Sarah Pearson, chief of strategic initiatives at the Defense Innovation Unit. Photo: National Defense Industrial Association

Despite success in helping startups and new entrants into the defense industry prototype and conduct initial operational evaluations of their technology offerings, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and its partners in the Pentagon are only now beginning to remove the roadblocks that prevent more relevant assessments of these systems and opportunities to quickly field them at scale, a DIU official said last week. DIU in August officially stood up its Bridge Program, which has been building for the past 12…