WASHINGTON — Two months after pruning the Pentagon’s list of 14 “Critical Technology Areas” down to just six top priorities, Defense Department CTO Emil Michael has announced the six officials who will lead research into those CTAs.
The six men all have prior experience in the DoD’s extensive technology apparatus. Four served at some point in the Air Force, historically the most technologically minded branch. Three of them were already the “principal directors” overseeing one of the old 14 CTAs, while the others were chosen from across the Department.
Cameron Stanley is now dual-hatted as the Pentagon’s Chief Digital & AI Officer (CDAO) — a role he assumed just two weeks ago — and as Senior Official for Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI). An Air Force Academy graduate, Cameron’s LinkedIn profile shows he’s moved back and forth between DoD and industry, with stints in Booz Allen, Amazon Web Services, Southern Command, and the groundbreaking military AI team Project Maven. He served in the first Trump Administration overseeing AI development for the Under Secretary of Intelligence & Security.
Gary Vora is Senior Official for Biomanufacturing, a subfield of biotechnology aimed at replacing traditional chemical engineering with biologically derived enzymes. For the last four years, he was the Navy’s Principal Scientist for Biotechnology. Before that he was deputy head of biomolecular science at the Naval Research Laboratory, publishing papers on topics like an obscure species of jellyfish that had been plaguing Navy divers by releasing microscopic balls of venom into the water.
Robert Mantz will oversee Contested Logistics Technologies, the push to harden the military’s sprawling global supply chains against attack. A chemist with a long history of working on fuel, Mantz been a “principal director” for energy technologies under the old 14-CTA scheme since 2023, when he moved from the Army’s R&D shop. An Air Force Academy graduate who rose to the rank of Colonel, he has worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory and DARPA.
Kevin Rudd will lead Quantum & Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID), a collection of technologies focused on collecting, transmitting, and sharing data while preventing the enemy from doing the same. A former DARPA program manager, Rudd has an extensive background in electronic warfare — the art of detecting and disrupting enemy radio and radar — with leading EW roles at the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Laboratory, as well as work on intelligence, surveillance, & reconnaissance (ISR) technology.
Christopher Vergien will oversee R&D on Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) — laser weapons, in layman’s terms, with a dash of high-powered microwaves on the side. He was previously principal director for directed energy under the old 14-CTA scheme, but his revamped portfolio emphasizes the importance of moving beyond science projects and one-off demonstrations to large-scale deployment. He’s worked at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and in various Air Force research jobs. The oldest hit for him online, from 2009, shows then-Lieutenant Vergien standing proudly next to a massive laser testbed.
James Weber will lead Scaled Hypersonics (SHY), having led its prior incarnation as Principal Director for Hypersonics. As with SCADE, SHY revamps a longstanding Pentagon tech priority to focus on moving past R&D to large-scale deployment. Weber has over three decades of experience in hypersonics himself and spent most of his career in various highly technical positions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base before ascending to the Pentagon.