International Innovation Initiatives

This program is creating a more lethal force that further integrates the trilateral forces, as well as strengthens the domestic defense industrial base under the regulatory framework authorized under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (Public Law 118-31). It supports the Department’s initiatives to: (1) deter strategic attacks against the United States, and its Allies and partners; (2) deter aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary; and (3) build enduring advantages for the future Joint Force. Specifically, the Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS) will deepen defense capability and technological cooperation by developing and providing joint advanced military capabilities to promote security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. This program provides funding to pursue operationally relevant advanced capability co-development, co-production, and/or co-sustainment; support integration of multi-national capabilities to act as a force multiplier; and test and evaluate promising solutions found across the AUKUS innovation ecosystem. The program portfolio aligns with the critical technology areas and operational requirements. As new AUKUS projects are considered in FY 2026, the intent is to consider proposals submitted from the DoW Components and industry and academia partners. The appropriate leadership will select proposals using a merit-based process that identifies the most promising solutions to operational challenges with an emphasis on transitioning technologies to current or future programs of record.

To keep pace with the rapidly evolving technological landscape, advancing science and technology (S&T) cooperation with our Allies and partners remains important. This project will incentivize the DoW Components, include the Military Services, to engage and/or expand their S&T cooperation with existing partners and with those partners with who they may be engaged in policy or operational activities but not in the S&T realm. In addition, this project will allow the Department to meet new and expanded requirements for substantive, administrative, and operational activities in support on international defense S&T cooperation. The intent is to consider proposals submitted from the DoW Components. The appropriate leadership will select proposals using a merit-based process that identifies the most promising solutions to operational challenges with an emphasis on transitioning technologies current or future programs of record.

To combat the evolving threat and development of critical technologies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) to leverage dual-use technological advances in Allied centers of innovation to achieve the Alliance’s operational requirements, including accelerating the development, testing, and fielding of security technology solutions to achieve an advantage over the evolving threat. The NATO DIANA program only provides non-traditional business partners from Alliance nations with funding to accelerate new technical solutions and commercialization specifically where the technology holds a dual use (commercial and defense in nature) potential. Advanced development and testing to facilitate adoption into U.S. defense programs requires supporting funding for our own labs and test centers to pull that technology into our Defense acquisition ecosystem. This project enables the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)) to assist in accelerating military capability development for U.S. forces as well as our NATO Allies and will expose new U.S. industries to the European markets. Fielding of critical technologies in the proposed areas will have significant positive impact on detecting the enemy first, ensuing effective communications and data exchange between coalition partners, as well as systems developed by different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and enabling robotic and autonomous systems to remain on station longer periods of time for greater operation impact. NATO DIANA advances access to technology across larger security challenges. These enhancements will contribute to increasing lethality across the U.S. and NATO military capabilities. The NATO DIANA initiative will fund dual-use technologies identified through the NATO DIANA challenges found sufficiently mature with the potential for meaningful impact for U.S. forces on the battlefield for continued development, testing, integration, and experimentation and proposes to fund each technology for capability maturation.