A senior Defense Innovation Unit official said an upcoming industry summit will be an opportunity to focus on scaling commercial technologies for use by the Defense Department, specifically focusing on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Aditi Kumar, deputy director for strategy, policy and national security partnerships at DIU, said the summit, called “Deploying and Scaling Autonomy for Strategic Impact,” will be held on Feb. 13 in Mountainview, CA.
“We will use this summit to discuss key technology areas underpinning autonomous systems and other priorities of interest in U.S. INDOPACOM with implications for the force worldwide,” Kumar said at the 10th annual defense R&D summit today. “We will drive dialogue with the commercial sector on technologies that are available to meet these priorities, focusing on a specific set of use cases and techniques that are, again, warfighter centric and threat informed.”
“And we will do so in partnership with service acquisition and innovation entity leaders with scale transition as the ultimate goal,” she added.
The summit is part of the next phase of DIU’s new strategy called DIU 3.0.
DIU 1.0, Kumar said, was about bridging the gap between the department and the commercial sector, while DIU 2.0 was about demonstrating that real military projects can be delivered to the warfighter.
Kumar said that DIU 3.0 attempts to take capabilities developed during DIU 1.0 and 2.0 and apply them with speed and scale required by the National Defense Strategy.
“I want to highlight three important tenants of our DIU 3.0 strategy today,” Kumar said. “One, a relentless focus on the most critical capability gaps. Two, strong partnerships within the engines of scale within the department. And three, catalyzing the DOD’s innovation entities into a community of impact.”
Kumar said DIU 3.0’s strategy will be released in the coming week.