{"id":5949,"date":"2026-02-21T22:07:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/new-army-office-aims-to-quickly-develop-and-scale-soldier-ideas\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T22:07:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:07:48","slug":"new-army-office-aims-to-quickly-develop-and-scale-soldier-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/new-army-office-aims-to-quickly-develop-and-scale-soldier-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"New Army office aims to quickly develop and scale soldier ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A\u00a0new Army organization aims to meld service leaders\u2019 mandates to cut bureaucracy and adopt a venture-capital mindset with their push to turn soldiers\u2019 ideas into manufactured gear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pathway for Innovation and Technology is another office, yes, but its director says it will bring together the Army\u2019s innovation and rapid acquisition hubs at the service\u2019s headquarters level, putting muscle behind what until now have been siloed efforts, and coordinating them with the Program Acquisition Executives, who have the funding and authority to turn ideas into programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sit at the table with the PAEs. I communicate directly with them to express what we are seeing. I also serve as a tech scout for them,\u201d Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, PIT\u2019s director, told reporters Friday. \u201cWhat we’ve had is unit-driven innovation. We’ve had lab-driven innovation with [program managers] and PAEs. But in this case, the gloves are off and we can inject that capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within PIT sits the Army\u2019s FUZE program, Joint Innovation Outpost and Global Tactical Edge Directorate, who through Daiyaan now have a direct line to the acquisition offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think is really interesting here is these divisions and corps have had these innovation hubs or labs for a while now, and they would find ideas, but there was no path to go take it to scale,\u201d said Chris Manning, the Army\u2019s deputy assistant secretary for research and technology. \u201cAnd so [members of the PIT organizations] are there on the ground and saying, \u2018Hey, what are the most promising things coming out of there? And how do I connect this to the broader acquisition enterprise?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

One of the top issues they\u2019d like to tackle is power generation and integration, particularly for unmanned aerial systems, Daiyaan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith us doing multiple vendors of UAS, multiple vendors of different capabilities, they all may have a different battery,\u201d and it might be nice to have \u201cone charger to charge them all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ideally, a PIT-lead program development might look like an xTech competition to get a bunch of companies working on a problem the Army wants to solve, select maybe 10 companies and award them prize money, get their prototypes in the field with soldiers for a 30 or 45 days, and then award Small Business Innovation Research contracts for another six months of development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From there, they could use FUZE\u2019s Tech Maturation Program to buy five, then 20, then maybe 100 pieces of equipment, while working on a Program Objective Memorandum that would lay out a five-year acquisition plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of that, in maybe a year now, we have moved the needle faster than we ever could, because we would have still been studying the problem\u201d under the Army\u2019s old acquisition model, Daiyaan said.<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t put a number on the number of different programs PIT is trying to get off the ground, he said, but there are hundreds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re 90 days in\u2014check back with us this time next year,\u201d he said. \u201cWe probably should talk about what we transitioned into programs.\u201d\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n