The Department of Defense will host an industry engagement day on July 26 to discuss with company representatives its plans and objectives for the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve initiative.
The event, which will be held at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, will include classified briefings on RDER’s technology capability requirements and proposal cycle and will provide an opportunity for the private sector to present technology concepts and proposals to defense officials, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient, said the private sector will play a key role in supporting the RDER program.
“Engagements like these are essential to ensure that we all understand the warfighting challenges and solicit the most creative ideas from industry,” Shyu said.
The RDER project aims to advance prototyping and experimentation to support joint fires, information advantage, logistics, command and control and other joint warfighting concepts.
In November, Shyu said 32 prototype projects were selected from the 203 proposals submitted to her office for funding that could address joint capability gaps.
