The fourth and final line of effort in the 2026 National Defense Strategy calls for the supercharging of the defense industrial base; and within that effort is a call to grow nontraditional vendors.

To that end, the War Department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict will host a one-day “accelerator” event, July 24, in the national capital region, in which representatives from more than a dozen companies will have the opportunity to pitch innovative solutions across nine areas related to the military’s special operations community.

The event comes as the office is seeking ways to rapidly innovate technologies and get them into the hands of warfighters quicker than the traditional acquisition avenues.

“Traditionally, in acquisition, there’s a lot of work and energy around the government figuring out what it needs and then telling industry to just build what it thinks it needs; and this is flipping the script on that,” explained Bonnie Evangelista, the office’s acquisition director for the Secretariat for Special Operations.

Rather, she said, the office is working to identify what the mission needs and then identify what industry-driven solutions already exist on the market that can meet that.

“That is a complete 180 from [a traditional] acquisition perspective,” Evangelista said, noting that the state of battlefield technology is rapidly changing in a matter of hours and days rather than years and decades as in the past. 

The method the office incorporates into fielding these new technologies is likened to a “critical triangle,” wherein warfighters are put in direct contact with private-sector innovators, as well as acquisition industry experts who understand the fiscal and contractual aspect of getting the new technology into the field.

“We are doing this accelerator event specifically to highlight the might of that triangle coming together to leverage, and kind of put pen to paper on what [Secretary of War Pete Hegseth] is talking about [regarding] empowering the warfighter [and] creating faster spirals to get technology into the field — and doing that in a very, very short time frame,” said Carmella Teeter, deputy assistant secretary of war for special operations analysis, resources and capabilities.

Whereas many traditional acquisition processes can take three or more years to get from awarding of a contract to putting the new technology into the field, the goal for getting any innovative approach or capability that the office selects for acquisition into the field is six months or less, with contracts being awarded the day of the event.

To get participants for the accelerator event, the team called for short proposal submissions, asking each applicant for a two-page white paper proposal on how they would address certain challenges.

Soon, the office received nearly 700 applications, which were eventually narrowed down to 15 organizations being invited to the July 24 event.

During the day of the event, participants will give an initial presentation consisting of an oral presentation, technical brief and government question-and-answer session.

Any project selected during the first phase — or gate — will be awarded an initial $10,000, with the eligibility to be invited to the second gate of the event and potentially be awarded an additional $50,000 if the technology meets government mission requirements.

Those companies that pass the second gate will then proceed to the third gate, which is prototype delivery, followed by the final gate of production.

“[The accelerator] is very focused on trying to break down those barriers to entry that we see in particular with small businesses and the startups,” Teeter said, adding that the goal is to cut bureaucracy and create synergy by way of the aforementioned critical triangle.

Teeter said that what ultimately drives projects like the upcoming accelerator event is the necessity to remember that the warfighters deserve to have the best technology at their disposal, and as quickly as possible.

“We owe that to these people that are going to be asked to solve the impossible problems,” she said. “We owe them unfair advantage on the battlefield, and that’s what this is all designed to do: to give our warfighters unfair advantage by making sure that we remember from all the way up to the senior levels here in the [War Department] that their voice and their comfort level with that technology is the thing that we care about most; and we want to empower them to have a say in their future with that.”

If the upcoming event ultimately proves successful, Teeter said she could envision similar events also permeating throughout the department.

By Matthew Olay, Pentagon News