A few weeks ago, the White House issued an AI Action Plan setting in motion a blueprint  for federal agencies, industry, and academia to achieve U.S. AI innovation and success. In a document dated late June 2025, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy (IBP) released its own roadmap of actions detailing the incorporation of AI in national security and warfighter capabilities. Sample applications of AI among defense operations include greater reconnaissance with surveillance data feeds, system performance detections, logistics and mission planning, and bolstering sensor technologies for troops.

Though the White House AI Action Plan contains a section for the Department of Defense to take an approach to enabling, training and expanding AI among the DOD, the IBP’s released roadmap takes a more targeted approach in addressing the barriers of AI innovation.

The roadmap is the result of a May 2024 RFI titled, Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Adoption of the Artificial Intelligence for Defense Applications. The RFI sought to identify gaps in the DIB regarding AI innovation.  IBP received 48 responses to the RFI and in June 2025, the IBP publicly released a summary and analysis of the responses to the RFI and found the following under four main themes:

Infrastructure and Supply Chain Resilience. DOD must reduce reliance on foreign suppliers and reduce reliance on critical components of AI infrastructure as well, including large data centers and advanced processors. Supply chain vulnerabilities, particularly when it comes to Intellectual Property (IP) theft and cyberattacks, present large barriers to AI adoption by the DIB.

Workforce. DOD should collaborate with academia, industry and other government partners to establish training programs and curriculum for the workforce on data management, ethics and responsible AI use.

Innovation. DOD should develop frameworks that facilitate data sharing, AI development and system interoperability to encourage accelerated innovation cycles and wider adoption of AI for defense applications. Data silos, IP ownership and lack of interoperable systems must be addressed before successful data sharing can take place.  

Acquisition, Policy, and Regulatory Environment. DOD should simplify and expedite the acquisition process for AI with an emphasis on Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs). The current structure of outdated regulations, contract vehicles and billing structures lack the flexibility to procure AI solutions and services.

DIB AI Roadmap

The roadmap outlines quick wins, mid-range goals, and long-range considerations in the four key areas described above to enable AI in defense applications.

Source: IBP 

Expanding DOD AI Procurement Avenues

According to the roadmap document, “The DoD is eager to expand acquisition of AI capabilities and has developed guidance and tools to facilitate effective and efficient acquisition.”

In summarizing the acquisition methodologies in place at the DOD, the IBP document cites the DOD Tradewinds initiative, “Tradewinds is a suite of services designed to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence/machine learning, digital, and data analytics solutions throughout the DoD.” As a reminder to contractors, Tradewind offers a repository, or marketplace, of DOD AI/ML needs, as well as a $4B OTA funding vehicle to accelerate and scale AI capabilities to meet DOD challenges.

Moreover, DOD recently announced the awards for four contracts to accelerate AI adoption. Each contract is valued at up to $200M and provides a commercial first approach to acquire a range of AI offerings across DOD mission areas. Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI were the recipients of the awarded contracts.

With the roadmap in place, contractors can expect DOD to continue marketing acquisition pathways such as OTAs to AI contractors, as well as upgrading acquisition policies and processes to improve AI procurement.