U.S. Department of the Army Secretary and 2024 Wash100 Award winner Christine Wormuth made it clear at this year’s South by Southwest festival in March that the service branch is operating under a software-first directive. She specifically noted that “the Army’s success on future battlefields will depend on [its] ability to rapidly update software and disseminate it to the operational force. Software development must be a source of our military advantage.”
At the Potomac Officers Club’s CIO Summit in April, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Data, Engineering and Software Jennifer Swanson shared more insights on what the Army is looking for from its partners and why software is such a critical part of its current strategy.
Swanson will sit on a panel at POC’s 2024 Army Summit this Thursday, June 13. The event has been held annually for nearly a decade now and is the definitive briefing for the government contracting community on all things Army modernization and technology. You don’t want to miss it! Browse the full lineup and agenda here and register here.
During a fireside chat with Rancher Government Solutions’ Tricia Fitzmaurice at the CIO Summit, Swanson acknowledged that the service’s new software focus might be strange for Department of Defense collaborators at first, given that for many, the Army is synonymous with hardware. But Swanson said “all of that hardware is truly software-driven today” and that technicians are working to develop ways to update software in the field quickly, especially in a potential conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary.
“The ability to be able to maintain overmatch is critical, and I think very dependent on really leveraging capability updates through software like Secretary Wormuth said,” Swanson noted.
When Fitzmaurice asked her specifically how original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, like Rancher, can aid the Army’s mission in carrying out this directive, she said that building software products with open architecture is central.
“In order to be able to do that in a rapid way without worrying about what else you’re going to screw up, you have to have your architecture very cleanly designed. And so I think that’s critical for any program that we’re developing, is to really have the software separated from the data, separated from the hardware,” Swanson remarked.
Programs like the software acquisition pathway and middle transaction authority, or MTA, have “ revamped how we are able to acquire and deliver” when it comes to software, Swanson said. “Gone are the days where everything’s a waterfall approach and it takes 10 years to develop something and field it.”
Want to hear more from Swanson on what her cohort is doing to acquire exquisite technologies for the benefit of the warfighter? Register to attend the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Army Summit! It will be held on Thursday, June 13, at the Hilton-McLean in Virginia and features an all-star lineup of Army officials like the Honorable Doug Bush, Young Bang and the recently appointed Army CIO Leonel Garciga.
