Defense Tech Developments to Watch in 2025

Successful implementation of zero-trust cybersecurity strategies in government requires a significant cultural and systemic shift.

The Defense Department is modernizing technology across the enterprise to remain a dominant fighting force worldwide. Its new Fulcrum: DOD Information Technology Advancement Strategy, artificial intelligence and the workforce issues dictated technology talk in 2024 and will shape priorities in the new year.

“In the modern battlefield, technology and new innovations are crucial,” said Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, about national security priorities. “We have put a variety of provisions to help move toward [innovation and fielding new technology].”

Fulcrum Plan is the ‘Nexus’ of Strategic Priorities

Released in June, Fulcrum is DOD’s plan to modernize its IT systems and capabilities. The strategy focuses on four key areas: providing joint warfighting IT capabilities, modernizing information networks and compute, optimizing IT governance and strengthening digital workforce.

The strategy, according to DOD Deputy CIO Leslie Beavers, aims to expand strategic dominance, improve efficiency and enable the deployment of emerging technologies to support the warfighter.

“It is called ‘Fulcrum’ because it sits at the nexus between our national security strategy, our strategic management plans, our really big thinking strategies, our workforce implementation strategies, our software modernization strategies, our cybersecurity strategies, and it gives you tangible steps to take to turn that strategic vision into an operational reality,” Beavers said during the AFCEA TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore in August.

DOD Deputy Customer Experience Officer Robert Franzen said that the strategy is a “North Star” for department IT initiatives, bridging the gap between strategies and technology. He emphasized the importance of collaboration across the department for successful implementation of the plan in the coming years.

“It’s an integrated approach where we build upon the workforce, further improve governance, also addressing the big rocks for modernization, which all really leads into the fact that Fulcrum is about leveraging technology as a strategic enabler to improve decision advantage for the warfighter on the battlefield,” Franzen told GovCIO Media & Research in August.

Zero Trust Implementation Gets Updates

Cybersecurity is a key pillar of Fulcrum and informs the department’s zero-trust implementation goals laid out in the 2021 executive order on cybersecurity.

“To move fast, we want to have zero trust baked in,” DOD Director of Cloud & Software Modernization George Lamb told GovCIO Media & Research at AFCEA TechNet Cyber. “It’s an inherent part of everything we do.”

Similarly, DOD released in June an updated zero trust overlays document to help department components implement zero trust. The document outlines plans to phase in zero-trust controls and conduct a gap analysis to help DOD reach its goals, according to Will Schmitt, division chief at the DOD Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office.

“Zero trust is a data-centric strategy for security,” Schmitt said. “You’re protecting the data itself. You’re moving that protection boundary from the perimeter right down to what’s critical to be protected, and what that means is that everybody has to be authorized and authenticated to access that piece of information.”

“The overlays are given the ability to quickly determine that 70% and 90% of the controls are in place. They’re there so we can be confident as we operate,” said Lamb of the overlays.

Implementing zero trust at DOD comes with its share of challenges like multiple classification environments. During the GovCIO Media & Research Defense IT Summit in February, Randy Resnick, director of the DOD Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office, highlighted that there are many ways to implement zero trust.

“You can improve where you have existing in the ground, we call that course of action one. You could do commercial cloud, which we’re engaging in with the [Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability] vendors right now to see whether or not they could do zero trust in their clouds — and that’s aggressively being worked. And of course, action three would be on preliminary private cloud, which we are aware a number of companies are doing on their own,” said Resnick.

Zero-trust implementation is a cornerstone of the national security mission, intelligence CIOs said during a panel at DoDIIS Worldwide in October in Omaha. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency CIO Mark Chatelain said that zero trust is essential to protecting against both external adversaries and insider risks.

“Zero trust is a very important initiative, and I think it’s going to really have a major effect also on the way that we do cyber defense because we recognize that we’re moving from more network-centric defenses to data-centric defenses,” Chatelain said in October. “If you assume that the network is compromised, you’re in a much better position.”

Artificial Intelligence is the Future … and the Present

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has been working to promote AI modernization initiatives. In September, the Pentagon’s CAIO Radha Plumb announced Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories, CDAO’s new AI acquisition plan. Plumb said that the plan will make buying AI easier for DOD.

“Let’s make a layer cake instead of a vertically integrated stack,” said Plumb in a conversation with Dcode Co-Founder and CEO Meagan Metzger. “Let’s figure out how we buy each of those pieces. … Let’s create some acquisition pathways, both on the prototype and challenge side, and if you’re successful, [it will show] what a scaled enterprise can look like. And then let’s do that in a predictable, repeatable way.”

AI uses more processing power than traditional applications and Defense components are working to find the computing to run AI systems. They also cost money that is not necessarily in budgets. Collaboration and smart budgeting come together to solve these problems, Space Force Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer Chandra Donelson said during the NVIDIA AI Summit in Washington, D.C.

“We need industry’s help…understanding what our compute and infrastructure needs are, and then helping us map out our strategy to be able to scale that across the department,” said Donelson. “We do want to invest heavily into compute this year for fiscal year 2025. It’s something that is a top priority for me.”

The Navy is developing more AI and autonomous systems for the future of war, said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti in October. The Navy’s “Project 33” plan operationalizes robotic and autonomous systems to meet China’s technological progress.

“It’s pretty clear that, based on what [China President Xi Jinping] has said, his military forces need to be ready by 2027 for war,” said Franchetti. “My objective in the navigation plan is to make sure that we are, going forward, fully able to integrate the man-unmanned teaming concepts through these platforms, whether it’s under the sea, on the sea or above the sea.”

AI development is a “modern-day arms race” for the Defense Department. Emerging tech can be a force multiplier on and off the battlefield, Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) AI/ML Program Manager Jamie Fitzgibbon said during the GovCIO Media & Research AI Summit in November.

“The first one to finish gets to write the rules. It behooves us to do it responsibly, but to move fast,” said Fitzgibbon.

The Pentagon is finding new ways to use AI to solve new problems. In 2024, DOD launched GigEagle, an AI-powered platform that helps connect short-term tech talent with agencies that need them, to supplement its workforce needs. According to 75th Innovation Command Chief Talent Officer Major Craig Robbins, GigEagle can identify hundreds of potential candidates within seconds, making the process significantly faster and more efficient.

“The whole concept of a skills marketplace is new to the Department of Defense,” Robbins told GovCIO Media & Research in May. “It’s relatively new to the workforce at large…GigEagle aligns with the Army People Strategy by enabling the army to shift from simply distributing personnel to a more deliberate process of managing the talents of our soldiers and civilians, especially those who are serving in the reserve and the National Guard.”

The Workforce Drives Security

DOD needs a modern workforce to meet its modernization goals. The Defense Innovation Board unanimously voted in favor of recommendations aimed at driving innovation through personnel and collaboration during the group’s July 17 public meeting.

“Innovators often can’t get promoted, can’t get the good jobs, and in that frustration, they oftentimes leave,” said board member Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Leaders have to provide top cover for innovators. We do that as mentors and leaders notionally. But for the ‘mavericks’ that are amongst us, those that can really bring innovation, we’ve got to find a place for them, promote them and make sure they have a future to eventually get into positions of leadership themselves.”

DOD is short thousands of cybersecurity professionals, according to Principal Director for Resources & Analysis Mark Gorak. The department, however, is making progress on the 2023-2027 DOD Cyber Workforce Strategy Implementation Plan, released in late 2023.

“If you’re only operating at 70% of your strength, you are not fulfilling your full mission. And then our workforce becomes overworked and overburdened,” Gorak said in June. “We don’t execute as proficiently as we would like. Our goal is above 90% across the board, which is a pretty good goal and we’re at 75% now.”

Evolving cybersecurity threats require a modern workforce throughout DOD. Department of the Navy CIO Jane Rathbun told GovCIO Media & Research in February that her office is leveraging all available resources to secure the entire cyber domain.

“Getting the right workforce — who really understands this environment and understands how to work and improve the control and management of data from a security perspective — is critical,” she said. “We are leveraging the myriad authorities that we’ve been given, … like the [DOD] Cyber Excepted Service, the cyber workforce, all of our people have been tagged, we are working on training initiatives and really pronouncing more loudly the role that they play in delivering capability to the warfighter.”

A partnership between DIU and the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) wants to accelerate adoption of commercial tech for national security applications and develop the future leaders to manage said solutions. DIU and NPS signed a memorandum of understanding in April to collaborate on these goals.

“[The memo] facilitates a seamless integration of talents and technologies, allowing NPS faculty and students to gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge defense technologies at DIU, while DIU personnel benefit from NPS’s advanced research resources,” NPS Director of Research Innovation Kaitie Penry told GovCIO Media & Research. “Regular exchanges of personnel and ideas ensure that best practices and lessons learned are shared, accelerating the development of innovative solutions.”

Defense components need to train the workforce to use AI responsibly and effectively. The Innovation Directorate Army Recruiting Command is focusing on education, fluency and literacy to ensure better workforce adoption. The command’s acting Director Col. Kris Saling said that a data literacy course for members of the workforce has helped staff become more critical consumers of data. The course has been adopted for its professional military education, and now, everyone at the command receives the training.

“You need the folks who are the engineers who are going to build the car, but what do we actually need for the folks who are going to drive it? Or the folks who aren’t necessarily driving it, but they need to know it’s on the road. This leads kind of how we’re tackling that problem,” Saling said during the GovCIO Media & Research AI Summit.