Army’s Pathway for Innovation and Technology presentation prepares soldiers for future challenges

By Jayden Hermitt, Staff Writer

June 24, 2026

Matt Willis, Ph.D., director of the Army FUZE, delivered the roadmap for the future of innovation and acquisition in warfighter technology at the Army’s Pathway for Innovation & Technology (PIT) presentation at Central Florida Tech Grove on May 27.

Army FUZE, serves as the U.S. Army’s flagship innovation initiative focused on rapidly transitioning emerging, dual-use commercial technologies to operational military use.

Willis has spent the past decade within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, helping shape modernization and acquisition efforts across the service.

During the presentation, Willis described PIT as a mechanism designed to bypass traditional acquisition bottlenecks by rapidly identifying, prototyping and scaling new technologies directly to soldiers in the field.

PIT aims to turn away from multi-year development cycles and solve the problem of mission-critical technology being delayed getting into the hands of soldiers.

According to Willis, PIT embeds acquisition professionals from organizations including U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM), Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate (G-TEAD), ASA(ALT) and Joint Innovation Outpost (JIOP) alongside warfighters to ensure technology investments remain aligned with  operational needs.

PIT allows soldiers to test new technology right in the field. By doing this, PIT can gauge continuous feedback from warfighters, and soldiers can test tools in real-world scenarios.

Willis said the initiative is part of the Army’s broader response to recent directives from the Secretary of War around acquisition and innovation reform.

“The old process of having a linear acquisition process to a non-linear technology development is just not practical,” Willis said. “We aren’t delivering new capabilities at the speed and scale that we need for our soldiers.”

He identified four primary mission threads that the Army Service Component Command (ASCC) is focused on delivering solutions for in the next 18 to 24 months: autonomous breaching, tactical logistics, expeditionary power and Arctic operations.

Willis also emphasized the value of providing portfolio companies within Army FUZE and Army PIT gaining access to more affordable sources of capital to scale technologies for military use.

“For companies to be able to deliver at the scale for the Army, they’re going to need access to cheaper capital,” Willis said. “We’re trying to build more inroads with the venture, private capital and other communities.”

He added having strong support from senior Army leadership is pivotal in advancing the initiative’s objectives.

“Having the right leadership support has certainly changed the paradigm and allowed us to actually do it, vice just talking about it.” Willis said.