Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, on Wednesday delivered a keynote speech at a conference in Washington D.C., and highlighted some of the initiatives DOD has launched to drive innovation and accelerate the delivery of capabilities to warfighters.
One of the efforts Hicks discussed is the adoption of flexible acquisition pathways and new contracting tools, such as the Commercial Solutions Opening and other transaction authority, to work better with nontraditional defense firms and other commercial enterprises.
“Today, over 200 programs have used Middle-Tier and Software Acquisition pathways, with $57 billion flowing through them since inception — nearly 40 percent just in fiscal ‘24. In some cases, they’re shaving up to six years off delivery timelines,” the deputy DOD secretary said.
“And since January 2021, we’ve obligated $44 billion with OTAs, 61 percent more than at this point in the last administration. Production’s share of that total grew over 12-fold compared to four years ago. That’s real change,” she added.
DOD Innovation Fact Sheet
Those contracting tools and acquisition pathways were cited in the Innovation Fact Sheet DOD released Wednesday.
According to Hicks, the Innovation Fact Sheet covers the department’s “unceasing work to debug DoD’s innovation ecosystem,” efforts to address the valleys of death, investments in data and artificial intelligence and advancement of programs like Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control.
Replicator Initiative
During her speech, Hicks mentioned the efforts the department has launched to advance the Replicator initiative, which seeks to field thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems, or ADA2 systems, within the next 18 to 24 months.
Some of those efforts are identifying and validating key operational requirements from combatant commands, selecting initial capabilities to meet those demands, developing acquisition strategies for each capability and submitting reprogramming requests and a spending plan to Congress to speed up program implementation.
“With Congress’s support, we secured needed funding for fiscal year 2024, about $500 million, and budgeted a similar amount for fiscal year 2025,” the DOD official stated.
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