Army Agile Innovation and Demonstration

Army Agile Innovation and Demonstration is a Program Element (PE 0603025A) within the Army's Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) budget, focused on accelerating innovative solutions to support future force modernization. The program leverages both strategic and non-traditional partnerships, including collaborations with academia and industry, to rapidly develop and demonstrate breakthrough technologies. Its overarching goal is to maintain technological superiority in a globally competitive environment by fostering agile innovation and expediting the transition of promising technologies to Army acquisition programs for rapid delivery to Soldiers.

CK8: Advanced Technology Development and Convergence is a major line item under this program, with objectives centered on identifying, developing, and adapting commercially available technologies for Army use. The Army Applications Laboratory (AAL) leads efforts to assess, seed, and demonstrate technologies that can quickly transition to acquisition or other programs. CK8 emphasizes partnerships with both traditional and non-traditional industry players to advance commercial R&D investments, focusing on technologies that enhance unit lethality, survivability, readiness, and efficiency. These efforts are designed to address current technology shortfalls and future capability gaps, with senior leadership prioritizing projects for maximum impact to the warfighter.

Within CK8, the program also supports the demonstration and development of Army-discovered innovative technologies, often sourced from events such as Innovation Days and the Expeditionary Technology Search. These initiatives seek to identify cross-domain innovations that display unique potential and direct advanced research funding toward their maturation and demonstration. The goal is to expedite the adaptation of disruptive technologies for operational use, ensuring that promising solutions can transition into programs of record or inform future requirements and concepts.

DA3: Army Advanced Innovation is another key component, funding the advanced development portion of the Army Innovation Plan. This project aims to rapidly accelerate solutions to challenging warfighter problems by integrating multidisciplinary technologies and bridging internal and external innovation efforts. DA3 supports the demonstration and transition of disruptive capabilities that fall outside the normal acquisition pipeline, with a focus on transformational technologies for the Army of 2040. The program also seeks to improve Command and Control applications through software tool optimization and automated workflows, reducing human workloads and informing future fielding architectures.

A new initiative under DA3 in FY 2026 is the Advance Army University Research Hubs, which seeks to harness the innovation ecosystem within academic institutions. This effort involves partnerships with university research centers, entrepreneur programs, international academic partners, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority Institutions (HBCU/MI). The objective is to mature and demonstrate disruptive technologies originating from university-led research, particularly those near commercial readiness with dual-use potential for military applications. Priority areas for transition include weapon systems, human-machine interfaces, C5ISR, logistics, and Soldier enabling systems, with prototypes planned for field testing and validation.

The program is coordinated with related Army RDT&E efforts, such as PE 0602002A (Army Agile Innovation and Development-Applied Research), ensuring a holistic approach to technology investment and transition. Work is performed by a range of Army organizations, including DEVCOM, AI2C, AAL, the Engineering Research and Development Center, Space and Missile Defense Technical Center, and the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Oversight and project approval are managed by the Army Innovation Oversight Board and Army Futures Command, prioritizing innovations with high potential to fill capability gaps and deliver operational advantages.