The Army will require open architecture in all future equipment purchases, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said Oct. 12, as the service moves to eliminate proprietary technology barriers that complicate battlefield integration.
“Everything we buy from here on out will have open architecture. It’s non-negotiable,” Telle said at the Association of the United States Army’s 2026 conference in Washington, D.C.
Telle said proprietary systems have hindered the Army’s ability to share data across platforms and integrate new technologies into existing networks.
“Our individual pieces of equipment must communicate seamlessly, because on the modern battlefield, the kill chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” he said. “If the data is trapped behind proprietary modes, and we have to call a contractor to decode the data, our super intelligent command and control doesn’t matter.”
Telle identified interoperability as one of three major acquisition challenges facing the Army, alongside lengthy procurement timelines and an acquisition structure organized around individual platforms rather than operational requirements.
To address integration barriers in existing equipment, Telle highlighted Operation Jailbreak, an initiative designed to improve interoperability across legacy systems.
Under the initiative, engineers from companies that had never worked together gathered at a single location over several weeks to resolve integration problems, he said. Telle said the approach could reduce the time and cost of connecting existing systems without requiring lengthy development efforts.
Army sets open-architecture requirements for autonomy
The open-architecture requirement also applies to autonomous systems, Army Chief Technology Officer Alexander Miller said during a separate panel on Oct. 13.
“Open architecture is table stakes. We will not pay you to integrate. We won’t. We will find somebody that actually wants to be part of the team, and we will bring them in,” Miller said.
Miller said the Army wants units to combine autonomous capabilities from multiple vendors and configure them for specific missions, rather than rely on a single provider’s technology.
“We do not see autonomy as a monolith, because it’s not,” he said.
Instead, Miller described an approach that brings together teams with different technical strengths to develop and test capabilities alongside soldiers. He said the Army’s priority is to identify the tasks soldiers need to accomplish and then apply the appropriate technologies.