Defense Technical Information Center

Abstract

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) is essential to DoD’s research and innovation ecosystem. Capturing, curating, and sharing current and past research results enables new efforts to start with an understanding of what has been done, what did not prove out, what the current state is, and what is trending to fortify success. DTIC is a catalyst for researchers to deliver new and upgraded capability and avoid rework while shortening the time to field new capabilities. Recognizing the critical need to maintain and advance the U.S. position in near-peer competition, DTIC’s knowledge base and interfaces increase the pace of innovation, technical maturity, and the return on investment of research activities. With a new foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enabled tools, DTIC is refining and developing new models to enhance discovery and encourage collaboration across the research and engineering enterprise and the warfighting community. AI modeling supports new ways to explore information, and in turn, enables new ways to draw understanding, recognize Science and Technology (S&T) return on investment, track technology maturation, and identify key research. Today, DTIC is evaluating and assessing tools that will: increase the relevance of search results; summarize papers; improve data quality; improve document technology categorization; and follow author citations to discover related past work and key research. DTIC continues to track technology maturation to avail itself of cutting-edge technologies to enhance the research efforts of members of the Research and Engineering (R&E) and S&T communities. For example, DTIC is researching current options and technology designed to validate the results from ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to reduce AI hallucinations, or false information presented as fact. A critical next step will be to optimize models and focus on efficiency to reduce the impact of high compute costs limiting activities. DTIC’s Information Analysis Centers (IACs) provide industry subject matter experts (SMEs) with answers to quick turn questions and the ability to facilitate further research through short term task orders and complex multi-year research and prototyping efforts. Utilizing the United States Air Force (USAF) Cloud One environment and working with both the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the R&E Joint Reserve Directorate (JRD), DTIC is utilizing AI and ML technologies, with development, security, and operations (DevSecOps, or rapid security focused development) capability to provide users state of the art innovative discovery and submission tools. The focus for FY 2025 is continued enhancement of discovery and analysis across all DTIC-operated networks – public (Impact Level (IL) 2), controlled unclassified information (CUI) (IL 4) and classified (IL 6) – while adding consolidation and delivery of a modern submission pipeline based on ecommerce best practices to simplify and reduce effort for submitters, provide them tracking and visibility, and improve the quality and completeness of submissions. In concert with congressional and R&E community interest, DTIC modernization efforts are informed by the DoD community to transform distribution, enhance collection, strengthen analytical capabilities on science and technology (S&T) content, and support the management of research data sets. Ongoing modernization activities embrace data-driven concepts and leverage commercial innovations and opens the opportunity to draw new insights, recognize relationships, and track activity. DTIC is using on-demand compute resources and DevSecOps to deliver a stream of products and user-sought insights and, in the process, reduce the timelines and investments in user interfaces and data fields. Rather than each search returning in seconds, DTIC is executing multiple concurrent searches in response to user queries to provide a complete portfolio of S&T activity, allowing users to select the most relevant information for their needs. DTIC will note choices and tailor future results for those users. DTIC holds a knowledge base of nearly 5 million information records and is working with the R&E and S&T communities to increase its repository, enhance completeness of those records already in the collection, assure quality of records submitted, and federate to additional information stores and resources. To meet Open Science objectives, DTIC is expanding its inventory of peer-reviewed journal articles funded by the DoD, linking to additional sources, and providing access to all users without embargo, to include links to digital data sets. DTIC is engaged with the Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO) to seek methods to improve data quality, focusing on opportunities made possible through enterprise data management and other advances in technology, to include but not limited to AI and ML. This Program Element (PE) provides for DTIC mission operations, which are focused on three core activities: Content, Discovery, and Information Analysis Centers (IAC): a) Content: Includes the S&T repository DoD and Service records (reports and research data). DTIC acquires and prepares 80 thousand records a year, aligned to critical technology areas, DoD Communities of Interest (CoIs), and technology areas to aid discovery. As a state-of-the-art electronic document submission pipeline is implemented, DTIC continues leading open science activities, sharing content with Advana, conducting gap analysis to identify sources for potential materials, and federating to external collections. Ongoing efforts focus on consolidating input systems and migrating users to new submission interfaces to improve quality of material and realign resources from manual processing to end user tools. Still, DTIC receives thousands of paper and other media documents each year. These documents require manual processing; they must be digitized, scanned for Personally Identifiable Information (PII), control markings verified, and metadata extracted to aid in discovery. Further, DTIC continues to work to complete digitization of hundreds of thousands of documents on microfilm. b) Discovery: Offers search and analysis interfaces on cloud Impact Level (IL) 4/NIPRNet (Controlled Unclassified Information, or CUI), and IL6/SIPRNet (classified), providing for situational awareness of on-going research activity across the Department. By consolidating tools, consistency improves, and the time users spend locating data will be reduced, lessening the need to be trained in collection types and content. Maintenance requirements will also be reduced, allowing the organization to focus on users and features. Data scientists and analysts will continue to develop models using AI and ML to increase community understanding of the S&T landscape; incorporate commercial analytic and search technologies to improve search results; and provide users key information and a complete picture of activity and progress. By employing tools in the cloud, DTIC will add natural language query and user self-service functions. This will move the burden of initial analysis from the user by pre-processing and presenting information products that inform and answer questions using data drawn from multiple collections. DTIC will refocus resources on information analysis and interrogation capabilities. c) DTIC's Department of Defense Information Analysis Centers (DoDIAC): support research and development activities across the defense systems, cyber security, information systems, and homeland defense domains to drive innovation and technological development by anticipating and responding to the research needs of the defense and broader community. The DoDIAC Program Management Office (PMO) provides core funding, management, and oversight of IACs, which are chartered by DoD to collect, research, analyze, and disseminate S&T information in specialized fields to DoD researchers and acquisition professionals. In addition, the PMO manages the $48 Billion IAC MAC, an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) multiple award contract (MAC) that provides for new research built on prior investments and incorporates the innovations of government, industry, and academia. For the last several years, competition inherent in the IAC model has produced savings of 10-16% under projected costs, while still delivering vetted technical expertise to address DoD’s complex challenges. Providing DoD labs and program managers access to thousands of industry subject matter experts, the IACs performed $2.5 Billion of customer-funded research and analysis in FY 2022 and $3.2 Billion in FY 2023, supporting over 700 organizations and over 900 research and development projects across 267 task orders. Approximately 5,759 current research artifacts from this R&D work are provided to DTIC's technical repository annually and are available to users across the Department. DTIC MODERNIZATION DTIC’s modernization activities are cutting a path for others: - In line to be the second activity approved for continuous authority to operate (cATO). - The first implementation of Azure gov cloud in Cloud One. - Early adopter working to qualify large language models (LLM) and ChatGPT within the DoD. - The first into DoDNET. - Working to bring commercial tools to gov clouds and use by DoD. DTIC continues to work to ensure our users are provided access to the most relevant information, drawn from multiple sources, quickly and in one session. Users are provided with data, trends, and analysis to provide full situational awareness given their role or interest. DTIC is DoD’s single central source and is an essential knowledge resource improving user results--increasing both DTIC’s return on investment (ROI) and S&T’s ROI. Modernization focus areas include the following: - Readiness and Availability: The goal is to be always on and available. Using rapid failover capabilities of gov cloud, Operating System level zero-day responses from Cloud One, along with rapid deployment capabilities of DevSecOps, DTIC will increase readiness and availability, including access to on-demand compute and storage for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) implementation. Downtime will be reduced and access to burst compute capacity will address user needs. - Submissions: Having consolidated submission processes in FY 2024, new tools break from past practice that tied submissions to a different interface for each collection. The consolidated process builds an integrated single pipeline with a consistent clear user interface. It is built on ecommerce capabilities, with automated steps validating metadata, tracking information to the submitter, and persistent identifiers to integrate Service feeder systems more fully with the DTIC submission system. Submitters have access to batch upload, web-based application interfaces, and system-to-system submissions. Enhancing and simplifying the submission system, along with the automation of the process, will remove barriers and result in a more complete picture (quality and quantity) of the state of knowledge and activity accessed by DTIC search, providing improved situational awareness, increased understanding, and enabling better decisions. - Search and Analysis: Adopting AI/ML-ready commercial search engine gives DTIC users access to a leading commercial engine and user interface features that will be continuously enhanced. Analysis and visualizations will be a key method of conveying information. Return-on-investment (ROI) for S&T will increase as users will spend less time looking for information and more time benefiting from information at DTIC (less rework, optimized efforts, enhanced analysis, and building community), improving coordination of research efforts. Analysis and data mining of DoD collections will uncover new relationships, trends, and opportunities. This foundation will be extended in FY 2025 with new models, further data enhancement, and integration of emerging technology insertion, including addition of validated AI/ML and LLM-informed products. - Data Sets: Aided by cooperative engagement with the services and coordination within R&E, data sets continue to mature as a knowledge asset. DTIC is coordinating its approach with the CDAO and is working with the DoD S&T community to populate a research data sets directory. DTIC chairs the Research Data Executive Council (RDEC) and is an active member of the Research Data Working Group (RDWG); the Services are engaged in governance and strategy for metadata sharing, application programming interfaces (APIs), and code/tools to use. Increased awareness of existing DoD S&T data sets across the community, revalidating results, and sharing data sets and associated code/tools across Services/agencies, will provide a baseline to validate the utility of data set preservation. OTHER MISSION PRIORITIES Other priority and complementary DTIC mission activities are described below: - Bring communities together supporting collaboration between researchers, warfighters, industry, academia, Federal agencies, and allies. - Information protection: readily available to trusted users and blocked from unauthorized access. - Develop and manage DoD’s Science Technology Information Policy (STIP). - Maintain compliance with existing public law, regulations, and guidelines. In support of these mission operations, DTIC leases space and critical shared services (e.g., human resources (HR); financial management and accounting; contracting; cloud hosting; common-use IT services and security; communications; and civilian payroll services) from expert and efficient DoD and commercial service-providers. SUMMARY - DTIC actively supports the Secretary’s priorities – defending the Nation, taking care of our people, and succeeding through teamwork. - DTIC plans reflect a strong commitment to address congressional, DoD, and R&E priorities. - Building on progress, DTIC’s focus remains on growing the knowledge base, facilitating sharing, maintaining open repositories, and developing data analytics to advance discovery and understanding. - DTIC is adopting transformational technologies to enhance collection, distribution, analysis, and research data sets to provide decision makers and Warfighters insight into the S&T research terrain.

Document Details

• Document Type: R2 Budgetary Justification
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2025
• Source ID: 0605801KA_6_0400_PB_2025
• Change Summary Explanation: Program Change: There is a $0.334 Million net decrease reflected in the FY 2025 Base President’s Budget request. This decrease is the net change resulting from the Department’s compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) caps in FY 2025; a funds realignment from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) for Microsoft 365 enterprise software licenses; and adjustments for civilian pay and economic assumptions regarding non-pay inflation rates. The FY 2025 Base program includes a $0.422 Million reduction attributable to the Department’s Fourth Estate Network Optimization (4ENO) information technology reform savings.
• Service Agency Name: Defense Technical Information Center

Entities

Organizations

• Defense Technical Information Center

Tags

Fields of Study

• Computer science

Readers

• Defense Technology Research and Development.
• Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.

Technology Areas

• AI & ML
• AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
• Cyber
• Microelectronics
• Space