Department of War's Critical Technologies Office Partners With In-Q-Tel to Accelerate Technology From Non-Traditional Performers to the Warfighter

Oct. 2, 2026 |

The Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (R&E), through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Critical Technologies (CT), has announced an agreement to partner with the Central Intelligence Agency and In-Q-Tel (IQT), a not-for-profit strategic investor that has served the national security community since 1999.

The partnership gives the Department's research and engineering enterprise structured access to IQT's global technology-scouting platform and its portfolio of early-stage companies, with the explicit objective of compressing the timeline to transition and rapidly field mature commercial solutions from non-traditional performers to the warfighter.

The Department of War has mandated six Critical Technology Areas (CTAs) as the focus of its investment and transition efforts: Applied Artificial Intelligence, Biomanufacturing, Contested Logistics Technologies, Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance, Scaled Directed Energy, and Scaled Hypersonics. Under the agreement, IQT will conduct technology scouting and technical due diligence across all six CTAs, as well as across enabling technology areas, while the Department identifies transition sponsors and pathways for validated technologies.

"In a contested global threat environment, technological superiority will not be determined by who invents a capability first, but by who delivers it to the warfighter fastest. The Department is fundamentally shifting its posture: we are moving from acting solely as a long-cycle technology developer to operating as an agile, credible, and rapid customer for America's most innovative non-traditional performers. Our partnership with In-Q-Tel eliminates bureaucratic friction across our six CTAs. Over the next 12 months, our benchmark for success is simple and unambiguous: moving validated commercial prototypes out of the lab and into active operational field evaluations with our combatant commands," said Hon. Michael Dodd, Assistant Secretary of War for Critical Technologies.

The integration leverages In-Q-Tel's proven venture capital methodology to vet early-stage commercial solutions that align directly with the Department's urgent mission requirements. By combining CT's strategic transition pathways with IQT's deep-tech scouting infrastructure, the partnership aims to significantly de-risk the integration of commercial hardware and software for national security applications, signaling to the commercial tech sector that the Department of War is open for business.

Joint pilot programs under this new partnership will begin in the coming weeks, targeting immediate battlefield bottlenecks. By aligning IQT's venture ecosystem with the Department's rapid transition pipelines, both organizations aim to establish a permanent bridge that converts commercial ingenuity into deployed military capability at the speed of relevance.

DOD Official Says AI, Other Innovations Will Transform Future Warfighting

Aug. 27, 2025 | By David Vergun, DOD News |

In a conflict scenario, artificial intelligence can assist the warfighter in discerning what is happening in the environment and better understand the tactics the adversary might use, thereby improving decision-making, said Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. 

AI takes language or equations, synthesizes the information and can provide answers that are beyond the computational power of the human brain in a short time frame, he explained. 

Uses for AI are endless and include creating new materials, assisting Defense Department employees and contractors, modeling and simulation, and the Golden Dome, Michael said. 

Private industry is investing hundreds of billions of dollars each year into AI for things like software development, chips, data centers and so on, he said. 

Besides AI, another dual-use technology with both military and civilian applications is space-launched technology, such as satellites, he said, noting that private industry has footed most of the bill. 

Other nascent critical areas for DOD are hypersonics, directed energy, unmanned aerial vehicles and critical minerals, he said, highlighting that the importance of UAVs on the battlefield was demonstrated in the recent Israel-Iran conflict, as well as in Ukraine. 

UAVs can go from start to prototype in 18 months, something that can't be done with manned aircraft, Michael said, adding that the systems can be user tested by warfighters, and the best ones can be quickly fielded. 

As for enemy drones such as those used by the Houthis, it doesn't make sense to shoot them down with missiles that cost millions, he said. This is where directed energy can be used to good effect. 

Michael said to get all these innovations moving, industry needs to share risk with the department.  

"It's a balance," he said. "When there's more shared risk, both sides can take more risks, and that will lead to speed, that will lead to invention and so on."