I
118THCONGRESS
1
STSESSION H. R. 3168
To establish a Joint Autonomy Office in the Department of Defense, and
for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MAY9, 2023
Mr. W
ITTMAN(for himself and Mr. RUPPERSBERGER) introduced the
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services
A BILL
To establish a Joint Autonomy Office in the Department
of Defense, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-1
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 2
SECTION 1. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JOINT AUTONOMY 3
OFFICE. 4
(a) E
STABLISHMENT.—Not later than 120 days after 5
the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of 6
Defense, in consultation with the Chief Digital and Artifi-7
cial Intelligence Officer, shall establish an Office in the 8
Department of Defense to coordinate and accelerate the 9
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delivery of all-domain autonomous systems to operational 1
users. 2
(b) D
ESIGNATION.—The office established under sub-3
section (a) shall be known as the ‘‘Joint Autonomy Office’’ 4
(in this Act referred to as the ‘‘Office’’). 5
(c) H
EAD OFOFFICE.—The head of the Office shall 6
be a Director appointed by the Secretary of Defense from 7
among individuals with management experience and tech-8
nical expertise in all-domain autonomous system tech-9
nologies. 10
(d) D
UTIES.—The duties of the Joint Autonomy Of-11
fice are following: 12
(1) Utilize commercial and defense best prac-13
tices and existing investments in defense cloud infra-14
structure to accelerate the delivery of autonomous 15
systems to the operational user. 16
(2) Implement an all-domain enterprise autono-17
mous systems software development and testing 18
platform across classification levels of the Depart-19
ment of Defense. 20
(3) Provide access to defense programs with au-21
tonomy requirements to accelerate the development 22
and testing of all-domain autonomous systems. 23
(4) Implement an enterprise all-domain data ac-24
quisition and curation process to build, manage, and 25
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sustain datasets from all available autonomy pro-1
grams of the Department in order to develop and 2
test all-domain autonomous systems. 3
(5) Provide access to existing and future service 4
and joint autonomous system development and ac-5
quisition programs, including such programs as the 6
Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, Robotic Com-7
bat Vehicles, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and 8
Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle, as development 9
and testing datasets mature. 10
(6) Accelerate the Department’s development 11
and testing of all-domain autonomous system proto-12
types to scaled production in conjunction with serv-13
ice and joint autonomous system development and 14
acquisition and the combatant commands. 15
(7) Accelerate the Department’s development 16
and operational test and evaluation of all-domain au-17
tonomous systems in conjunction with service and 18
joint test community and the combatant commands. 19
(8) Continuously solicit and utilize joint 20
warfighter feedback on requirements and capability 21
progress in the development process. 22
(9) Ensure that the development environments, 23
generated data for autonomous system development, 24
and any prototype all-domain autonomous system 25
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technologies, are designed to transition to full 1
sustainment within the programs of the military de-2
partments. 3
(10) Ensure that knowledge of proper autono-4
mous system program design and execution, includ-5
ing software development, test, and acquisition best 6
practices, is transitioned to service program execu-7
tive offices with unmanned and autonomous system 8
requirements. 9
(11) Carry out such other activities relating to 10
the coordination, development, and delivery of auton-11
omous systems as the Secretary of Defense deter-12
mines appropriate. 13
(e) H
IRINGAUTHORITIES.— 14
(1) H
IGHLY QUALIFIED EXPERTS .—Pursuant 15
to the authority provided under section 9903 of title 16
5, United States Code, the Secretary of Defense may 17
establish within the Office up to 12 Highly Qualified 18
Expert positions to facilitate the rapid hiring of 19
technical program managers with experience in the 20
development, test, production, and delivery of all-do-21
main autonomous systems. The Secretary may ex-22
tend the term of each such Highly Qualified Expert 23
for a period of not more than seven years. 24
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(2) EXCEPTED SERVICE HIRING AUTHORITY .— 1
Each position in the Joint Autonomy Office shall be 2
a position in the excepted service, and the Secretary 3
may appoint individuals to such positions in the 4
same manner as provided under section 1599f of 5
title 10, United States Code. 6
(f) D
ATAACCESS ANDRELATEDAUTHORITIES.— 7
(1) D
ATA ACCESS.—The Secretary of Defense 8
shall ensure that the Joint Autonomy Office— 9
(A) subject to the implementation of the 10
security protocols described in paragraph (2), 11
has unlimited access to existing datasets within 12
service and joint autonomous system, artificial 13
intelligence, and legacy platform and sensor 14
programs regardless of classification level; and 15
(B) has the authority to centralize access 16
to such data and information, as required to 17
carry out the duties of the Office. 18
(2) S
ECURITY PROTOCOLS .—The Secretary of 19
Defense shall implement appropriate security proto-20
cols to protect any data and other information 21
shared with or maintained by the Office under para-22
graph (1). 23
(g) C
ONTRACTING AUTHORITIES AND LIMITA-24
TIONS.— 25
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(1) IN GENERAL.—The Director of the Office— 1
(A) subject to paragraph (2), may enter 2
into contracts with private sector, non-Govern-3
ment entities, as appropriate, for the purposes 4
of leveraging innovative commercial technologies 5
to aid and facilitate the execution of the duties 6
of the Office; and 7
(B) shall ensure that all programs admin-8
istered by the Office are carried out in accord-9
ance with section 3453 of title 10, United 10
States Code. 11
(2) L
IMITATION.—The Office may coordinate 12
with other offices of the Department of Defense with 13
contracting authority as required to carry out the 14
duties described in subsection (d). 15
(h) C
OORDINATION.—The Director of the Office shall 16
ensure that the activities of the Office are conducted in 17
accordance with Department of Defense policies and in co-18
ordination with the research and development programs 19
of the Department. 20
(i) B
RIEFING.—Not later than 90 days after the date 21
of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense 22
shall provide to the Committees on Armed Services of the 23
Senate and House of Representatives a briefing on the 24
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status of the establishment of the Office under this sec-1
tion. 2
(j) T
ERMINATION.— 3
(1) I
N GENERAL.—Except as provided in para-4
graph (2), the Office shall terminate on the date 5
that is seven years after the date of the enactment 6
of this Act. 7
(2) E
XTENSION.—The Secretary may extend 8
the termination date under paragraph (1) for one or 9
more additional periods of seven years if— 10
(A) if the Secretary determines that such 11
an extension is in the best interest of the De-12
partment of Defense; and 13
(B) submits to the Committees on Armed 14
Services of the Senate and House of Represent-15
atives notice of the Secretary’s intent to make 16
such an extension. 17
(k) D
EFINITIONS.—In this section: 18
(1) The term ‘‘all-domain’’, when used with re-19
spect to an autonomous system, means interoper-20
ability across one or more of the ground, aerial, 21
maritime, and space domains. 22
(2) The term ‘‘autonomous system’’ means a 23
system with the ability to conduct integrated sens-24
ing, perception, communication, decision-making, 25
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and action within specific boundaries and independ-1
ently from a human operator’s instruction. 2
(3) The term ‘‘Chief Digital and Artificial Intel-3
ligence Officer’’ has the meaning given that term in 4
section 846(b) of the James M. Inhofe National De-5
fense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (Pub-6
lic Law 117–263). 7
(4) The term ‘‘operational test and evaluation’’ 8
has the meaning given that term in section 4171(h) 9
of title 10, United States Code. 10
(l) A
UTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.—There 11
are authorized to be appropriated to the Department of 12
Defense $55,000,000 for fiscal year 2024 to carry out this 13
section. 14
SEC. 2. FRAMEWORK FOR CLASSIFICATION OF AUTONO-15
MOUS CAPABILITIES. 16
(a) I
NGENERAL.—Not later than 180 days after the 17
date on which Joint Autonomy Office is established pursu-18
ant to section 1, the Director of the Office, in consultation 19
with the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Under 20
Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the 21
commanders of the combatant commands, and the Secre-22
taries of the military departments, shall establish a De-23
partment-wide classification framework for autonomous 24
capabilities. 25
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(b) PURPOSE.—The purpose of the framework re-1
quired under subsection (a) shall be to facilitate the devel-2
opment of a common understanding within the Depart-3
ment of Defense of autonomous capabilities and related 4
operational requirements to better plan for, resource, and 5
integrate appropriate autonomy-enabling hardware and 6
software into current and future systems across the De-7
partment. 8
(c) A
UTONOMYCLASSIFICATIONFRAMEWORK.—At a 9
minimum, the framework required under subsection (a) 10
shall— 11
(1) include multiple levels of increasingly com-12
plex autonomous maneuver capability with a focus 13
on classifying necessary levels of human supervision 14
or control during operational use; 15
(2) apply to current and future autonomous 16
systems operating across land, air, maritime, and 17
space domains; 18
(3) include estimates of costs necessary to 19
achieve specific levels of autonomous capability; and 20
(4) include— 21
(A) operational requirements including 22
necessary levels of survivability in GPS- or com-23
munications-denied environments; 24
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(B) specific operational or engagement sce-1
narios; and 2
(C) necessary levels of teaming with other 3
autonomous systems. 4
(d) P
ROGRESSREPORT.—Not later than 30 days 5
after the establishment of the framework under subsection 6
(a), the Director of the Joint Autonomy Office shall sub-7
mit to the congressional defense committees a report that 8
includes a description of the framework and the specific 9
methodologies, criteria, and operational requirements used 10
to develop the classifications under the framework. 11
(e) R
EGULARREASSESSMENT.— 12
(1) I
N GENERAL.—Not less frequently than 13
once every two years, Director of the Joint Auton-14
omy Office shall reassess and update the classifica-15
tion framework required under subsection (a) to en-16
sure the framework incorporates recent develop-17
ments in technology, standards, and operational re-18
quirements relating to autonomous capabilities. 19
(2) B
RIEFING.—Not later than 30 days of the 20
completion of each reassessment under paragraph 21
(1), the Director of the Joint Autonomy Office shall 22
provide to the congressional defense committees a 23
briefing on the results of the reassessment and any 24
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resulting revisions to the classification framework 1
under subsection (a). 2
(f) I
MPLEMENTATION.—Not later than 90 days after 3
the establishment of the framework under subsection (a), 4
the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy shall issue in-5
structions to the military services to implement such 6
framework by operationalizing the use of the framework 7
in the planning and budgeting processes of individual pro-8
gram offices. 9
SEC. 3. PLAN FOR INTEGRATION OF AUTONOMOUS CAPA-10
BILITIES INTO SYSTEMS OF THE DEPART-11
MENT OF DEFENSE. 12
(a) P
LANREQUIRED.—Not later than one year after 13
the date on which Joint Autonomy Office is established 14
pursuant to section 1, the Director of the Joint Autonomy 15
Office shall develop and implement a plan and procedures 16
to standardize the planning, resourcing, and integration 17
efforts with respect to autonomous capabilities for current 18
and future systems across the Department. 19
(b) E
LEMENTS.—The plan required under subsection 20
(a) shall include the following: 21
(1) A Department-wide assessment of the sta-22
tus of efforts to resource and integrate autonomy 23
software into current and future systems, includ-24
ing— 25
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(A) the identification of current and future 1
systems across the Department which can be 2
integrated with autonomy software to enable 3
continuous operational capability of such sys-4
tems in GPS- or communications-denied envi-5
ronments, including those systems identified in 6
the report required by section 246 of the Na-7
tional Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 8
Year 2022 (Public Law 117–81; 135 Stat. 9
1622); and 10
(B) an assessment of gaps in— 11
(i) program funding related to the ac-12
quisition of autonomy software; 13
(ii) acquisition processes, including 14
the planning, programming, budgeting, 15
and execution process for acquiring and in-16
tegrating autonomy-enabling capabilities 17
across relevant programs of record; 18
(iii) training capabilities; 19
(iv) testing, evaluation, verification, 20
and validation capabilities in all environ-21
ments, including virtual and real world en-22
vironments; and 23
(v) efforts to test, resource, and scale 24
commercially available technologies. 25
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(2) A plan to address, to the maximum extent 1
practicable, the gaps assessed in paragraph (1), in-2
cluding— 3
(A) updated procedures to plan for auton-4
omy software costs at the onset of the acquisi-5
tion life cycle; 6
(B) plans to include in greater detail the 7
projected autonomy software costs for applica-8
ble programs of record within period covered by 9
the Future Years Defense Program; and 10
(C) plans to standardize the acquisition of 11
autonomy software for programs of record 12
across the military services including the use of 13
the capability classification framework required 14
in section 2 of this Act. 15
(c) C
ONSULTATION.—The Director of the Joint Au-16
tonomy Office shall develop the plan under subsection (a) 17
in consultation with— 18
(1) the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisi-19
tion and Sustainment; 20
(2) the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence 21
Officer; 22
(3) the Joint Chiefs of Staff; 23
(4) the senior acquisition executive of each mili-24
tary service; 25
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(5) the commanders of the combatant com-1
mands; and 2
(6) such other organizations and elements of 3
the Department of Defense as the Director deter-4
mines appropriate. 5
(d) R
EPORT.— 6
(1) I
N GENERAL.—Not later than 90 days after 7
the completion of the plan under subsection (a), the 8
Director of the Joint Autonomy Office shall submit 9
to the congressional defense committees a report 10
that describes the specific elements of the plan. 11
(2) F
ORM.—The report under paragraph (1) 12
shall be submitted in unclassified form but may con-13
tain a classified annex. 14
Æ
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