Army Launches Strategic Capital Initiative to Attract Private Investment

The U.S. Army is asking industry to help modernize the technological backbone of its installations and industrial base through a request for information issued last week.

The Strategic Capital Initiative (SCI), according to Army officials, aims to attract investors, manufacturers, energy developers and advanced‑technology firms to co‑develop infrastructure and supply‑chain capabilities essential to future warfighting.

“The strategic vision for this is building the Army of tomorrow with private industry today,” said Deputy Under Secretary of the Army Dave Fitzgerald. “We know we have to move at the speed of innovation. This initiative is a direct invitation to the private sector to become our partner in a historic modernization effort.”

Army officials said the initiative represents a structural shift toward co-investing with industry in dual-use technologies that benefit both national defense and commercial markets, rather than relying solely on congressional appropriations and traditional budgeting cycles.

“We’re trying to create a new public‑private partnership model that is centered around the capital markets, the credit markets,” Fitzgerald explained during a media roundtable last week. “We cannot be solely reliant on Congressionally appropriated funds, because there’s just not enough to go around.”

Fitzgerald said aging infrastructure across Army installations is increasingly unable to support next-generation systems. New aviation platforms, including the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), will require modern hangars, power systems and maintenance infrastructure.

“We’re going to need new hangars, because the hangars that we have for the legacy aviation platforms that have been in the arsenal 50 years, they don’t fit it,” Fitzgerald said.

Dual‑Use Technology as the Engine of the Strategic Capital Initiative

The SCI is designed to cultivate ecosystems around dual-use technologies that can support both military and commercial markets. Fitting within the Pentagon’s technology modernization strategy, the initiative moves away from traditional defense acquisition models that rely on bespoke supply chains and specialized facilities built solely and single‑customer economics that slow innovation and inflate costs.

“We’re not doing an RFI as a … brainstorming exercise. If we get novel approaches that align with what we need, we can then go direct back to the proposer with a targeted [commercial service offering],” he said.

He added that the initiative is intended to reshape the industrial and technological foundation that produces Army systems and capabilities. Similar to the Army’s FUZE innovation engine, SCI is designed to accelerate development cycles and deliver capabilities more quickly.

“It’s not so much the end product per se,” he said. “This is more like trying to break down the supply chain, stuff that we know that we’re going to need for our own needs, but that there are also commercial use forces.”

The Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle is one example of this dual-use model. The vehicle relies heavily on commercial components, which Fitzgerald said demonstrates how defense programs can leverage existing commercial manufacturing ecosystems.

“The ISV is essentially 80% commercial parts,” he said. “Is there a way that we can effectively become a sub‑tier supplier back into the commercial market for automotive parts?”

Fitzgerald said SCI could also strengthen supply chain efficiency by encouraging domestic production of key components, including rare earth elements and critical minerals used in defense systems.

“These supply chains overlap with commercial markets,” Fitgerald said. “Heavy rare earths that go into small drones … also go into the motors that make your car window go up,”

By sharing early investment risk, the Army hopes to incentivize tech firms to expand domestic manufacturing and develop resilient energy microgrids without relying entirely on appropriated funds, Fitzgerald said. The Army intends to act as a stable anchor customer or co-investor to make these ventures commercially viable, he emphasized.

“We are really looking for innovative models of both financing and operating on how the Army can help de-risk these investments for private capital and how we can align long-term for our partners with the Army’s co-mission,” Fitzgerald said.