GDIT opens technology hub to accelerate defense, intel capability development

General Dynamic Information Technology announced Wednesday that it has built a new facility dedicated to fast-tracking development of emerging capabilities for its customers in the national security sector.

Located in Springfield, Virginia, the company’s so-called Mission Emerge Center is a 5,200-square-foot collaboration hub where GDIT can work closely with the Defense Department, Intelligence Community and other vendors to build, test and demonstrate advanced capabilities. The facility represents the company’s significant multi-year investment to improve how new technologies are developed and delivered to warfighters, GDIT President Amy Gilliland said.

“Technology is the differentiator. … It is a journey that we’ve been on over the last couple of years, and being able to get that technology to the mission for us has totally changed our thinking about how we run our business,” Gilliland told reporters at the new site ahead of the announcement.

The company intends to use the facility to prototype emerging capabilities that both the Pentagon and IC have sought to deploy to battlefields, such as AI, software development, cyber, edge computing, improved sensor processing and more.

During a tour of the center, reporters saw demonstrations of integrated moving geospatial intelligence, augmented reality visualization for mission planning and geospatial data analysis enabled by large language models.

In the second Trump administration, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon leaders have initiated a shift in how the department develops and procures new capabilities. Rather than spend years writing requirements, running a competition and conducting tests of new systems, the DOD wants proven technologies it can rapidly deploy and then iterate on in the field.

To that end, the Mission Emerge Center will be a space where GDIT’s customers can see demonstrations of the company’s solutions and how they could apply to their own needs — something that isn’t always possible at the Pentagon or IC offices, Gilliland said.

“You are not demonstrating when you’re in the customer spaces. This is a chance to actually show them, and you can have different inputs and you can change different things,” she said. “We can create solutions that we showcase here that are tagged to a sandbox environment that we’re building, where the customer can actually see things.”

GDIT will also be able to invite other vendors — ranging from other General Dynamics units, major tech corporations and commercial companies — to the Mission Emerge Center to facilitate collaboration and co-development on new solutions.

The contractor has around 70 established industry partners in its emerging tech program, as well as over 60 ongoing pilot and proof-of-concept efforts, Gilliland noted.

All together, the venue is expected to help GDIT and its partners develop and deliver new capabilities in ways that account for rapid technological change and evolving customer needs, she said.

“If you put out a [request for proposal] and tell industry to go build something, and they build it for three years and there’s no engagement along the way, you’ll bring them what the military said they wanted — but that was three years ago,” Gilliland said. “And so, how can we create touchpoints where we say, ‘Here is what we are today, and here is where I think you need to be based on sitting alongside you and serving with you every day. Where do you need to be in the next year [or] next month? Come into my lab, and I’ll show you what that could look like.’”