In its Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) requested roughly $1.9 billion to fund new projects that were previously part of its Network-Centric Warfare Technology program. The new efforts, aligned under the DARPA Advanced Technology Development program, signal continuity with Network-Centric Warfare, focusing on the unification of technologically advanced systems across U.S. services.
Notably, the projects that consolidate and realign efforts that were previously aligned under Network-Centric Warfare Technology are also those that account for the vast share of DARPA Advanced Technology program’s funding. These are DAT-01: Advanced Systems and DAT-06 DARPA Advanced Technology Development (confusingly holding the same name as the program).
| DARPA RDT&E | |||
| PE#0603467E / DARPA Advanced Technology Development | FY24 | FY25 | FY26 |
| DAT-01: Advanced Systems | 0.0 | 0.0 | 445.310 |
| DAT-06: DARPA Advanced Technology Development | 0.0 | 0.0 | 974.036 |
All $ in millions
Source: U.S. Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Estimates (Proposal), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, RDT&E Justification Book, Vol. 1
Note: These projects are new starts in FY26. They comprise two of four DARPA Advanced Technology Program efforts.
Unification of Advanced Technologies
DARPA Advanced Technology Development’s predecessor, Network-Centric Warfare Technology, faced the following problem: the flexibility and robustness of adversarial network technology, coupled with the U.S.’s doctrinal limits on the use of firepower, meant that American armed services would require a synchronization of the use of advanced technologies in air, ground, and maritime operations. The emphasis was on unification of the services in the domain of advanced networking technologies.
The current DARPA Advanced Technology Development program retains this theme with a focus on maturing advanced technologies such that U.S. forces can operate seamlessly with them in all domains. Among the upshots of this seamless operation are improved battlefield awareness, strike capability, and battle damage assessments.
Project DAT-01: Advanced Systems, which consolidates certain previous efforts and establishes new efforts, specifically seeks to create “enabling technologies” to this effect, going beyond networking technology alone to now include robotic and information technology systems.
These technologies are meant to enable – to make possible – the seamless operation sought by the services. It retains the original focus of Network-Centric Warfare on the problem of adversarial flexibility and robustness and the U.S.’s ability to respond effectively. DAT-01 emphasizes the use of force only where necessary; targeted with specific, intended effect(s).
Project DAT-06: DARPA Advanced Technology Development, for its part, is classified, which similarly retains the classified focus of the previous Project NET-06: Network-Centric Warfare Technology.
New Tech, Old Story
The share of funding requested for Projects DAT-01 and DAT-06 is higher relative to the allocation for the entire Network-Centric Warfare Technology program in DARPA’s FY25 budget estimates. This is unsurprising given their aims. Unification of the services’ uses of advanced and emerging technologies (particularly networking technologies) is a recurring theme for the U.S. Defense Department in recent years. JADC2 is perhaps the archetypal example.
Such efforts in fact go back much further, and the U.S. Defense Department has frequently taken steps to synchronize the use of advanced, “disruptive” technologies across services at both the strategic and tactical levels.
To take a dramatic example, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) originated as a Cold War-era effort to unify and synchronize the U.S.’s use of nuclear weapons in the event, for example, of a Soviet incursion into Europe. By the end of the 1950s, the Navy, Army, and Air Force each independently possessed nuclear weapons with independent integration of their nuclear weapons into operational plans. Their use was therefore uncoordinated, necessitating an effort to construct a comprehensive, service-independent plan for the allocation of targets at which nuclear weapons would be deployed (after substantial, heated, and political debate between the services – unification was a forced effort, far from ‘natural’).
Private Sector Attraction and Commercialization
Unlike SIOP, the technologies under the focus of DARPA Advanced Technology Development are not exclusively matured in-house, and private sector partnerships and other collaborations are explicit components of these maturation and unification efforts.
DARPA plans to devote resources towards the attraction of private investment and the development of commercialization roadmaps in FY26.
Two efforts within Project DAT-01 involve these aims: the Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative (EEI, focused on private investment attraction) and Pulling Guard (commercialization roadmaps). EEI specifically focuses on pairing DARPA’s in-house “top technical talent” with “experienced business leaders” to quicken the transition of breakthrough technologies to market.
EEI is allocated $25.0 million and Pulling Guard is allocated $32.5 million for FY26.
Given that DARPA is likely to spend billions of dollars on Advanced Technology Development over the next five-to-ten years – with the vast share expected to go to the efforts subsumed by DAT-01 and DAT-06 – private sector actors may find fruitful partnership or investment opportunities within the following (inexhaustive) areas:
- Semantically correct and information-condensed network and user communications software
- Quantitative measurement and benchmarking for autonomous system implementation and autonomy readiness levels
- Semi-autonomous, modular, point-defense overwatch/escort systems
- Maritime sensing, tracking, targeting, and engagement capabilities
- Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) construction for manufacturing and deployment support
- Multi-modal computer vision techniques
Given the critical nature of both the technologies under development within this program and the importance of making their uses seamless across the U.S. services during operation, DARPA is reasonably expected to spend several billion dollars on the efforts within DAT-01 and DAT-06 over the next ten years (even if such efforts are realigned into new programs). Contractors should stay apprised of them as DARPA seeks to build commercialization roadmaps and attract private investment.
Vincent Carchidi has a background in defense and policy analysis, specializing in critical and emerging technologies. He is currently a Defense Industry Analyst with Forecast International. He also maintains a background in cognitive science, with an interest in artificial intelligence.
