The U.S. Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is teaming up with the Department of the Army to fast-track adoption of AI-enabled coding tools across the Defense Department (previously the War Department) workforce.

In a call for solutions posted on SAM.gov, officials outlined plans to equip DOD software developers with commercial-grade AI capabilities to speed delivery and boost code quality. 

“Today, the DoW’s developer workforce operates across a diverse set of environments — desktop-based, virtual desktop, and web-based — using a variety of development tools and programming languages. The Department seeks solutions that can operate within this heterogeneous environment while meeting the security and compliance standards required for Department systems and data,” the document reads.

The solicitation seeks commercially available tools deployable at enterprise scale, addressing what leaders describe as a lack of standardized access to AI coding platforms common in the private sector.

The department is seeking two modalities: AI-powered coding assistance embedded in integrated development environments (IDEs), and command-line interface (CLI)-based agentic tools capable of autonomous, multistep coding tasks with human oversight.