WASHINGTON — Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and leaders from Anduril, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Perennial Autonomy and RTX announced May 5 that they will “sprint” to conduct a series of combined Army and defense industry partnered hackathon events to integrate critical military technology systems.
This “Right to Integrate” hackathon, or R2I, is an Army-Industry partnered sprint that will ensure offensive and defensive weapon systems, and business systems across the Army, can collectively integrate, share data and communicate with each other.
Historically, multiple systems from multiple manufacturers have struggled with cross-platform integration — creating competing information silos inside operational Army units. Building on the success of the approach for Next Generation Command and Control for open architecture, this hackathon sprint, possibly the largest in human history, will have profound impacts.
“We’ve known for a long time that our systems, weapons, and sensors need to talk to each other so that we can dominate the battlefield,” said Driscoll. “The war in Ukraine showed the world that speed matters and an open architecture construct is highly effective in high-intensity warfare. We haven’t been moving fast enough. The U.S. Army, along with our great defense industry partners, will lead this effort on behalf of our nation and ensure that we remain the dominant fighting force on the planet.”
Historically, the U.S. Army has paid defense companies for exquisite war-fighting systems, with a siloed approach to procurement and program management both inside the government and within the defense sector itself. Unfortunately, these rarely communicated with each other and required additional costs, time, and field service engineers to manually integrate the information or systems. These manual integrations were often bespoke and frequently failed. This time-consuming and expensive process is no longer sufficient for the Information Age.
“We cannot fight from a swivel chair across multiple disaggregated systems anymore. We must integrate at the speed of digital information, and leverage the technologies of our time, like agentic artificial intelligence, drone swarms, and cyber weapons. I’m incredibly grateful for the rapid and wholehearted support these companies have shown us. There are no better defense industry partners in the world that in the U.S.,” said Driscoll.
The idea for this initiative is not new; however, it became a reality for the world as Ukraine’s existential threat drove their modular open system architecture command, or MOSA, and control system to effectively integrate drones, sensors, and shooting platforms in a single system. By mandating that all entrants meet the criteria of exposing their application programming interface, the Ukrainian military quickly and effectively integrated information across all platforms. The Army started in this direction with NGC2 and is now expanding to a broader array of systems.
“Soldiers don’t have time to wait while systems that should already be talking to each other get patched together on a battlefield,” said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve. “It’s a wicked problem, and R2I puts our industry partners and our Soldiers in the same room to solve it as rapidly as possible. That’s what the American Soldier deserves.”
While this initiative helps the U.S. Army and broader military, it is also beneficial for the defense industry and non-traditional vendors as it increases competition, improves integration of new technology, and ensures a single company isn’t required to bear the burden of this change. As this is happening simultaneously for all participants, everyone benefits, but no one more than the American Soldier.
“We’ve seen the cost of integration approach zero in the commercial space – especially with software systems with open interfaces and architectures,” said Dr. Alex Miller, chief technology officer for the U.S. Army. “We have seen standards come and go in the department for decades, but are still beholden to sub-par implementation, close and proprietary interfaces, or systems that lack the flexibility to adapt over time.”
“MOSA has shifted from a verb – how we do things – to a noun. How companies find ways to use their architecture,” said Miller. “We are setting conditions to where being open is industry’s ticket to participate. If you do not expose your interfaces and your documentation, you will not be able to join the ecosystem. This will be especially true for autonomous systems.”
The first event will be held at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the coming weeks. Anduril, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Perennial Autonomy and RTX are all supporting with dozens of pieces of technology and equipment, as well as engineers and scientists, to join Army leaders, Soldiers, and technical experts.
During the sprint, the companies will sign a statement of support for the Army’s integration efforts, for both current systems and future systems still in development. The statement highlights that the hackathon sprint will be carried out at no cost to the Army.
At the heart of this initiative lies a vital Army-Industry partnership united by a single purpose: warfighter supremacy. By breaking down barriers and working shoulder-to-shoulder with industry leaders, the Army is ensuring an interconnected, adaptable force. This joint effort is essential to achieving true decision dominance, allowing our Soldiers to sense, decide, and strike faster than any enemy force in future combat operations.
