Innovative commercial solutions for Department of War missions through CSOs

This is a revision to the notice, to includes updates to two critical topic areas. All changes are indicated on the actual notice, by a vertical black change bar along the right-hand margin.

The General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS) Defense Capability Accelerator (CapX) intends to utilize the Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) procedures throughout Fiscal Year 2026. These CSOs, on behalf of interagency partners within the Department of War (DoW), including Military Departments (MILDEPS), 4th Estate entities, Combatant Commands (CCMDs), and others, will seek innovative, commercial solutions to address specific mission and operational challenges.

Disclaimer: This is not a solicitation, and no white papers or proposals are being requested at this time. Specific CSO solicitations will be released separately as funding becomes available. A general set of anticipated CSO topic areas are provided as a part of this notice.

I. CSO Authority

Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) procedures are authorized by Section 880 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and as amended by Section 7227 of the FY23 NDAA. CSOs are subject to the limitations outlined in the General Services Acquisition Manual (GSAM) Part 571 and the associated CSO Guide. CSO procedures can be utilized to competitively procure innovative commercial products and commercial services to include innovative technologies and solutions using the commercial solutions opening.

II. CSO Pilot Program Benefits

GSA developed this program to be implemented outside the normal Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) requirements to engage traditional and non-traditional Government contractors, including start-up companies. This pilot program is intended to promote competition with a streamlined approach to acquire innovative commercial products and commercial services. This pilot program offers the following benefits:

1. Streamlined solicitation requiring only minimal corporate and technical information.

2. Fast track vendor selection timelines.

3. Simplified contract administration procedures and requirements.

4. Preference for the vendor retaining core intellectual property.

III. Planned Topic Areas

GSA anticipates issuing CSO announcements focused on the following general topic areas. This list of topics is not all encompassing and CSOs may be issued that are not defined in these topic areas.

Integrated Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Automation Ecosystems

This topic seeks commercial solutions that enable fully integrated, secure, and scalable data and AI ecosystems to support national security missions. Capabilities of interest include federated data engineering, metadata-driven interoperability, and data mesh or knowledge graph architectures that support modular data sharing across organizations. Solutions should enhance decision-making through advanced AI/ML techniques such as generative and agentic AI, predictive analytics, adaptive learning, red teaming, and autonomous decision-support. Solutions may also include automation technologies like robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent orchestration, and agentic workflows to improve business process efficiency and platform operations across government environments.

This topic may explore tools that support enterprise data governance, including tagging, policy enforcement, automated compliance validation, and system-level reciprocity; as well as data product development pipelines, catalogs, curated datasets, and Agile/SAFe-based delivery. Solutions may also include mission-focused application development, cloud-native DevSecOps enablement, financial operations optimization, and security/policy auditing to ensure visibility into cyber and platform risks.

Solutions operating within hybrid, federated, or regulated cloud environments should demonstrate the ability to scale securely, integrate across distributed stakeholders, and incorporate automation-driven monitoring and governance practices.

Overall, emphasis is placed on delivering measurable mission outcomes through user-centric applications, composable architectures, enterprise-ready analytics, and resilient automation-enabled ecosystems that operate across multi-domain, contested, and federated environments.

Autonomous and Uncrewed Systems Innovation

This topic area supports the development of commercial platforms, sensors, autonomy stacks, and control architectures for uncrewed systems (UXS) across maritime, aerial, ground, and space domains. This topic area seeks commercial capabilities that enable contested-environment resilience, modular integration, and advanced teaming or mission autonomy behaviors. Solutions may include modular UAS architectures with government-integrable interfaces, low-cost or attritable flight systems, alternative Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technologies, companion compute boards to offload flight controllers for ML/AI…