MITRE identified challenges preventing the Department of Defense from rapidly adopting commercial innovations and provided recommendations that would accelerate capability delivery to warfighters in a new paper published Monday. Titled Breaking Barriers: Accelerating Innovation Adoption for Defense Priorities, the paper guides the Pentagon to streamline processes and better leverage commercial capabilities to achieve its technology priorities.
What DOD Can Do to Accelerate Innovation Adoption
The paper, published, recommends that the DOD start by identifying specific mission gaps and communicating them with industry. By focusing on mission problem needs rather than requirement statements, the government can empower industry to identify novel and creative solutions that address urgent and complex operational challenges.
MITRE also promotes maturing commercial technologies and exploring dual-use applications. According to the paper, existing industry technologies present an opportunity for the DOD to deliver capabilities at speed and scale. The DOD must facilitate a transparent dialogue between the problem owners and the technology providers and ensure collaboration throughout the development process to validate that a proposed solution remain aligned with mission needs.
MITRE also advised the DOD to reduce barriers to data and facilities that industry can use to innovate. The organization explained that non-traditional industry partners often face limited or no access to classified computing resources classified or mission-relevant data. The DOD can address the issue by implementing best practices, such as applying a modular open systems approach and developing a full system-level digital twin.
Finally, the paper said the DOD must fast-track the procurement process by more widely utilizing flexible and agile acquisition or transition methods, such as other transaction agreements.
