Defense Innovation Delivering Critical Capabilities to Warfighters at Speed and Scale

The Defense Innovation Unit, which stood up in 2015, has proven that it can help solve military problems with commercial technology and make a difference on the battlefield, said, Doug Beck, director of DIU and senior advisor to the defense secretary.

The focus now at DIU is to deliver to the warfighter those most critical solutions at speed and scale to achieve true strategic effect, said Beck, who spoke at the Aspen Security Forum.

To get a firsthand understanding of the warfighters' needs, DIU personnel are embedding with the geographic combatant commands, U.S. Indo-Pacom Command and U.S. European Command, he said, noting that the Eucom team is helping to bring innovative capability to Ukraine.

To be successful, DIU is also partnering with the department's true engines of scale - the services - as well as with the critical scaling partners in the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense entities like acquisition, sustainment, research and engineering to transition and integrate capabilities in order to have a material impact on the most pivotal operational plans, the director said, noting that DIU is also increasingly partnering with the international community.

To ensure coordination, synergy and communication among the many innovation hubs across the department, DIU is leading the defense innovation community of entities, he said, adding that the group also seeks ways to knock down barriers that get in the way of bringing in new capabilities, systems and industry partners.

One of the barriers to tackle has to do with culture, such as risk aversion, Beck said. "That takes time to change, and the way you change it is with success."

Success, he said, is working with the best companies to bring their novel approaches to speed and scale, citing an early example of DIU successfully prototyping and delivering an effective counter-unmanned aerial system to U.S. Special Operations Command which has since adopted that capability at scale. DIU continues to discover C-UAS technology for the department.

Another key to driving meaningful change, is building commercial-fluent contracting officers and dual-fluency talent across the workforce. Today, DIU partners with the Defense Acquisition University to facilitate a competitive, immersive fellowship program to educate and provide top DOD contracting officers with experience on how to effectively acquire emerging commercial technologies from nontraditional companies.

Congress has provided DIU much more flexibility in the way it uses funding that will allow it to not only help companies develop prototypes, but also help with initial fielding of new technologies.

DIU headquarters is located in Mountain View, California, with satellite offices in Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago and Washington. DIU has undertaken an effort to optimize its regional presence, outreach and programming to further strengthen its integration into the national security innovation base. This includes defense innovation on-ramp hubs that are located in Ohio, Washington state, Hawaii, Arizona and Kansas to access the best technology and talent from around the country, Beck said.