Michael Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), has said the Department of Defense (DoD) needs to establish trust with Congress to streamline budgeting procedures while promoting flexibility in experimentation, DoD News reported Friday.
Brown told attendees at the Aspen Security Forum that speeding up the current two-year budgeting process will help the DoD adopt innovative technologies while leveraging various contracting authorities.
"But the speed is now all about the budgeting process. And that requires work with Congress,” he said. "We have to develop a relationship that involves trust so that there is more budget flexibility.”
According to Brown, the DoD cannot afford to be behind the private sector in terms of experimentation. The U.S. also needs to scale up efforts in areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and cyber autonomy to keep up with adversaries like China, he added.
"We're not moving in government at an agile pace that reflects the nature of the competition. It's about speed," said Brown. "We need to be quick on our feet to be able to prototype, test in military application, and then have a rapid uptake to get those vendors into production."
