Overmatch Blueprint: The Army's First Operational Acquisition Detachment at Fort Bragg

At Fort Bragg, the Army’s first Operational Acquisition Detachment (OAD) 1 is reshaping how the service discovers capability gaps, prototypes emerging technologies and deliver solutions at the speed of need. When Col. Thomas R. Monaghan Jr., established this detachment under the Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin Joint Innovation Outpost (JIOP), he built it directly against the XVIII Airborne Corps Campaign Plan, ensuring efforts were aligned with operational priorities rather than isolated innovation. As the director of the Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin JIOP for the XVIII Airborne Corps, Monaghan positioned the detachment to move faster and more effectively than traditional structures.

“The Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin Joint Innovation Outpost is the premier transformation hub for the XVIII Airborne Corps and a collaborative engine for overmatch. We are empowering our greatest asset: the American Soldier. Moving at the speed of relevance with Milestone Decision Authority of up to $50 million, we shatter traditional bureaucratic timelines to deliver tomorrow’s technology today,” Monaghan explained.

This combination of operational integration, empowered Soldiers and accelerated acquisition has created a replicable blueprint—one that future OADs will use as they stand up across the Army.

IDENTIFYING AND PRIORITIZING CAPABILITY GAPS THROUGH THE “FOUR DOORS”

To establish OAD 1, Monaghan began with a detailed analysis of the XVIII Airborne Corps Campaign Plan to understand the Corps’ mission, vision and capability gaps. That assessment became the foundation of the JIOP’s “Four Doors,” a structured system for identifying, validating and prioritizing operational requirements.

The first door captures bottom-up, Soldier-driven innovation. Ideas emerge directly from troops “in the dirt,” with platforms like the Dragon’s Lair competition giving any Soldier—regardless of rank—an opportunity to surface friction points and propose solutions. The second door reflects the XVIII Airborne Corps Commander’s Technical Innovation Objectives (TIOs), which tie innovation efforts to campaign plan priorities and “fight tonight” readiness. The third door incorporates external requests from interagency and joint partners, ensuring the JIOP can support shared operational challenges across organizations. The fourth door brings in industry-presented technologies that match Corps TIOs and are ready for Soldier evaluation.

“When I first sat down with [Lt.] General [Gregory K.] Anderson [commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps], we read through the Campaign Plan so I could understand his mission, his vision and the capability gaps he’d identified,” Monaghan said. “We established ‘four doors’ of entry into the JIOP to give everyone a single point of entry to innovate.”

This framework ensures that needs from Soldiers, commanders, outside agencies and industry all feed into one coherent system designed to move solutions forward quickly.

RAPID PROTOTYPING THROUGH CONSOLIDATED TEAMS AND HIGH-VELOCITY CONTRACTING

Speed is the JIOP’s primary currency. By consolidating requirement writers, Soldiers, engineers and industry vendors into a single collaborative space, the Outpost removes bureaucratic friction that traditionally slows acquisition. Coupled with delegated authority to execute prototyping efforts up to $50 million and a close partnership with the 419th Contracting Support Brigade, the JIOP has driven average contract award timelines down to just 20 days.

Academic and industry partners routinely bring their developers and engineers directly into the dirt with Soldiers—often using non-standard, off-post ranges—to test prototypes and adjust in real time. This “Soldier-in-the-loop” engineering provides immediate operational feedback and enables rapid iteration cycles that replace months of formal coordination.

“Our partnerships are built on a single premise: speed,” Monaghan said. Direct collaboration with the 419th Contracting Support Brigade Commander “eliminates the time-consuming revisions that plague traditional contracting,” while tight integration with engineers “shatters the barrier between idea and execution.”

Several recent successes demonstrate this acceleration. The JIOP worked with the 82nd Airborne Division to test a commercially developed 5.56mm frangible counter-drone round and transition it to the Program Manager for Ammunition for a potential Program of Record in roughly six months—far faster than the traditional three-to-five-year timeline. A similar process produced the Modular Drone Case after Soldiers identified the need to protect $20,000 drones during airborne operations.

“The 82nd was jumping with $20,000 drones and breaking them,” said Lt. Col. Wallace W. (Will) Rollins, deputy director, of the Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin JIOP, and the director of OAD 1. “Soldiers in the dirt recognized they needed a delivery system. On their own, they designed a MOLLE-capable soft case with a 3D-printed mesh insert. They brought it through the JIOP, we got a contract and within a year, it was in production.”

SYNCHRONIZING RAPID INNOVATION WITH THE ARMY ACQUISITION ENTERPRISE

While the JIOP moves quickly, it does so in coordination with traditional acquisition organizations like Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs) and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA(ALT)). The Outpost acts not as a workaround, but as a collective conduit. Program managers (PMs) are engaged at project initiation, ensuring alignment with long-term program strategies and preventing duplication.

By generating early and unfiltered operational data, the JIOP gives PAEs and PMs the confidence needed to evaluate, scale and integrate emerging technologies. Forums such as the Pathway to Innovation and Technology office provide deliberate venues where the JIOP, PAEs and PMs map formal transition pathways from prototype to Programs of Record.

“We are organically tied into the broader Army acquisition structure,” Rollins explained. “Before we even start a new project, we coordinate the relevant program office to bring them in on the effort, ensuring that we leverage institutional knowledge and resources. We aren’t trying to stand up something new that cuts off other organizations. Rather, we are aligning a team of teams, driven by direct warfighter feedback, to fix a specific problem, and then transition that validated solution back into the established Army acquisition system.”

Lessons learned from the establishment of the JIOP and OAD 1 at Fort Bragg—from infrastructure to processes—will guide the development of follow-on OADs across the Army.

These insights underscore the value of broad collaboration across ASA(ALT), science and technology organizations, academia, requirements communities and industry. As additional OADs are established within Army corps, each will adapt to its unique operational problem set, yet all will benefit from having embedded acquisition expertise at the operational level.

CONCLUSION

The JIOP and OAD 1 at Fort Bragg have created a blueprint for how the Army must operate to maintain overmatch: empowered Soldiers, streamlined acquisition authorities, rapid contracting and deep integration with the traditional acquisition enterprise. The model not only accelerates capability delivery but also strengthens communication and reduces duplicative costs across the Army.

“I want to use our work here at the XVIII Airborne Corps to codify the innovation process,” Monaghan said. “Operational acquisition detachments should be a permanent fixture at every corps headquarters. It doesn’t need to look exactly the same because every corps has a different problem set, but having that acquisition expertise embedded at the operational level informs the chain of command, reduces duplicative costs and drastically improves communication across the Army.”

As the Army moves toward establishing additional OADs, the Fort Bragg model demonstrates how delegated prototyping authority and Soldier-driven innovation can produce immediate, relevant capability.

“There has never been an acquisition officer with these kinds of delegated authorities embedded directly within an operational command,” Monaghan said. “Having the unique ability to execute prototyping projects of up to $50 million allows us to aggressively attack tactical problem sets, act as problem-preventers and deliver immediate capability to the Soldier. When you empower warfighters to innovate at the tactical edge, you build a culture of relentless adaptation.”

For more information, go to https://pit.army.mil/.

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