The priorities of the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley outpost have evolved since its early days as a conduit to the commercial sector.
The Defense Innovation Unit is making riskier bets on new military equipment as it tries to further slash the time it takes to send commercial products to the field, a DIU official said at Defense One’s Tech Summit outside Washington Tuesday.
Now in its second decade of operations, the priorities of the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley outpost have evolved since its early days as a conduit to the commercial sector. DoD leaders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on down are encouraging DIU to move more aggressively amid the latest chapter of a decades-long push to reimagine the military’s notoriously slow tech purchasing process.
“Over the last six months, we’ve gotten pretty clear direction … to really start leaning forward and taking acquisition risk and pushing on projects in such a way that we can find the best capability and get it fielded as quickly as possible,” said Kedar Pavgi, DIU’s director of commercial strategy and operations.
Owen West, who came to DIU in March from the Department of Government Efficiency’s Pentagon team, is pressing the organization to field the most technologically advanced force at the lowest cost, Pavgi said. “Substituting technology for people in the field” to reduce cost per kill is the ultimate goal, Pavgi said.
So far, some of those risks appear to be paying off. DIU is celebrating the June 8 rescue of two downed Apache helicopter pilots near the Strait of Hormuz by a 24-foot drone boat it helped bring to fruition — the first such use of an unmanned surface vessel in combat.
The Corsair drone, built by Saronic Technologies, grew from idea to reality in four months, Conley said. What’s more, the same search for commercial sea systems led to contracts with four more firms that are now working with military commands around the globe, Jarred Conley, head of DIU’s maritime portfolio, added at the conference.
“As we continue to expand, the question is not, ‘Can the boats drive themselves?’” he said. “It’s, ‘What missions can these boats be adapted to do?’”
DIU hopes to carry that momentum forward in the months ahead. One maritime project aims to speed new anti-mine equipment to the Middle East by September, Conley said, while another seeks small, autonomous drone boats to deliver fresh supplies to units across the Indo-Pacific.
The team may be able to take on additional projects next year if a proposed funding bump becomes law.
Though the Trump administration requested $956 million for DIU in 2027, House appropriators would grow that number to $1.1 billion, adding $10 million to fund an off-grid power pilot program and $5 million to continue embedding with other national security organizations. DIU has worked alongside the U.S. military’s combatant commands and with foreign industrial bases for years.
Asked whether he has the resources to meet the mission, Pavgi pointed to the acquisition shortcuts Congress has provided DIU to move more swiftly than usual.
“Other transaction agreements, prize challenge authority … between all those sets of authorities, we are very much executing on the mission that we’ve been given,” he said.
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