I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 3168 
To establish a Joint Autonomy Office in the Department of Defense, and 
for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 9, 2023 
Mr. WITTMAN (for himself and Mr. RUPPERSBERGER) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services 
A BILL 
To establish a Joint Autonomy Office in the Department 
of Defense, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JOINT AUTONOMY 
OFFICE. 
(a) ESTABLISHMENT.—Not later than 120 days after 
the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of 
Defense, in consultation with the Chief Digital and Artifi-
cial Intelligence Officer, shall establish an Office in the 
Department of Defense to coordinate and accelerate the 
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delivery of all-domain autonomous systems to operational 
users. 
(b) DESIGNATION.—The office established under sub-
section (a) shall be known as the ‘‘Joint Autonomy Office’’ 
(in this Act referred to as the ‘‘Office’’). 
(c) HEAD OF OFFICE.—The head of the Office shall 
be a Director appointed by the Secretary of Defense from 
among individuals with management experience and tech-
nical expertise in all-domain autonomous system tech-
nologies. 
(d) DUTIES.—The duties of the Joint Autonomy Of-
fice are following: 
(1) Utilize commercial and defense best prac-
tices and existing investments in defense cloud infra-
structure to accelerate the delivery of autonomous 
systems to the operational user. 
(2) Implement an all-domain enterprise autono-
mous systems software development and testing 
platform across classification levels of the Depart-
ment of Defense. 
(3) Provide access to defense programs with au-
tonomy requirements to accelerate the development 
and testing of all-domain autonomous systems. 
(4) Implement an enterprise all-domain data ac-
quisition and curation process to build, manage, and 
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sustain datasets from all available autonomy pro-
grams of the Department in order to develop and 
test all-domain autonomous systems. 
(5) Provide access to existing and future service 
and joint autonomous system development and ac-
quisition programs, including such programs as the 
Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, Robotic Com-
bat Vehicles, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and 
Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle, as development 
and testing datasets mature. 
(6) Accelerate the Department’s development 
and testing of all-domain autonomous system proto-
types to scaled production in conjunction with serv-
ice and joint autonomous system development and 
acquisition and the combatant commands. 
(7) Accelerate the Department’s development 
and operational test and evaluation of all-domain au-
tonomous systems in conjunction with service and 
joint test community and the combatant commands. 
(8) Continuously solicit and utilize joint 
warfighter feedback on requirements and capability 
progress in the development process. 
(9) Ensure that the development environments, 
generated data for autonomous system development, 
and any prototype all-domain autonomous system 
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technologies, are designed to transition to full 
sustainment within the programs of the military de-
partments. 
(10) Ensure that knowledge of proper autono-
mous system program design and execution, includ-
ing software development, test, and acquisition best 
practices, is transitioned to service program execu-
tive offices with unmanned and autonomous system 
requirements. 
(11) Carry out such other activities relating to 
the coordination, development, and delivery of auton-
omous systems as the Secretary of Defense deter-
mines appropriate. 
(e) HIRING AUTHORITIES.— 
(1) HIGHLY
QUALIFIED
EXPERTS.—Pursuant 
to the authority provided under section 9903 of title 
5, United States Code, the Secretary of Defense may 
establish within the Office up to 12 Highly Qualified 
Expert positions to facilitate the rapid hiring of 
technical program managers with experience in the 
development, test, production, and delivery of all-do-
main autonomous systems. The Secretary may ex-
tend the term of each such Highly Qualified Expert 
for a period of not more than seven years. 
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