By leveraging AI technologies, the Department of Defense (DoD) can streamline and accelerate procurement timelines, thereby fostering innovation from a wide range of businesses traditionally overlooked in defense contracting, according to a Pentagon official.
Maynard Holliday, assistant secretary for critical technologies in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, explained that a common industry complaint is that the department’s contracting processes are too slow.
“One of the things that my colleagues in Silicon Valley told us is that [they] need to get on a contract sooner, [they] can’t wait a year [or] six months, they got payrolls to meet,” Holliday said during Defense One’s Tech Summit on June 18.
He explained that AI technologies, especially large language models, can increasingly be utilized for administrative tasks, promising to streamline and accelerate contracting processes within the DoD.
AI technologies complement human capabilities by automating administrative tasks, offering deeper data insights, and enhancing overall contract management procedures without replacing human involvement, Holliday said.
As a result, this could empower “non-traditional startups unfamiliar with the complexities of DoD’s acquisition and procurement processes to gain access to available contracts more efficiently,” he said.
Holliday explained that the DoD currently offers multiple pathways for non-traditional contractors to engage, utilizing technologies to facilitate their access to contracting opportunities.
“[The DoD] has a lot of front doors that are implementing technologies to help those non-traditional organizations access DoD contracting opportunities,” Holliday said.
He specifically highlighted the critical technology roadmaps established by the Critical Technologies Office, which set the technical direction for the DoD to align industry, academia, and international partners toward shared objectives.
Moreover, Holliday underscored that trust in both systems and technologies lies at the foundation of AI utilization within the department, whether for contracting, administrative tasks, or operational goals.
“We want to be able to raise the level of trust even in a combatant situation, so that the warfighter, the commander, the user will trust the system and be able to turn up the trust continuum, and say, ‘Alright, I trust it to engage incoming systems’,” Holliday said.
