Army Spending on IT Using Other Transaction Agreements, FY 2021-2023

Last week’s post provided a 30,000 ft. view of the use of Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) by the Department of Defense (DOD) from fiscal 2021 to 2023. This week’s post begins a multi-week deep dive into the use of OTAs for information technology (IT) by defense organizations; specifically, in this case, the U.S. Army.

Total Army IT OTA Spending, FY 2021-2023

Of all the sub-departments and agencies at the DOD, the Army has been using OTAs for IT prototypes the longest. It has also been the organization that spends the most annually on IT OTAs.

The data pictured above shows that after a bit of weakness in FY 2022, Army IT OTA spending rebounded strongly in FY 2023. That growth is attributable in large part to two efforts: Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Production and Sustainment ($813M in FY 2023 vs. $53M in FY 2022) and the Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer ($160M in FY 2023, $0 in FY 2022). Army commands also awarded new OTAs for other IT programs in FY 2023, but with spending on these two programs alone totaling almost $1.0B, they swung the balance much higher for FY 2023.

IT OTA Spending by Army Organization, FY 2021-2023

The data for spending by organization shakes out as follows.

Seeing multiple Program Executive Offices (PEOs) listed in the top ten organizations makes sense as these offices are responsible for developing new capabilities. The Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) sits at the top of the heap, which also is no surprise as the Army’s PEOs fall under this office. This data suggests that spending on IT OTAs at Army PEOs is even higher than is shown. The ASA AT&L simply did not report which PEO was spending the money.

Additional commands spending a lot on capability prototypes include Combat Capabilities Development Command, which falls under Army Futures Command, Army Network Enterprise Technology Command  (NETCOM), which falls under Army Cyber Command, and the Army’s Redstone Testing Center, which is a part of Army Training and Evaluation Command.

Lastly, Army organizations not listed here spent another $2.3B on IT OTAs between FY 2021 and 2023.

Spending by Technology Area, FY 2021-2023

The final data point to present is a look at the technologies Army commands are spending prototype dollars on. This data is shown in the chart below.

Parsing the data by effort reveals the following top five programs leveraging cloud technology and their total spending over the last three full fiscal years.

• Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) Production and Sustainment - $1.2B
• Vantage Data Platform - $317M
• Cloud Service Provider/Reseller for the Army Enterprise Cloud Management Agency - $258M
• Synthetic Training Environment Prototype Training Management Tool - $168M
• Persistent Cyber Training Environment Cyber Innovation Challenge No. 4 - $82M

The systems listed above rely on the cloud to provide the hosting environments and computing power for data processing and simulation. Unfortunately, the granularity of the data does not allow the identification of the purely cloud services related to these efforts. This is not the case for the Cloud Service Provider contract, which the ECMA uses to support migration and hosting efforts for the cArmy capability.

Other technologies seeing increased Army prototype spending include Big Data Analytics ($35M in FY 2023, $17M in FY 2021); Satellite Communications ($34M in FY 2023, $1.6M in FY 2021; and Unmanned Systems ($47M in FY 2023, $13M in FY 2021).

Final Thoughts

The Army continues to make heavy use of OTAs for IT prototypes. This is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future because Army commands have become accustomed to the OTA method. Therefore, it could be advantageous for companies working in R&D to either establish contact or remain in contact with the industry consortia that often see OTA solicitations appear first.