Michael Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), told Defense News in an interview published Monday about technology projects DIU plans to transition into service in the near term and those include work on predictive maintenance and time indications and warning.
“That’s a combination of rapid launch capability, which we’ve been helping with some of the prototyping efforts,” Brown said of DIU’s work on time indications and warning. “And then the analysis of the commercial satellite imagery that comes from that, we’re working with some of the vendors that are looking at artificial intelligence- and machine learning-infused algorithms so you can analyze that and enhance what you might be seeing.
So that’s an incredible capability if you think about putting all those together, in terms of getting a more real-time view, globally, of what’s happening." Brown discussed the organization’s efforts to improve its transition rate for tech projects and encourage contractors to work with the Department of Defense (DoD) .
He also mentioned the Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure and Clean Sweep as some of the projects that DIU started as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. When asked about how DIU incentivizes vendors to work with the Pentagon, he said the unit should work on “commercial time frames.”
“We need to be evaluating commercial vendors. And we need to think about how do we work in their world — not ask them to conform to ours,” Brown added.
