Army and defense sector launch ‘Right to Integrate’ hackathon for shared technology

WASHINGTON — The Army is launching a fast-paced series of partnered hackathons with nine of the largest U.S. defense contractors to connect weapon systems, sensors and software that have long operated in silos, officials announced. Branded the “Right to Integrate” sprint, or R2I, the effort aims to ensure offensive and defensive systems—as well as business systems—can seamlessly share data and communicate across formations, building on the service’s Next Generation Command and Control open-architecture work.

Leaders from Anduril, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Perennial Autonomy and RTX will join Army technologists and soldiers in a series of hackathon-style events that Army officials described as potentially the largest of their kind. The first is scheduled to take place at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the coming weeks. Participating companies plan to contribute dozens of systems along with engineers and scientists, and will sign a statement of support for both current and future integration efforts. The sprint is being conducted at no cost to the Army, according to the announcement.

“We’ve known for a long time that our systems, weapons, and sensors need to talk to each other so that we can dominate the battlefield,” said Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll. “The war in Ukraine showed the world that speed matters and an open architecture construct is highly effective in high-intensity warfare. We haven’t been moving fast enough. The U.S. Army, along with our great defense industry partners, will lead this effort on behalf of our nation and ensure that we remain the dominant fighting force on the planet.”

The initiative is designed to attack a long-standing problem: multiple programs from multiple manufacturers that cannot natively interoperate, creating competing information silos in operational units and driving expensive, bespoke integrations that often fail. Army officials say R2I will insist on open interfaces and shared data standards, taking cues from Ukraine’s rapid adoption of modular open system architecture in combat, where exposing application programming interfaces allowed fast connection of drones, sensors and firing platforms.

“Soldiers don’t have time to wait while systems that should already be talking to each other get patched together on a battlefield,” said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve. “It’s a wicked problem, and R2I puts our industry partners and our Soldiers in the same room to solve it as rapidly as possible. That’s what the American Soldier deserves.”

The Army cast the approach as a win for both the force and the industrial base, asserting it will lower integration costs, open doors for non-traditional vendors and accelerate the fielding of new technology, particularly autonomy. “We cannot fight from a swivel chair across multiple disaggregated systems anymore. We must integrate at the speed of digital information, and leverage the technologies of our time, like agentic artificial intelligence, drone swarms, and cyber weapons. I’m incredibly grateful for the rapid and wholehearted support these companies have shown us. There are no better defense industry partners in the world that in the U.S.,” said Driscoll.

Army Chief Technology Officer Dr. Alex Miller said commercial software has demonstrated how quickly integration costs can fall when open architectures take hold—and warned that proprietary or inflexible interfaces will not meet the Army’s needs. “We’ve seen the cost of integration approach zero in the commercial space – especially with software systems with open interfaces and architectures,” said Dr. Alex Miller, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Army. “We have seen standards come and go in the department for decades, but are still beholden to sub-par implementation, close and proprietary interfaces, or systems that lack the flexibility to adapt over time.”

“MOSA has shifted from a verb – how we do things – to a noun. How companies find ways to use their architecture,” said Miller. “We are setting conditions to where being open is industry’s ticket to participate. If you do not expose your interfaces and your documentation, you will not be able to join the ecosystem. This will be especially true for autonomous systems.”

The sprint builds on recent Army experimentation with data fusion under Next Generation Command and Control. During the Ivy Sting 4 exercise at Fort Carson on Feb. 2, soldiers used the Lattice system to integrate with NGC2 and fuse sensor data to improve mission command across maneuver formations—an example of the kind of rapid, multi-vendor connectivity the service now wants to scale.

Officials said R2I will put soldiers and industry engineers side by side to rapidly solve integration challenges in real time, with the goal of delivering an interconnected, adaptable force capable of faster sensing, decision-making and engagement in future operations.