DEI, DOA: How the defense industry is racing to bury its diversity efforts
Defense primes have rushed to wipe web pages and remove previous claims of "unwavering" commitment to DEI efforts since President Donald Trump has taken office.
Defense primes have rushed to wipe web pages and remove previous claims of "unwavering" commitment to DEI efforts since President Donald Trump has taken office.
The new digital engineering policy released today will essentially allow the Army to move from manual, paper-driven processes to a digital environment.
Ordinary soldiers and civil servants have used the Army Data Platform to build thousands of data analytics. Now the service wants to scale up ADP’s success — but that will take a new way of doing business, said chief data officer David Markowitz.
While key executives tell Breaking Defense they have adjusted to the new normal, experts worry IT supply chain vulnerabilities could be exploited in the future by adversarial nations.
Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told reporters the service plans to award contracts for the Vantage re-compete towards the end of this year.
"We don't want your traditional industry brief. We want capabilities that we can get after the threat quickly," explained Col. Joseph Roth, director of SSC's Front Door industry engagement initiative.
Cyber resilience has become a frontline mission for the US military. Breaking Defense’s new eBook rounds up key reporting from the 2025 Alamo ACE conference with the latest developments in cyber offense and defense.
"[T]he IC Commercial Space Council is discussing commercial protection right now. We had a meeting on Tuesday, and it came up," said NGA's David Gauthier, who chairs the council.
“For instance, in the CMMC realm, rather than go out and assess each and every network of our industry partners, I’m kind of keen on establishing some sort of cloud services [...]” said David McKeown, DoD deputy chief information officer and senior information security officer
“There’s a cost to your IP, there’s a cost to the US government and there’s a benefit to our adversaries if we don’t do something like this,” DoD Chief Information Officer John Sherman said of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program.
The JROC now will issue "strategic directives" to the services prescribing how they craft buying plans to substantiate the emerging Joint Warfighting Concept, Brig. Gen. Rob Parker, Joint Staff J6 deputy director, says.
AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss R&D to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today.
"It’s ultimately a political decision, and ... this demands a strong and fully staffed OSD," said Mackenzie Eaglen, of the American Enterprise Institute. "That doesn’t seem likely until much later this year."
A single Army command, HRC, tracks more than 800,000 data elements, the service’s new Chief Data Officer says. If you try to share all your data without setting clear priorities, the network will choke on it – especially in frontline units, where getting the right data can be life or death.
The Army must link its tactical networks with its "enterprise" networks at home base, Lt. Gen. Morrison said, passing data on everything from artillery bombardments to cyber attacks.