The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said in its annual report that it launched 23 new projects in 2020, which reflects a year-over-year increase of 35 percent, and transitioned 11 prototypes to Department of Defense partners for large-scale procurement.
DIU received 944 commercial proposals and awarded 56 prototype other transaction agreements to companies in 2020, bringing the total number of prototype OTAs issued to 208, according to the agency’s 2020 annual report.
The agency has transitioned a total of 26 commercial platforms to DOD partners since it started facilitating prototype projects in 2016. To date, 43 percent of its projects have generated at least one prototype that moved to commercial production.
“Additionally, 51 DIU projects have ongoing prototypes that will be eligible for transition to production if successfully completed,” the report’s executive summary reads.
DIU listed some of its key achievements in the previous year, such as making five small unmanned aerial systems available for federal procurement on the General Services Administration schedule as part of the Blue sUAS program, scaling the predictive maintenance platform to additional Air Force and Army partners and aircraft and launching advanced energy and materials as the sixth technology portfolio in addition to artificial intelligence, cyber, autonomy, space and human systems portfolios.