GVSETS 2026: The Army Is Not Short on Innovation. The Challenge Is Execution.

I left GVSETS 2026 with one overriding thought: the Army is not short on innovation. The harder challenge is turning innovation into capability.

There was certainly no shortage of technology being discussed in Novi. AI, autonomous systems, robotics, digital engineering, advanced manufacturing, open architectures, power, predictive logistics and a wide range of other capabilities were part of the conversation.

But what struck me most this year wasn’t any particular technology.

It was how much of the discussion has shifted toward what happens after the technology works.

That is an important shift.

For years, we have talked about accelerating innovation and getting new technology into Soldiers’ hands faster. This year, I heard much more discussion about the mechanisms needed to actually make that happen: Soldier experimentation, acquisition reform, new contracting approaches, commercial technology, private investment and better transition pathways.

The Army clearly recognizes that speed has to improve.

The harder question is whether we can connect all of those pieces well enough to consistently produce results.

Speed Has to Mean Faster Decisions

One discussion that caught my attention was the Army’s Pathway for Innovation and Technology, or PIT.

The basic concept makes sense: identify important operational problems, find mature technologies that may address them, get those capabilities in front of Soldiers quickly, learn from experimentation and move successful solutions toward acquisition.

I like that direction.

But speed cannot simply mean taking the existing process and moving through it faster.

It also means making decisions faster.

Some capabilities should move forward quickly. Others should stop quickly.

There is value in both.

A demonstration that confirms something does not meet the requirement can be just as useful as one that proves a technology works, provided we make the decision and move on.

What we cannot afford is a long series of demonstrations where everyone likes what they see but no one knows what happens next.

The Army Is Asking Industry for More Than a Product

The discussions around autonomy highlighted another change I believe is important.

The Army increasingly appears willing to present industry with an operational problem and allow companies to propose an integrated solution rather than prescribing every element of that solution in advance.

That is the right direction.

Industry is investing enormous amounts of money in autonomy, AI, computing, manufacturing and other commercial technologies. The Army should take advantage of that investment rather than unnecessarily recreating it.

But that also puts more responsibility on industry.

Showing up with an impressive product is not enough.

A company needs to understand what the Army is trying to accomplish, where the capability fits into a formation, what it has to connect to, how Soldiers will use it and what happens when something breaks.

That requires much deeper mission understanding than simply responding to a set of specifications.

The Demonstration Cannot Be the Finish Line

This may still be one of the biggest execution problems we need to solve.

A company develops something promising. Someone in the Army sees it. There is interest. A demonstration follows. The technology works.

Then everyone looks around and asks:

Who owns this now?

That is where things can get difficult.

The organization with the operational problem may not have the funding. The organization with the money may not own the requirement. The technical organization may be able to evaluate the capability but have no contracting authority. And the organization conducting the demonstration may not be the organization responsible for fielding or sustaining it.

There are legitimate reasons those responsibilities sit in different places.

But if we do not think about transition early, a successful demonstration can still become a dead end.

Before an Army organization and a company start a pilot, both should have some understanding of what happens if it succeeds.

Not every detail needs to be worked out in advance. But somebody should be asking the transition question from the beginning.

I Was Glad to See Sustainment in the Conversation

One thing I particularly liked about GVSETS this year was seeing sustainment and the Organic Industrial Base getting real attention.

That matters because modernization and sustainment are too often discussed as though they are separate activities.

They are not.

Everything we field eventually has to be maintained, repaired, supplied, updated, documented, trained on and supported.

That becomes even more important as Army systems grow more software-intensive and more dependent on data.

AI is a good example.

The Army already has enormous amounts of maintenance, supply and readiness data. The opportunity is not simply to build another dashboard that displays more of it.

The value comes when we can use that information to identify a developing readiness problem earlier, understand what is driving it and give leaders or maintainers enough information to do something about it.

That is where AI and analytics become useful.

If they do not change a decision or improve an outcome, we should question what value we are actually getting.

Integration May Be the Bigger Problem

Another theme I took away from GVSETS was the growing importance of integration.

We continue to add capability to formations: autonomy, UAS, counter-UAS, sensors, networks, computing, electronic systems and more.

All of it needs something.

Power. Data. Communications. Space. Cooling. Cybersecurity. Maintenance support.

At some point, adding another great subsystem can create problems somewhere else in the formation.

The discussions around vehicle power made that point pretty clearly. The Army does not simply need more batteries and generators. It needs better ways to manage the growing power demand created by all of these new capabilities.

The same issue exists digitally.

A new application may perform extremely well by itself, but if it cannot interact with Army data, networks or other systems, integrating it at scale becomes much harder.

That is why open architectures, interoperability, data standards and digital engineering matter.

They may not be as exciting as showing off a new autonomous vehicle, but they may ultimately determine how quickly we can continue inserting new capability into Army formations.

Modernization is not just about acquiring more technology.

It is also about building formations and systems that can continuously accept new technology.

Manufacturing Still Matters

Being in Detroit makes another part of this discussion difficult to ignore.

Innovation means very little if we cannot produce things at scale.

GVSETS continues to bring together traditional defense companies, commercial manufacturers, small businesses, startups, government organizations and investors. That mix is increasingly important.

The Army needs access to commercial innovation.

But a prototype and a production capability are two very different things.

Eventually someone has to produce the system or component at the quantity, quality, cost and speed the Army requires. The supply chain has to support it. And once it is fielded, somebody has to sustain it.

That is why I continue to believe the Organic Industrial Base, commercial manufacturing, advanced manufacturing and supply-chain resilience belong squarely in the modernization discussion.

They are not activities that occur after modernization.

They are part of modernization.

My Takeaway From GVSETS

I came away from GVSETS encouraged.

There are some exceptional technologies being developed. The Army is clearly trying to reduce barriers to getting those technologies evaluated and into Soldiers’ hands. There is more emphasis on experimentation, commercial solutions, acquisition speed and bringing nontraditional companies into the defense market.

All of that is positive.

But I do not think technology is our limiting factor.

Execution is.

We have to get better at connecting the operational problem to the technology, the experiment, the requirement, the acquisition strategy, the production base, the fielding plan and ultimately the sustainment of that capability.

If we can do that faster, with fewer handoffs and fewer dead ends, the amount of innovation already taking place across the Army and industry can have a much greater impact.

That was my biggest takeaway from GVSETS 2026.

The advantage will not come simply from developing better technology. It will come from how quickly we can turn that technology into sustainable capability in the hands of Soldiers.