.

“During the evaluation, our focus will be to determine the effectiveness with which the Services and Defense Innovation Unit selected capabilities for the Replicator Initiative to meet the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s operational needs,” an OIG spokesperson told DefenseScoop in an email shortly after the memo’s release.

“It was a self-generated project, based on our ongoing analysis of DOD operations and programs,” the spokesperson said.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks first launched Replicator late last summer, billing it as a strategic move to confront China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by accelerating the adoption of “attritable autonomous systems” in multiple combat domains — through replicable processes — within 18 to 24 months.

DOD leadership and insiders have been expressly tight-lipped about the ambitious effort since its inception, frequently citing security concerns. But so far, Pentagon officials have secured roughly $500 million from Congress for fiscal 2024 to move forward with tranche one, and they are requesting an additional $500 million for fiscal 2025.

In April, DefenseScoop reported that the department’s first tranche choices for Replicator systems include kamikaze drones, unmanned surface vessels and counter-drone systems.

Although the initial aim of the OIG’s evaluation is to “determine the effectiveness” with which the services and DIU picked capabilities that can meet the demands of Indo-Pacom’s operational needs, the memo states that the watchdog may revise or expand the objective of this Replicator assessment as officials proceed.

“As with all Inspector General reviews, we intend to cooperate fully and with expediency to support the Office of the Inspector General’s important work to ensure full accountability for the American taxpayer,” Pentagon spokesman and Hick’s public affairs advisor Eric Pahon told DefenseScoop in an email Monday.

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This award to the California-based geospatial analytics company — worth up to $2 million in pilot funding — is historic as it marks the result of NGA’s first-ever commercial solutions opening (CSO) solicitation.

“If this is successful, we may look to the CSO pipeline for other acquisitions,” an NGA spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

In conversations over email this week, the spokesperson and NGA Director of Commercial Operations Devin Brande briefed DefenseScoop on the recent selection process and how the agency is thinking about innovating its acquisition methods.

This CSO is one component of Project Aegir, NGA’s fresh attempt to shape a multiple-vendor approach to buying unclassified intelligence products and ultimately enabling a commercial architecture to sense and make sense of illicit maritime activity. 

The agency launched Aegir earlier this year in response to a direct request from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in a region where illegal fishing is a top maritime security concern.

“Rather than telling industry what to give us, we’re asking them to show us what’s possible, unlocking new potential and leading to a stronger industry-government team,” Brande told DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

“Because of the evolving, global nature of the mission NGA recognizes we have to use all tools available to provide the GEOINT capabilities our customers need,” he said.

In total, 82 teams competed for the agency’s first-ever CSO. 

From those, a dozen finalists were selected by a panel of analysts and collection managers from NGA and Indo-Pacom to make their pitches in-person at the Defense Innovation Unit headquarters in Mountain View, California, earlier this month, according to an NGA press release.

The finalists were: Airbus U.S. Space and Defense, Anduril Industries, BlackSky Geospatial Solutions, Freedom Technology Solution Group, HII Mission Technologies, Orbital Insight, NV5 Geospatial, Planet Labs Federal, Royce Geospatial Solutions, Space-Eyes (Channel Logistics, LLC), Striveworks, and Ursa Space Systems.

During the pitch sessions, each of the finalists were evaluated “on their ability to fuse diverse data types to both identify maritime vessels and to increase confidence in using automation to confirm the characterization of maritime activity,” per the release. 

The U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center Pacific also participated in the pitch sessions at DIU to supply mission-based input.

Notably, the agency’s entire execution of this CSO solicitation — from public announcement to selection — unfolded in less than 90 days.

“The biggest thing here is that we’re exploring new ways of speeding up acquisition to get new capabilities to our customers, and warfighters, faster. Ninety days for a solicitation to award is insanely fast. So even though it’s a pilot, it’s very meaningful from an acquisition perspective,” the NGA spokesperson told DefenseScoop. “The fact that we’re looking at wholly commercial capabilities for this means that we can speed up the process.”

Over the next five months, pilot testing will be conducted on Orbital Insight’s capabilities. The results of those tests will determine whether NGA will pursue any long-term contracts or broader acquisition efforts.

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Wednesday evening the Pentagon announced that Palantir landed a deal for its Maven Smart System led by the Army. On Thursday, company executives said the effort will significantly grow the user base and help the department’s Chief Digital and AI Office proliferate the technology to warfighters and pursue its vision for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which aims to better connect the platforms, sensors and data streams of the U.S. military and key international partners to improve decision-making, operational effectiveness and efficiency.

The IDIQ contract will help the combatant commands and the Joint Staff do CJADC2-related work, Shannon Clark, head of defense growth at Palantir, told reporters.

The tech is expected to facilitate battlespace awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires and targeting workflows.

“This is taking what has been built in prototype and experimentation and bringing this [Maven system] to production,” Clark said. “The prototype began in 2021, we fielded that to a small set of users at each of these combatant commands. Now this is offering an enterprise capability with essentially no user limit at these combatant commands. So any individual that is focused on some of the workflows that [the technology is designed to aid] … will have access to the platform. That’s one of the things we’re so excited about, frankly, is because this means that an intel analyst or a user that’s doing work in the field has access to this platform, as do the combatant commanders themselves.”

Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command. The tech will also continue to be deployed as part of the Defense Department’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE), according to Clark.

“Users are going to span everyone from intel analysts and operators in, you know, some of the remote island chains across the world to leadership at the Pentagon. It’s going to reach thousands of users across the globe,” Clark said.

The company will be working with other vendors and U.S. government partners to integrate their technologies with Maven.

“We will be partnering with them to help integrate other AI capabilities, not just what Palantir brings to the table. So they will be able to build on all the data integrations that Palantir is doing, build on the pipelines and the applications within the platform or other platforms through open APIs and our ontology software development kits,” Clark said. “We want to be able to integrate with any data system, any new AI capability that the government procures and wants to be part of this ecosystem. So, you know, should tomorrow a new sensor come online, should … a new AI capability come online, we want to be able to integrate with that.”

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office also awarded Palantir a $33 million prototype other transaction agreement “to rapidly and securely” onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into a government-owned, Palantir-operated data environment, according to a CDAO release that went out Thursday afternoon.

The Maven system and the data environment will support the Defense Department’s plans for the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) initiative that was announced Thursday.

The first task order under the $480 million Maven contract is worth $153 million. The funding will go toward licenses to deploy the company’s software, according to Clark.

“This task order kicks off on June 1 … Those licenses will be made available immediately to all those users,” she told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters. “That’s the beauty of commercial software. The beauty of the product that we built is that we can get it up and running in days and weeks, not months and years.”

The Maven tech can integrate data from a variety of reporting systems — such as satellite imagery, signals intelligence, electronic intelligence, human intelligence, or other sources — across multiple domains to provide users with better situational awareness of friendly and adversary forces. That info can be displayed for commanders and other personnel via easy-to-use maps and dashboards, Andrew Locke, DOD enterprise lead at Palantir, told reporters.

The system can also “layer in” AI capabilities, such as computer vision models that scan imagery and look for objects of interest.

“For the user, they can go immediately from kind of that tip and cue that something of interest is there and actually nominate, you know, targets from the platform. So, you know, when we think about the integration of AI into these workflows, it is very much like humans involved in the process … They’re providing their unique subject matter expertise to verify that, you know, what AI maybe suggested is there is actually there. And then go from that into what you know the next stage of a process might be,” Locke said.

That could include what he called a “targeting nomination workflow.”

“In this case, you can either nominate a single target or multiple targets. We help to augment the user where we take all the metadata associated with those detections and kind of package that in the … format that they’re familiar with as part of the target nomination. As they do that, that would then transition to a separate capability that we’re providing across target management where nominated targets would then pop up right into a board … And for a staff, they can really optimize a process, take like their standard operating procedures that are unique to that organization and then code that in software,” he explained.

Data from social media could also be integrated into workflows if the U.S. government asked for that, he suggested.

“On our side, [we’re] really agnostic, you know, to the data sources. And really no technical limitation,” he told DefenseScoop during the meeting with reporters.

Palantir will defer to the Pentagon in terms of providing specifics on the actual social media sites or programs that they might want to pull from, he noted.

“But basically … if the government were to be using a sort of AI to initially run off of social media, whether that’s computer vision against images or videos that are in posts, or some type of like geolocation or, you know, natural language processing, you know, over keywords … then we would provide, like, the integration of whatever those social media sources potentially look like. And then … move that into classified networks, and then provide that sort of information in conjunction with the other data sources that we’ve integrated on the government’s behalf,” Locke said.

Updated on May 30, 2024, at 5:20 PM. This story has been updated to include information about an other transaction agreement awarded to Palantir and the Pentagon’s Open DIGAR initiative.

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“I think that largely, information operations are foundational for every operation that the department will do going forward. We have to be thinking about the information environment component of those activities,” Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also leads the National Security Agency, said at the Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, hosted by Vanderbilt University, on Wednesday.

In recent years, adversaries have sought to exploit the information environment through disinformation, misinformation, information ops and other activities as a means of undermining U.S. and allied interests without having to confront them in direct military conflict.

The Pentagon has sought to play catch-up of sorts, releasing updates to doctrine and strategy — and the services themselves issuing their own guidance within the information realm.

The DOD has also shifted its mindset in recent years to a stance of perpetual competition. Adversaries have viewed conflict on a continuum while the U.S. has traditionally viewed it as a binary state of either war or peace. The Joint Concept for Competing, released last year, formally recognizes that the department is engaged in a competition on a daily basis below the threshold of all-out conflict.

Additionally, given that much of this information capability will be delivered via cyber means, Cybercom will play a big role in the information environment going forward.

Haugh said the Russia-Ukraine conflict provides some real-world evidence of the importance of the information environment and how certain operations, such as strategic disclosures, can help thwart adversarial efforts.

“The fact that the United States really used sensitive intelligence to be able to demonstrate to the world what we believed Russia was going to do [and] when they were going to do it, too, really set the tone of this is what it means to be for the international dialogue. That was in and of itself a strategic use of information to be able to drive support,” he said regarding the strategic disclosures of intelligence ahead of Russia’s invasion.

Haugh noted that defense officials need to be mindful of how information capabilities will be used against U.S. forces.

“The other aspects, I think, from a military perspective that we need to be thinking about [is] how are we preparing our force for their likely involvement in a conflict and what will the information operations look like targeting our military force?” he said. “How well are we prepared for that? Is that an area that commanders talk about and they’re going to receive messages that are personalized on their own devices? Those are things we need to be thinking about how we prepare.”

During its 2014 incursion into Ukraine, Russia demonstrated the adept ability to target Ukrainian soldiers’ personal devices with tailored messages, something U.S forces took great interest in.

Information operations can also be conducted in the civilian or corporate worlds — something the U.S. government also must be mindful of.

“It’s not just within a military environment. I think we have seen some shifts in the cybercrime world that have already moved to information operations … Not just ransomware holding things at risk, but hacking and extracting information that is now held as a coercive tool for a ransom that is really about the disclosure of information,” Haugh explained. “It’s not just something that is within a military domain or between nations. This can be very personal for any business in the Western society that’s targeted by an actor and coerced based off of a hacking activity that will disclose information, [that] will either to be embarrassing or do some form of competitive advantage. It’s a part of our daily lives and it’s certainly going to be a part of military activities moving forward.”

When it comes to deterring China and being prepared for what Beijing could do, Haugh explained the U.S. must me mindful of how its potential adversary would use information capabilities.

“The area that I think that we have to really be mindful of, is thinking about what the information environment would look like in a crisis with China and how they would use the tools that are available to them in the information environment and what would be the implications of that, both within the region and with our population,” he said.

China’s use of misinformation and disinformation in the Pacific region and across the world to influence various populations, has concerned many.

“The execution of propaganda, misinformation and disinformation is a real concern for me. It should be a real concern for all of the United States. The [People’s Republic of China’s] ability to influence our information environment is concerning,” Adm. John Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in March before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

One recent example he provided the committee was the notion being put forth that the West — and particularly, the U.S. — is in decline, while China is rising.

“That is Chinese propaganda. Our economy continues to grow, theirs is in the cellar. So, the actions in the information space, ultimately, it was being reported all over the United States. That’s the expansive ability of mis- and disinformation to influence the United States,” he said. “We ought to understand that it’s occurring and we ought to understand that our free and open media and the truth that we project is a critical value of the United States, it’s one to be protected. But we have to call out the mis- and disinformation to stop that ability to influence.”

Aquilino noted that the best way to combat behavior like this is to “expose the bad and amplify the good.”

“We have to understand how media is used in the People’s Republic of China, oh, by the way, and in Russia, because it’s a similar problem … But it is not what we see in our media. We have to understand what’s occurring in the differences, we have to value it and then we have to expose it,” he said.

The U.S. government has taken the approach of exposing adversary activities — be it by releasing malware samples they use, declassifying videos of their actions, or other methods — as a key way to beat back their malevolent efforts by shaming these actors and revealing their tactics so organizations can develop countermeasures, in addition to declassifying intelligence.

Aquilino’s successor told Congress as part of his confirmation process, that he plans to use information tools and work with other government agencies to maximize information capabilities to beat back and expose malign Chinese behavior.

“We must also employ information-related capabilities to transparently bring attention to malign behavior, such as the United States and our partners publicly releasing video of coercive and risky [People’s Liberation Army] intercepts of our lawfully operating ships and aircraft. If confirmed, I will assess current information-related capabilities and consider all viable options to improve our information operations posture and readiness,” Adm. Samuel Paparo wrote in responses to senators‘ questions. “It is critical that we continue highlighting malign PRC activities in the information environment.”

Paparo also indicated he may be inclined to use the strategic disclosure playbook that officials believed were successful against Russia, in the region against Chinese behavior.

“[W]e learned how the timely sharing of previously classified intelligence with our partners and the public revealed Russia’s imminent plans for an attack and helped spur the international community to act in support of Ukraine. Timely transparency can be an effective tool to counter aggression,” Paparo said. A similar tactic could be used to expose China’s activity towards Taiwan, he added, suggesting he could provide more details to lawmakers in a classified setting.

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