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Applied Artificial Intelligence | Biomanufacturing | Contested Logistics Technologies | Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance | Scaled Hypersonics |

Scaled Directed Energy

Applied Artificial Intelligence

Whitehouse issues new Executive Order:PROMOTING ADVANCED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INNOVATION AND SECURITY

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/

NPS Launches New Master’s in Artificial Intelligence Focused on Warfighter Needs

The new MSAI program at NPS aligns with the six Critical Technology Areas recently announced by Dr. Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)), as essential to address the United States’ most pressing national security challenges. In an official video posted on OUSW(R&E)’s LinkedIn, Michael stated that applied AI will transform the Department of War (DoW) into an “AI-First” organization, revolutionizing decision-making and operational efficiency. The effort is in response to direction from the White House.

https://nps.edu/-/nps-launches-new-master-s-in-artificial-intelligence-focused-on-warfighter-needs

The Navy’s Strategy to Weaponize Data and Artificial Intelligence

This strategy sets the conditions to equip and empower all DON missions with the data and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities necessary to rapidly learn and adapt to fight better tomorrow. It is our blueprint for becoming an “AI-first” maritime force, where speed is the decisive variable in maintaining dominance. Similar to traditional assets such as personnel, weapons systems, and munitions, our data and AI must be deliberately integrated and employed across the fabric of operations to realize the

exponential warfighting advantage of the digital age.

Weaponizing data and AI, in this context, is about purposely applying these technologies to produce, improve, and accelerate data-driven advantages that dramatically improve warfighting effects, optimize our essential business operations, and protect our competitive edge as the world’s dominant maritime force.

https://news.usni.org/2026/07/16/the-navys-strategy-to-weaponize-data-and-artificial-intelligence

Biomanufacturing

Built From Biology

Harnessing the power of microbes and plants to make new biology-based products, materials, and fuels to power the U.S. bioeconomy.

Berkeley Lab has capabilities in all aspects of biomanufacturing. Our teams of synthetic biologists, biochemists, and process engineers collaborate with academic groups and companies to invent innovative solutions and advance them to market readiness – changing what’s possible in fuels, therapeutics, food, personal products, and high-performance materials.

https://www.lbl.gov/research/biomanufacturing/

Army Seeks to Establish Self Sufficiency

Industrial revolutions are rare, but when they come, they change everything. We are at the start of just such a time now. The convergence of synthetic biology, robotics, and biomanufacturing is ushering in a new bioeconomy that is based on biotechnologies rather than petrochemical production.

The Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC) is expanding its biomanufacturing capabilities to be the tip of the spear in this effort – and in the process, providing a big job boost by helping to establish a bioeconomy in the U.S. and Maryland.

https://www.cbc.devcom.army.mil/center-focus/2021-biomanufacturing/

The NIST Biomanufacturing Program draws from a broad array of unique, interdisciplinary expertise, resources, and facilities including biophysical characterization of biotherapeutics including colloidal and rheological measurements state-of-the-art mass spectrometry, NMR, and cryo-electron microscopy capabilities for characterizing biotherapeutics world-class neutron and X-ray scattering facilities to determine biotherapeutic stability and structure.

We work closely with stakeholders from across the biopharmaceutical community including industry, FDA, universities, and equipment vendors to identify key measurement problems. NIST holds an annual Biopharmaceutical Measurement Roundtable consisting of members of the industry for feedback on the relevance of its research activities, and to learn of current and emerging measurement needs.

https://www.nist.gov/biomanufacturing

Defense Industrial Base: DOD Efforts to Develop Domestic Biomanufacturing

Two key takeaways – issues and opportunities:

Biomanufacturing is increasingly critical to DOD and holds the potential to expand and strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base. According to DOD officials, biomanufacturing has the potential to create material for a wide range of defense applications, such as explosives, body armor, and solvents to maintain weapon systems. Biomaterials can expand or create new defense capabilities. They can also replace products and components that are critical to DOD with materials that are domestically sourced, cheaper, and safer.

DOD identified that the U.S. does not have sufficient infrastructure, such as biomanufacturing facilities, to support the advancement of promising biotechnology projects from the laboratory to commercial-scale production. According to DOD officials, expanding the use of biomanufacturing contributes to the establishment of new supply chains.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-107797.pdf

Contested Logistics

Army settles on five companies for sustainment robot competition

Capability Program Executive Mission Autonomy has selected five companies to develop prototypes under Project Sustainment, the Army's latest blueprint to develop and field a medium-sized ground robot for tactical logistics.

The effort is part of the Army’s desire to “remove soldiers from high-risk delivery routes while delivering essential supplies directly to the tactical edge,” reads the announcement. The service plans to kick off a transforming in contact rotation focused on that mission in the second quarter of fiscal year 2027.

https://insidedefense.com/insider/army-settles-five-companies-sustainment-robot-competition

Marine Corps Installations and Logistics Enterprise 2026

“The Reference A for USMC Installations and Logistics”

“… MCILE personnel juggle today’s demands while preparing for future missions, developing and codifying ways to overcome the challenges of contested environments.”

Contested Environment. Marine activities are monitored and contested every day. Every site that Marines operate from is exposed to space, cyber, information, and potentially drone threats. Forward deployed forces are vulnerable to direct strikes and interdiction of needed material. Non-kinetic effects are proving to be just as disruptive and strategically consequential as kinetic effects while being generally cheaper to employ and often non-attributional, a recipe that makes their use increasingly more attractive to potential adversaries. Persistent safeguarding of the installations, transportation, and supply sources that comprise global USMC posture is an operational imperative.

https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jun/23/2003953060/-1/-1/0/MCILE26_REF-A.PDF

Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance

USHERING IN THE NEXT FRONTIER OF QUANTUM INNOVATION

Executive Order 14413 issued June 22, 2026

Section 1. Purpose. America stands at the cusp of a quantum revolution. Quantum information science and technology (QIST) will provide transformational capabilities that will drive American innovation, power economic growth, generate high-paying jobs, and bolster national security. In 2018, I laid the foundation for United States leadership in QIST by signing into law the National Quantum Initiative Act and doubling Federal investment in QIST research and development. Today, as other nations move quickly to challenge American leadership, the United States must take a cohesive, whole-of-government approach to accelerate deployment and commercialization of quantum computing, sensing, and networking.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/ushering-in-the-next-frontier-of-quantum-innovation/

Before Q-Day: The Race to Quantum First

Somewhere, a hard drive is filling up with secrets no one can read yet, and its owner is waiting for the machine that opens them all at once. On March 30, 2026, that wait got shorter.

Two independent research teams lowered the public estimates for breaking the encryption that secures banking, communications, and classified traffic. One showed that Shor’s algorithm, the quantum method for factoring the large numbers behind public-key encryption, could run at cryptographically relevant scale with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable neutral-atom qubits. Google Quantum AI, with the Ethereum Foundation and Stanford, put the threshold for breaking elliptic-curve encryption below 500,000 physical qubits on a superconducting machine. Google is planning as if the estimates will keep falling. Days before the papers appeared, it set a deadline to move its products onto quantum-resistant encryption by 2029.

…Yet the United States is preparing for the quantum era one office at a time, while the threat is arriving all at once. Cryptography, artificial intelligence, networks, sensing, and the supply chain are being handled as five separate problems on five separate schedules. They share one deadline and one prize: “Quantum First,” before China. Responsibility should sit with the National Security Council, with the first year of work inexpensive and concrete, and allies offered a stake in the science.

https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/before-q-day-the-race-to-quantum-first/

New NSF Project Triad to Explore Real-World Application of Quantum Technologies

The National Science Foundation unveiled a new quantum initiative called Project Triad to realize the U.S. government's vision of implementing quantum technologies across various sectors such as energy, biotechnology and manufacturing.

https://www.executivegov.com/articles/quantum-technology-real-world-application-nsf-project-triad

DoW Unleashes Quantum Defense Strategy to Harden Networks and Empower the Joint Force

This comprehensive, forward-looking plan addresses the urgent need to secure the Department's communications, data, and command and control systems against the emerging threats posed by future quantum computing capabilities.

The strategy prioritizes strengthening industry collaboration to drive efficiency across the enterprise. A key element of this is preparing the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) — the engine of the Secretary of War's "Arsenal of Freedom"— for upcoming Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) cryptographic compliance.

https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4524599/securing-global-dominance-dow-unleashes-quantum-defense-strategy-to-harden-netw/

The DoW Post-Quantum Cryptography Strategy is available here: https://dowcio.war.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/DoW-PQC-Strategy.pdf

Connecting the battlefield: Engineering the Army’s future command and control fabric

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. — As part of the Communications-Electronics Command, the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command hosted the first in a series of Leader Professional Development briefs at Fort Huachuca on June 9, 2026. During the brief, the Pentagon Joint Staff provided USAISEC’s senior leadership with key insights into the Department of War’s strategic direction.

In alignment with the DoW's vision, USAISEC is focusing its engineering efforts on emerging global networking concepts, such as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. CJADC2 is the data-centric framework supporting the DoW’s warfighting concept designed to connect all U.S. military assets across every domain (i.e., land, sea, air, space and cyberspace) into a single, integrated network. The primary goal is to provide commanders with a decisive information advantage, enabling them to make better, faster decisions than the adversaries.

https://www.army.mil/article-amp/293357/connecting_the_battlefield_engineering_the_armys_future_command_and_control_fabric

Bipartisan Bill Would Expand Financial Support for US Quantum Industry

Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., introduced bipartisan legislation on July 6 that would expand the Export-Import Bank of the United States’ (EXIM) authority to support a broader range of quantum technologies.

Specifically, the bill broadens the current definition of “quantum computing” under EXIM’s China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP) to “quantum information science and technology.”



https://www.meritalk.com/articles/bipartisan-bill-would-expand-financial-support-for-us-quantum-industry/

Scaled Hypersonics

Next Generation Hypersonics for the Department of War

SAM Special Notice: This Special Notice is issued to provide awareness of the release of a Request for Solutions (RFS) for an other transaction project in accordance with 10 U.S.C. 4022. The RFS title Next Generation Hypersonics for the Department of War has been issued as part of the Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trust Systems (S2MARTS) consortium managed by National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL) and administered by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division.

Vendors interested in responding to this RFS must be members of the Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems (S2MARTS) Consortium. See: S2MARTS.org

SAM URL: https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/0466f126ade34bfdbe5b93a1bdba156a/view

GAO: Pentagon’s hypersonic programs grappling with schedule constraints, production woes

The Government Accountability Office's annual assessment of major DOD programs details potential risks and delays for three high-profile hypersonic weapons.

The military services remain challenged to deliver key hypersonic weapons to warfighters by their previously projected timelines, according to a new report from the U.S. government’s watchdog organization.

Published on Friday by the Government Accountability Office, the review highlights that three of the Pentagon’s ongoing hypersonic weapons programs are at risk of being delayed or delivering systems that have not been fully demonstrated. The efforts detailed in the report include the Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS).

https://defensescoop.com/2026/07/07/gao-pentagon-hypersonic-programs-schedule-constraints-production-woes/

JUST IN: Joint Army, Navy Hypersonic Weapon Effort Lacks Strategy, GAO Finds

The Navy and the Army both have plans for the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missile, but the Defense Department does not have a comprehensive plan to help both services coordinate the purchase, a recent Government Accountability report found.

“Navy Ship Modernization: DOD Needs Comprehensive Strategy to Field Hypersonic Missile Capability,” published July 17, said the collective $50 billion effort lacks a comprehensive plan, which could end up making it more expensive and less efficient for both services.

The Navy and Army are jointly developing the same missile, with the Navy’s effort called the Conventional Prompt Strike and the Army’s called the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. The Army is responsible for producing the missile glide body for both services, among other responsibilities. 

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2026/7/20/just-in-pentagons-hypersonic-effort-lacks-strategy-report-finds

Scaled Directed Energy

Department of War Announces Awards $86 Million Joint Laser Weapon System Agreements to Scale Directed Energy Capabilities

The Department of War announced today the award of two Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements to advance the United States' next-generation cruise missile and unmanned aerial system (UAS) defense architecture. The agreements with nLIGHT Defense and Lockheed Martin Aculight, executed by the Department's Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) Critical Technology Area (CTA), have an initial award value of $86 million and a total program ceiling of $847 million.

https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4539008/department-of-war-announces-awards-86-million-joint-laser-weapon-system-agreeme/

Army reveals new details on autonomous launcher, high energy laser program

Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano told an audience Tuesday that the service is looking to award the first contracts for its CAML program next month, and it is in final negotiations with AV for its E-HEL initiative.

WASHINGTON — The Army could award contracts for its high-profile Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) program next month, according to Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service’s portfolio acquisition executive for Fires.

Lozano also announced that the Army is currently “negotiating a contract” with AeroVironment (AV) for the service’s Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program, the Army’s first program of record for a new family of high-energy lasers designed to take down airborne threats, primarily drones.

https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/army-reveals-new-details-on-autonomous-launcher-high-energy-laser-program/

If your organization needs assistance meeting Federal or Department of Defense cyber security requirements, contact Marc Violante, Director of Federal Market Strategies at marcv@wispro.org

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