Pentagon accepting video pitches from vendors looking to gain access to CJADC2 enterprise

The Defense Department’s Chief Digital and AI Office kicked off an inaugural “challenge” to industry, asking vendors to pitch their solutions for contested logistics and sustainment to help the Pentagon advance its Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) initiative.

The move, which the mission commander of the U.S. military’s Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE) previewed in a discussion with DefenseScoop last month, comes on the heels of an award to Palantir for its Maven Smart System and the launch of the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories (Open DAGIR) effort.

According to an announcement released Thursday evening, contractors interested in participating in the new challenge — which will support those initiatives — can submit their proposals in the form of a 5-minute “pitch video” via the online Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, addressing the tasks and subtasks laid out in the formal call for submissions.

Vendors whose proposed solutions fit the bill may be integrated into upcoming events known as GIDE 12 and 13 starting this fall.

Global logistics and sustainment challenges present hurdles that the U.S. military is trying to overcome with better data management solutions, including through the use of artificial intelligence. Concern is growing as the department’s logistics networks are expected to be at greater risk in future conflicts if they’re targeted by adversaries’ advanced weapon systems.

“While logisticians from the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, and Service Components excel at developing these dynamic logistics plans, they require manual curation of data into often-static products in an analog workflow that varies across organizations. The lack of a common, enterprise-level data ontology for logistics and sustainment leads to sub-optimal decisions from stovepiped and static data — challenging the Joint Force’s ability to provide quick, dynamic, and predictive logistics and sustainment plans. These challenges are compounded in a contested environment,” the Tradewinds post notes.

The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) oversees the GIDE series in partnership with the combatant commands and the Joint Staff.

The newly launched challenge will support an innovative acquisition process, according to a release.

“The initiative has the potential to impact every Combatant Command, and warfighters will witness industry solutions applied immediately to their problem sets in a common CJADC2 global integration decision platform. Warfighters will rapidly share feedback in an iterative fashion, while executing the mission,” per the release.

The call for proposals on Tradewinds notes that the Pentagon needs a common data ontology, digitized workflows, access to live data, and insights derived from that information.

The inaugural GIDE challenge “is intended to develop the global logistics data ontology in [Maven Smart System] while enriching current ontology and workflows with existing government logistics data,” the document states, noting that the initiative will give new industry partners the opportunity to provide live logistics and sustainment data, “curated digital insights,” and integrated applications “containerized” and integrated into the Maven Smart System at Impact Level 5 as part of the broader Open DAGIR effort.

Submissions are due Sept. 6.