US Army sets technology goals for IDX 2026

A US Army all-source intelligence technician assigned to 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, assists the battalion intelligence officer during Exercise ‘Allied Spirit X' in Germany. (US Army )

The US Army is casting a wide net among industry partners in an effort to drill down into several key technology focus areas, which will form the basis for this year's iteration of the service's Intelligence Discovery Experiment (IDX).

Officials from the intelligence concepts and experimentation directorate at Army Futures and Concepts Command are seeking intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies to support ”future requirements of intelligence data processing and exploitation capabilities from the point of collection to targeting and decision making”, according to a January request for information (RFI).

”During this experiment we will be examining intelligence processing and exploitation from sensor [and] source through processor [to] exploitation, to determine where inefficiencies and latency exist and how these processes can be improved,” army officials said in the RFI.

Planning for IDX is expected to run through April 2026, culminating in the actual IDX experiment, which is scheduled to run from 7 to 13 June 2026, the solicitation stated.

The white paper submissions being sought under the IDX RFI will look to address a number of technical challenges within all major intelligence disciplines, as well as service-wide intelligence processing and exploitation strategies, officials said in an IDX industry notice.

On back-end processing and exploitation strategies, army officials are homing in on efforts to mature the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to ”increase efficiency and reduce latency in support of targeting and decision making in the future operational environment”, the notice stated.