Pentagon’s next APFIT round will prioritize tech that ‘can be made cheaply at scale’

The Pentagon will soon start its selection cycle for the next cohort of companies with production-ready capabilities that the military can quickly operationalize for real-world use via the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies, or APFIT program.

Lawmakers and a team led by Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael hosted an event that filled a large caucus room in the Cannon House Office Building on Tuesday, where APFIT awardees showcased their products and spotlighted recent milestones for U.S. military and government officials, a small group of reporters, and bipartisan members and staff from both chambers of Congress.

“For any companies that are out there today, I want to let you know that the next APFIT application is about to open for the next fiscal year — so please, we encourage you to apply,” Michael told the audience. 

Administered by the Defense Department’s R&E directorate that he leads, APFIT was designed to get in-demand equipment into the hands of military personnel years earlier than traditional acquisition timelines would allow, by rapidly providing large batches of direct procurement funding.

The program launched in 2022 during the former Biden administration to help small businesses and non-traditional defense contractors bridge the so-called “valley of death” — or the long-standing gap where successful R&D projects fail to receive backing for production at levels that enable wide-scale DOD adoption. 

“This program has created over $2 billion in awards that have been provided to over 100 small businesses,” Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., said at the event. “That’s an incredible achievement, and we should all celebrate that.” 

Alongside Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, McCollum (the top Democrat on that subcommittee) has helped drive the congressional campaign to create — and continuously fund — APFIT. She said those involved on the Hill will use the program’s recent success to inform their near-term bipartisan efforts to advance and reform defense procurement.

“While we’re celebrating today, this is just one step in solving the valley of death,” McCollum noted.

More than a dozen industry-built products awarded through APFIT — spanning autonomous and counter-drone systems, electronic warfare, expeditionary manufacturing, resilient communications, contested logistics and other mission areas — were on display at Tuesday’s event. 

Michael, who also serves as the DOD’s chief technology officer, recognized several officials onstage for the impacts and accomplishments of their projects, including the Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS drones that were recently deployed by the U.S. against Iran in Operation Epic Fury.

In response to questions from reporters on the sidelines of the event about major impacts of APFIT to date, he also pointed to counter-drone assets and the LUCAS drone, which improves upon Iran’s Shahed-136 and is produced by the Arizona-based manufacturer SpektreWorks for a much lower price tag than many legacy missiles.

“There are all kinds of systems out there now that are trying to and are blending the cost curve down, but this program is about blending that cost curve down permanently when we get these things up to scale,” the CTO said.

Forces in the Middle East and Pacific have shown particular interest, but the demand signal for APFIT capabilities is largely spread out across all the U.S. combatant commands.

“We have each command and component rank all the submissions, and we take those submissions — of course, we add some [consideration around] what’s current and important — but you’re only going to get a limited number of reps and sets with the limited number they can produce,” Michael told DefenseScoop. “It’s a great testing ground to see how they perform, which accelerates their development, because now we have real operational data. So that’s a factor. But the main factor is they pull from all the services that they bring, and we adjudicate without any outside influence.”

The application process for the initial fiscal 2027 APFIT cohort is set to soon open, but Michael did not confirm an official date. 

Regarding the types of products DOD will likely prioritize in that next round, the Pentagon CTO pointed to those that “can be made cheaply at scale.”

“With what we’re seeing in Ukraine and Russia, what we’re seeing in Iran, and what we’re expecting in the Pacific — unmanned, autonomous, AI-driven systems are really important,” he told DefenseScoop.

Despite APFIT’s early success, however, it remains unclear whether and how the program will secure additional funding from Congress to scale the tapped technologies further into fiscal 2027 and beyond, as lawmakers remain in a deadlock over DOD’s future budget.

“Things that succeed, we tend to find money for,” Calvert told reporters.