Senior defense leaders said on June 2 that future military advantage will depend on two capabilities: achieving data dominance across the battlespace and accelerating the transition of emerging technologies into operational use.
Speaking at GDIT Emerge in Washington, D.C., Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, deputy chief of staff, G-6, U.S. Army, focused on the Army’s push to treat data as a warfighting capability, while Joseph Jewell, assistant secretary of defense for science and technology, emphasized the need to move innovations from research labs into operational use more quickly.
Data dominance and decision making
Rey said the Army is working to move data from the tactical edge to enterprise systems and back across traditionally siloed platforms.
“We are trying to move data at echelon from the edge to the enterprise and back down across all the siloed platforms that we have right now,” he said. “Data is the decisive munition of the future, and we’re going to find our way to getting it to the commanders to make informed decisions across the board.”
But Rey said the Army’s challenge is not collecting data – it is managing it.
“We’re saturated with sensors on the battlefield, we’re saturated with data coming off those sensors,” Rey said. “We don’t have a data problem; we have a data management problem.”
GDIT President Amy Gilliland echoed that point, saying the military must make data available and actionable in contested environments where access to centralized infrastructure may be limited.
“Getting technology to a place where it can enable our warfighters to leverage [data] is so important,” Gilliland said.
Rey pointed to the Army Data Operations Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground as a key part of the service’s effort to move and manage data across formations. The center reached initial operating capability on April 3.
Rey also described a broader modernization framework centered on what he called the “three Ds,” focused on developing the workforce, deeper collaboration with industry, and data and network protection across the full operational pipeline.
Accelerating technology transition
Jewell said the Defense Department’s (DOD) challenge is not identifying promising technologies but moving them from research environments into operational use fast enough to keep pace with technological change.
“The one consistent thing is that change happens, and it happens faster sometimes than you can anticipate,” he said.
While defense laboratories continue producing new technologies, he said the DOD has struggled to scale and commercialize those innovations.
Gilliland echoed that point, saying DOD must move with greater urgency.
“We are on a wartime footing. We are in a foot race to stay ahead in technology, and we have to behave that way,” Gilliland said.
Jewell said closing that gap will require stronger engagement with venture-backed and nontraditional technology companies that can scale emerging capabilities faster than traditional acquisition models.
He pointed to efforts underway to better connect government-developed technologies with commercial industry and defense acquisition programs.
“We need to broaden the aperture,” Jewell said. “We need to figure out better how to bridge that gap between the companies that are actually capable of delivering at scale the technologies we need that are not the primes.”
As a result, he said DOD must build acquisition and transition pathways that move innovations out of laboratories and into operational environments.
“It’s about building an agile organization that can make those investments responsibly and then, crucially, also procure the results – so it doesn’t do any good if it stays in the lab,” he said.
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the War Department.