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U.S. Central Command stands up rapid innovation unit to deliver combat tech to troops in 60 days.
U.S. Central Command has created a Rapid Employment Joint Task Force to deliver battlefield technology to deployed forces in as little as 60 days. The effort aims to fast-track counter-drone tools, sensors, and software for U.S. troops and allies facing growing threats in the Middle East.
U.S. Central Command announced the creation of a Rapid Employment Joint Task Force in a press release dated September 23, 2025, positioning the new organization as a fast channel to move combat-ready technology to deployed forces. The statement frames the task force, led by CENTCOM’s chief technology officer, as a practical way to cut the time between frontline requests and fielding. The aim is to get software, sensors and counter-drone tools to units that need them, in weeks rather than months. The release ties the effort to ongoing work with regional partners and recent live-fire activities, including a counter-UAS event in Saudi Arabia.
CENTCOM has launched a Rapid Employment Joint Task Force to speed new battlefield technologies, such as counter-drone systems and software upgrades, into the hands of deployed forces within 60 days, aiming to strengthen operational effectiveness and regional partnerships (Picture source: U.S. DoW).
The mandate sits at the junction of three lines of effort CENTCOM highlights as capability, software and what it calls tech diplomacy. That combination matters because modern problems in theater rarely hinge on a single box. Units need sensors that can see small, fast threats, networks that move the data without delay, decision aids that help rather than distract, and effectors that can handle clutter, heat and dust. The task force is designed to stitch those pieces together and then push the package forward without waiting for a full budget cycle. In practice, it reads like a clearinghouse that can validate a requirement at the edge, select from available options and carry the approvals burden centrally so a battalion staff does not have to reinvent the process.
The release gives software equal footing with hardware, which tracks with reality in theater. A small software patch can unlock a new radar mode or add a drone profile to a threat library without shipping a crate. Systems that are likely to move quickly through this pipeline tend to be software defined radios hosting new waveforms, electronic warfare suites that can be retuned on demand, and open architecture. The plumbing behind that is familiar to practitioners: common data models, containerized apps, lightweight orchestration and quick reaction cyber certification so tools can ride existing networks.
By drawing from acquisitions, resourcing, logistics and data specialists, the task force can line up contracting shortcuts, standing test venues and pre-approved cyber baselines before a unit asks. That is how a 60-day target becomes important: it implies a mapped pipeline, including vendors with off-the-shelf kits, test ranges that can host rapid trials and templates for authority to operate that do not reset the clock every time a widget is updated. The recent counter-UAS live-fire event in Saudi Arabia is presented as a proving ground for this approach, with U.S., host nation and industry participation. It is a laboratory, but an operational one, where interference, heat and sand force honest results.
Units in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility need faster kill chains against small unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles and irregular fires. They also need better survivability when communications are contested. A rapid employment construct can push out fused sensor grids that blend fixed sites with pop-up assets, deploy analytics that clean up tracks and reduce false alarms, and pair those with layered effectors. In practice, that may look like a bundle of lightweight RF detectors, a short-range radar gap filler, a handheld interface that cues jammers or guns, and a software update that adds an identification rule. The logistics have to stay small, with spares and training the unit already has. If the task force can institutionalize an 80 percent solution delivered quickly, commanders will use it because it matches the tempo on the ground.
The same approach applies to command and control software. A streamlined authority to operate, coordinated by the task force, would let units trial a data fusion widget during an exercise window, gather feedback under load and then lock it in before the next rotation. Capability tends to accrete this way: small, survivable updates that shave minutes from a process and reduce human error.
CENTCOM sits at the center of a drone proliferation problem and its partners are building solutions at speed. By formalizing a joint task force for rapid employment, the command is trying to shorten coalition learning loops and make interoperability a lived practice rather than a panel topic. The Red Sands live-fire series in Saudi Arabia offers a model, an evaluation line where regional forces and U.S. units test sensors and effectors together, decide what is good enough and field it with shared tactics. That lowers the diplomatic friction around sharing because the testing is cooperative and the operational need is obvious to everyone on the range.
Washington wants partners in the region to view the United States as a quick collaborator on practical defense problems, especially air and missile defense at the tactical edge and the fight against small unmanned systems that do not respect borders. A task force built to cut delay is a way to match that message with the process. It also aligns with a broader push for affordable, fieldable counter-drone and autonomy solutions that can be exported or co-developed. If the team can move fast without breaking compliance, it will reinforce day-to-day deterrence in a theater where attacks can spike without warning.
Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.
Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.