USSOCOM Deputy Director of Acquisition Mr. David Breede has spoken at SOF Week 2026 in Tampa, emphasizing that the Department of War is striving to improve its traditionally lethargic overarching Acquisition System and those of the services by emulating the proven strengths of the SOF Acquisition System that result in the rapid prototyping, testing and evaluation, award, fielding and sustaining that gives U.S. Special Operators the operational edge in the crucible of live combat and unconventional missions.

He went on to say that learning how to operate in a radio frequency environment that is heavily contested is one of the chief challenges facing U.S. Special Operations Command.

"How do I operate completely untethered to RF? How are we operating either fully autonomously, or operators forward deployed but not connected in the rear?"

He emphasized that USSOCOM needs the ability to quickly integrate autonomous behaviors on multiple platforms, in multiple domains, without it having to be specifically built for that platform.

"What we built up over the last 20 years was a dependence upon full connection with higher headquarters. When we push something out as full autonomy, you have to be able to trust that they're going to go through their mission, even when you can't see them do their mission, and then come back and tell you how that mission went."

The problem is that vendors may offer capable collaborative autonomy solutions, but only within their own algorithm stack, leaving a group one UAS and an unmanned surface vessel unable to share targeting algorithms or fused environmental data unless purpose-built to the same architecture. "I think we're still moving very slowly in that area," he said.