Defense Innovation Unit urges scaling commercial technology, flexible funding and cultural change to speed fielding

Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, told the House Cyber, IT, and Innovation Subcommittee DIU is focused on embedding with warfighters, creating pathways to scale and changing incentives to make the department a better customer for commercial technology.

"We simply cannot meet the strategic imperative facing our nation unless we can integrate and deploy disruptive technologies from commercially derived sources ... with the focus, speed, and scale necessary to deter major conflict or win a force to fight," Beck said.

Beck described five core lines of effort for DIU: embedding with combatant commands and services to align projects to operational needs; partnering with services to create pathways to scale; catalyzing the defense innovation community through a network called DICE; deepening ties to the commercial…