DIU tries to transition tech to the frontlines faster with launch of new Bridge Program
The Defense Innovation Unit has a new, specialized team that’s hustling to clear major constraints associated with transitioning proven commercial technologies directly into the military services.
“Within one year, we will open co-use classified facilities nationwide, slash cyber authorization timelines by half, and enable agile, end-to-end testing capabilities for young companies desperate to demonstrate,” DIU’s Director Owen West wrote in a memorandum unveiling the Bridge Program this week.
According to that instruction and a Pentagon press release, DIU’s new business unit is charged with “eliminating critical bottlenecks” — explicitly related to security clearances, classified workspace access, and technology testing and accreditations — that have notoriously kept industry-made prototypes from reaching military end users on the frontlines in a timely manner and at scale.
DIU’s current chief of strategic initiatives, Sarah Pearson, will lead the Bridge Program. Pearson, who formerly served as a Navy officer and technology executive, conceptualized this effort for the unit over the last year.
Some of the officials’ activities will include establishing a quicker and more reliable tech accreditation portfolio that’s enabled by cybersecurity and AI capabilities, and modernizing the military’s test and evaluation pipelines.
A major line of effort under the program also focuses on maturing the Defense Department’s model for classified space design, construction, compliance and operation.
DIU’s Bridge Program team is partnering with a broader working group that involves officials from the offices of the undersecretaries of defense for intelligence and security, acquisition and sustainment, and research and engineering, as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency and the military services.
The program has contracted for multiple commercially owned and operated sites across the U.S., including in Texas, California, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New York. More locations are expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
DOD’s press release notes that the second Trump administration’s recent $10 billion investment in Pennsylvania’s defense industry includes funding for “four shared commercial classified facilities, one of which will be built in Pittsburgh — using the joint funding model that the Bridge Program is prototyping.”
Spokespersons from DIU and the Pentagon declined to provide more information about that new program and joint funding model prototype on Thursday, referring DefenseScoop to West’s memo.
“We are in a new era. Transition no longer ends with the success memo,” West wrote. “This era will be defined by making commercial capabilities easily accessible, so the Services may quickly transition and scale for the battlefield. In modern combat, the advantage belongs to those who adopt, and adapt, fastest.”
The Bridge Program’s launch follows a recent reorganization campaign inside DIU, and also marks the team’s latest move under West’s leadership to more rapidly supply measurable weaponry and combat power to the joint force.
“Too much promising technology falls victim to bureaucratic delays, or dies altogether in the endless clearance, authorization, budgeting cycle before it reaches the frontlines,” he wrote in the memo. “That ends today.”
