CDAO, DIU to Jointly Explore CJADC2 Digital Solutions Under MOA on Technology Collaboration

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and the Defense Innovation Unit will jointly experiment with digital solutions for Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control initiatives under a memorandum of agreement that the two Department of Defense agencies signed on Tuesday. One of the CJADC2 projects that CDAO is continuing to pursue in 2024 is the Global Information Dominance Experiments to link the U.S. armed forces sensors into a unified network.

The MOA covers three other areas to systemize the agencies’ collaboration to further fast-track utilization of commercially available data, analytics, software and artificial intelligence tools. Radha Plumb, CDAO chief digital and artificial intelligence officer and a past Potomac Officers Club speaker, expects the partnership to help draw “the best of industry” into the agencies’ enterprise network, CDAO said Wednesday.

According to Plumb, DIU’s capability to identify commercial technologies for adoption will enable quicker CDAO handover of the right tech capabilities to U.S. warfighters. 

The CDAO-DIU cooperation also calls for department-level policy and governance collaboration to accelerate digital technologies adoption and AI and autonomy development and fielding.

Douglas Beck, DIU director, said the two agencies are “natural teammates” in driving the DOD’s adoption of digital innovations. He pointed out that CDAO’s expertise in promoting enterprise-level architecture, solutions and policies jibes with DIU’s main goal of delivering commercial platforms to warfighters.