Innovation and Modernization Office (I&M)

Our mission is to accelerate defense innovation through prototyping to rapidly mature and transition capabilities aligned to DoD’s strategic imperatives. The Innovation and Modernization (I&M) office is a comprehensive effort designed to support innovation across multiple lines of effort, including Strategic Priorities, Innovation Outreach and Discovery (IO/ID), Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT), and AUKUS Pillar II Maritime Big Play (MBP). Innovation Showcases are a key line of effort for I&M, which involves conducting an integrated engagement campaign of technical briefings and prototype showcases throughout the year around the U.S. The program aims to plan a series of technology briefings and showcases addressing joint technology needs by adopting practices that reduce the barrier for non-traditional innovators' participation and foster collaboration between DoD and developers. International collaboration is another critical aspect of I&M, with the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) program being a significant initiative. The FCT program aims to find, assess, and field world-class technologies to enhance military capabilities and provide long-term value. The program is based on a cooperative, structured US and Partner-Nation R&D approach that maximizes modernization, increases interoperability, and reduces vulnerabilities. The AUKUS Pillar II Maritime Big Play (MBP) is a collaborative initiative under the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as AUKUS. The MBP is a sequence of increasingly complex collaborative demonstrations and evaluations that will lead to the validation of trilaterally-connected autonomous platforms from the sea floor to the stratosphere, and ultimately enable trilateral production, acquisition, and fielding of these systems.