The Department of Defense (DoD) delivered its first investment strategy today highlighting the Pentagon’s initial technology priorities for public sector investment in fiscal year (FY) 2024.
The Investment Strategy identifies priority critical component technology sectors for the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) and describes how OSC will catalyze private investment in these priority industries.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III launched the OSC last December to help steer private sector funding toward the technologies and supply chains that are important to DoD – including commercially available capabilities like artificial intelligence, space and integrated networks, quantum science, biotechnology, and advanced materials.
“I created the Office of Strategic Capital to foster U.S. private-sector investment in the cutting-edge tech that will keep America secure in the 21st century,” Austin said in a statement. “This important investment strategy will leverage America’s core advantages in innovation and free enterprise to strengthen our industrial base and invest in tech areas that are critical for national security.”
The strategy is a guiding framework for the OSC that complements existing DoD and government programs. OSC determined which technology areas to prioritize for its initial program activities based on rigorous analysis of national security applications, U.S. market competitiveness, and capital needs for critical technology industries.
“This Investment Strategy for the [OSC] describes new ways that the [DoD] will work with capital providers and companies to strengthen critical supply chains for national security. Together, we can work towards ensuring that the United States maintains its technological advantages,” Austin wrote in the strategy document.
Initial technology priorities laid out in the strategy include nanomaterials and metamaterials (Advanced Materials), bioenergetics (Biotechnology), synthetic biology (Biotechnology), OpenRAN (FutureG and 5G), sensor hardware (Integrated Sensing and Cyber), assembly, Testing, and Packaging (Microelectronics), Materials (Microelectronics), quantum computing (Quantum Science), quantum security (Quantum Science), quantum sensing (Quantum Science), battery storage (Renewable Energy Generation and Storage), and space-enabled services and equipment (Space Technology).
