Building the Tech Coalition

Abstract：There are frequent discussions about how the U.S. military should draw from the country’s commercial innovation base to gain an advantage, especially when it comes to the application of artificial intelligence (AI). Too often, conversations lament missed opportunities, valleys of death, painful contracting, or other U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) processes. While these hurdles are real, there are also positive stories of instances when commercial tech companies, military leadership, and warfighters came together to create a meaningful advantage on the battlefield. One of these is the story of how the 18th Airborne Corps used the Scarlet Dragon Exercise series to develop the Maven Smart System (MSS), an instance where frontline army users and a coalition of technology companies—enabled by DOD leadership and policies—pursued and developed a new technology that is having a meaningful impact on operations.