International Innovation Initiatives

Mission— International Innovation Initiatives

This program supports the Department’s initiatives to (1) deter strategic attacks against the United States, and its Allies and partners; (2) deter aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary; and (3) building enduring advantages for the future Joint Force. This program supports the Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS) (Project Code 079), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) (Project Code 353), and Science and Technology (S&T) International Engagement Initiatives (Project Code 354). AUKUS will deepen defense capability and technological cooperation by developing and providing joint advanced military capabilities to promote security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS program will accelerate the delivery of advanced military capabilities, increased interoperability, and improved information sharing. The delivery of these capabilities will enhance AUKUS partners’ military edge and strengthen integrated deterrence. In support of these objectives, the marquee AUKUS Pillar II project centers around increasingly complex collaborative demonstrations and evaluations that will lead to the validation of trilaterally-connected platforms from the sea floor to the stratosphere, and ultimately enable trilateral production, acquisition, fielding, and sustainment of these systems. The NATO DIANA program will pursue operationally relevant advanced capability co-development, support integration of multi-national capabilities to act as a force multiplier, and test and evaluate promising solutions found across the innovation ecosystem. This complementary program to DIANA will allow the United States to pull successful security solutions from the DIANA effort across the Alliance into availability in the U.S. industrial base and for operational use and aligns with the critical technology areas and operational requirements. The S&T International Engagement Initiatives program will incentivize the DoD Components, including the Military Services, to engage and/or expand their S&T cooperation with existing partners (e.g., Israel, India, Japan, South Korea) and with those new partners with whom they may be engaged in policy or operational activities but not in the S&T realm. The intent is to consider proposals submitted from the DoD Components. The appropriate leadership will select proposals using a merit-based process that identifies the most promising solutions to operational challenges. The program portfolio aligns with the interim National Defense Strategy guidance, the priority critical technology areas, and operational requirements.

Mission— AUKUS

This program supports the Department’s initiatives to: (1) deter strategic attacks against the United States, and its Allies and partners; (2) deter aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary; and (3) build enduring advantages for the future Joint Force. Specifically, the Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS) will deepen defense capability and technological cooperation by developing and providing joint advanced military capabilities to promote security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. This program provides funding to pursue operationally relevant advanced capability co-development, co-production, and/or co-sustainment; support integration of multi-national capabilities to act as a force multiplier;, and test and evaluate promising solutions found across the AUKUS innovation ecosystem. The program portfolio aligns with the critical technology areas and operational requirements. As new AUKUS projects are considered in FY2026, the intent is to consider proposals submitted from the DoD Components and industry and academia partners. The appropriate leadership will select proposals using a merit-based process that identifies the most promising solutions to operational challenges with an emphasis on transitioning technologies to current or future programs of record.

Mission— DIANA

To combat the evolving threat and development of critical technologies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) to leverage dual-use technological advances in Allied centers of innovation to achieve the Alliance’s operational requirements, including accelerating the development, testing, and fielding of security technology solutions to achieve an advantage over the evolving threat. The NATO DIANA program only provides non-traditional business partners from Alliance nations with funding to accelerate new technical solutions and commercialization specifically where the technology holds a dual use (commercial and defense in nature) potential. Advanced development and testing to facilitate adoption into U.S. defense programs requires supporting funding for our own labs and test centers to pull that technology into our Defense acquisition ecosystem. This project enables the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) to assist in accelerating military capability development for U.S. forces as well as our NATO Allies and will expose new U.S. industries to the European markets. Fielding of critical technologies in the proposed areas will have significant positive impact on detecting the enemy first, ensuing effective communications and data exchange between coalition partners, as well as systems developed by different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enabling robotic and autonomous systems to remain on station longer periods of time for greater operation impact. NATO DIANA advances access to technology across larger security challenges. These enhancements will contribute to increasing lethality across the U.S. and NATO military capabilities. The NATO DIANA initiative will fund dual-use technologies identified through the NATO DIANA challenges found sufficiently mature with the potential for meaningful impact for U.S. forces on the battlefield for continued development, testing, integration, and experimentation and proposes to fund each technology for capability maturation.

Mission— International S&T Engagement Initiatives

To keep pace with the rapidly evolving technological landscape, advancing science and technology (S&T) cooperation with our Allies and partners remains important. This project will incentivize the DoD Components, include the Military Services, to engage and/or expand their S&T cooperation with existing partners and with those partners with who they may be engaged in policy or operational activities but not in the S&T realm. In addition, this project will allow DoD to meet new and expanded requirements for substantive, administrative, and operational activities in support on international defense S&T cooperation. The intent is to consider proposals submitted from the DoD Components. The appropriate leadership will select proposals using a merit-based process that identifies the most promising solutions to operational challenges with an emphasis on transitioning technologies current or future programs of record.

Accomplishments & Planned Programs (6)