who help decide how to align fund- ing to their Services’ priorities and develop acquisition strategies. How- ever, SAEs and PEOs were engrossed in their own firefighting as cost over- runs and legacy requirements threat- ened budgets and strained program office efforts to field Warfighter ca- pabilities. When trading between in- creasing costs or lower performance, DoD program managers often chose to extend program schedules, mean- ing that Warfighters waited longer to receive and operate systems needed for operational effectiveness. If a program office is struggling to keep programs from falling off the rails or get them back on track, in- novations may seem like a visit from the “good idea fairy” or a distraction from their baseline plan. So, when DIU developed operationally effec- tive prototypes, Services lacked the processes, incentives, or bandwidth to integrate capabilities beyond the ini- tial prototype. DIU acknowledged that “prototypes delivered by DIU and transitioned to the force—even when closely aligned with critical Warfighter needs—were rarely adopted with the scale and integration necessary to
the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) cycle. Though the Services have the DIU hedge portfolio to lean on, the chal- lenge remains of prioritizing the nec- essary resourcing by the Services be- fore the hedge funding is exhausted. For the DoD’s youngest Service, a prime opportunity exists for the USSF and the DIU Space Portfolio to model how to better identify, integrate, and scale space capabilities. Adaptive Integration Techniques Adaptive integration techniques are intentional decision points in a program’s life cycle when commer- cial solutions could be integrated into acquisition pathways to demon- strate operational utility, with minimal disturbance to the program’s overall objectives. Adaptive integration tech- niques can also enable adoption by the Services while achieving scale for commercial partners. Multiple opportunities exist to in- tegrate and scale commercial space technologies into the life cycle of a Program of Record (POR), such as when a program is in the market re-
have a material impact on the most pivotal op- erational plans and deterrence options.” Recognizing this constraint, DIU sharpened its focus via the 3.0 strat- egy that prioritizes the most critical capability gaps. Solely proving that a novel technology worked was not enough to convince Service acquir- ers that adoption and scale were the prudent next steps. So DIU became not only a pathfinder for commercially derived defense technologies but also worked with the Services to see that these technologies were adopted. Partnering with the Services’ “en- gines of scale” required deep work to influence the budgetary level of Ser- vice programs. DIU worked with con- gressional leadership and staffers to establish a hedge portfolio that pro- vided DIU significantly more budget and flexibility to apply its appropria- tions to technologies that were ready for Services’ adoption. If a Combat- ant Commander or Service identified a capability gap for which the Service was unable to prioritize and fund a near-term solution, DIU could lever- age its hedge portfolio to initially fund the capability development until the Service could allocate funding through
Aalyria technology data orchestration interface, Spacetime. In July 2022, Aalyria contracted with DIU for the Hybrid Space Architecture project. Source: Screencapture from Aalyria
March-April 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 45
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