The Department of War under Secretary Pete Hegseth has expanded the Science, Technology and Innovation Board to 33 members, folding legacy advisory bodies into a single, high-caliber panel designed to speed technology decisions and better arm U.S. forces for future conflicts.
Secretary Hegseth approved a second round of appointments that grows the newly consolidated Science, Technology and Innovation Board, or STIB, aiming to deliver clearer, faster guidance to military leaders. The STIB replaces the old Defense Science Board and the Defense Innovation Board, combining decades of technical advisory experience with modern private-sector practices into one body. That merger is meant to stop overlapping recommendations and streamline how independent experts feed advice to the Department of War. The result is a single advisory pipeline intended to provide actionable answers rather than more committees.
“Our warfighters can’t afford to wait. We are unifying our best scientific minds and our most innovative private-sector leaders into a single board built to provide clear answers, not more bureaucracy,” said Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering. The new roster includes operational leaders and technologists who have actually delivered results in high-pressure environments. Christopher C. Miller brings leadership from the Pentagon and battlefield experience as a retired Army Special Forces colonel and Green Beret. James F. Geurts adds a record of acquisition reform and hands-on integration from his time overseeing Navy research and procurement efforts.
Other members blend White House and cyber expertise with venture-backed innovation and advanced science. Joshua Steinman offers cyber and supply chain experience from the National Security Council, while figures from venture capital and DARPA supply private-sector speed and deep technical know-how. The board intentionally mixes warfighters, policy veterans, and industry leaders so technical advice is grounded in operational reality. That mix should help the Department of War close the gap between lab breakthroughs and battlefield deployment.
Hegseth’s team has been aggressive about overhauling how the military buys and fields equipment, redesignating procurement as the Warfighting Acquisition System to emphasize speed. The department is pushing cheaper commercial tech where it makes sense, expanding flexible contracting tools, and cutting red tape that used to stall deliveries for years. Those are practical steps to get capabilities into troops’ hands faster rather than letting programs languish for a decade. The STIB is meant to be an upstream advisory muscle that supports those acquisition shifts with expert judgment.
The STIB’s focus areas map directly to modern warfighting priorities like generative AI, industrial base resilience, commercial space, cyber dominance, and biotechnology. By aligning experts on these domains, the board supports rapid choices about which commercial capabilities and emerging sciences the military should adopt. That alignment is designed to make sure the department has a coherent posture on technologies that will decide future conflicts. It also addresses the fragmentation critics say slowed decisions under the previous administration’s advisory structure.
Critics of past arrangements point to long timelines and conflicting committees that muddled recommendations, but the STIB’s single-board model is intended to eliminate that confusion. Government watchdogs have noted acquisition programs historically took almost 12 years on average to deliver initial capability under older processes. Streamlining advice and acquisition together aims to shave years off that timeline and reduce wasted effort. Faster delivery of new capabilities is not just bureaucratic polish; it directly affects lethality and survivability for deployed forces.
Beyond speed, the STIB brings battlefield-tested judgment to thorny trade-offs between risk and urgency. When you mix special operations experience, acquisition reformers, cyber policymakers, and venture investors, you get a board that can weigh operational need against technical maturity and industrial scale. That pragmatic blend should help the department decide when to field immature but game-changing tech and when to wait for more mature solutions. For a military facing peer competitors with growing technology arsenals, those decisions matter a great deal.
Operationalizing advice means the board will be judged on outcomes: how quickly new systems reach troops and how effectively those systems change the competitive balance. That outcome-focused stance mirrors Hegseth’s broader push to prioritize deployment speed and measurable performance. If the STIB can connect expert recommendations to faster contracting and smarter requirements, it will have done the practical work critical to modernizing the force. For commanders and service members, practical results on the ground are the only metric that counts.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America’s military.
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