DoD Modernization Exchange 2026: Army’s Leo Garciga on unified network, continuous ATO speeding tools to warfighters

Over the next two years, the Army expects to complete two major technology infrastructure projects that will open the door much wider for the service to deliver capabilities to soldiers at a speed only previously imagined.

By the end of 2027, the Army will finish the development of its unified network after more than four years of work.

Second, and maybe more importantly, the Army is testing and almost ready to push into production the long-held goal of creating a continuous authority to operate (ATO) process for applications.

Leo Garciga, chief information officer for the Department of the Army, said both of these will help complete a long-term effort to streamline how the Army does business, reduce bureaucracy and push decision-making down to the commanders and leaders who own their technology terrains.

“We are making things run a lot faster, and soldiers get capability when they need it, not when the bureaucracy of the headquarters gets in the way. Then we are rethinking the way we do cybersecurity. We did a big push to centralize and get a lot less authorizers out there that would authorize work on the network and really focused on maybe seven folks in the entire Army that really did it at a network level,” Garciga said during Federal News Network’s DoD Modernization Exchange 2026.

“At the same time, what we did was push down a lot of authorities to commanders, so commanders can operate their cyber terrain. Whether that be a command or that be a maneuver command, we were able to get that done very successfully. We’re still at the beginning stages of that piece, but I’m super excited to push those capabilities down as far as we can and really take out the administrivia of the way we were doing business.”

Focused on finding efficiencies

Garciga, who is leaving his role as Army CIO in June after three years in the position, has been focused during his time in the job on “reducing the administrivia” by modernizing and eliminating policies, centralizing the buying of common software platforms from large vendors and bringing the service’s legacy business systems into the modern era.

While any one of these initiatives would be an accomplishment in and of itself, Garciga has led a kind of transformation rarely seen in government.

“Part of the challenge that we continue to have when we talk about transforming the government is we have to help transform our industry partners who are not moving at the same pace as we are. There’s this friction that’s caused there. Sometimes we’re helping our industry partner transition and modernize versus them helping us,” he said.

“We have some good contractor-owned, contractor-operated partners that have come to the table, who are born in the cloud and already doing software this way. We’re seeing the ability to flip on a switch and get things done is real, and we could bring them to the table. I think still our challenge is, how do we do this at scale? We’ve got to bring everybody with us on this journey. We’re still learning as the models are very different and the command and control structures are different. Over the next year or two, we’ll see some more maturing in that space, and I think that mix will get greater.”

Unified network coming in 2027

The Army already experienced a lot of that maturity with its unified network effort. It brought the number of disparate enterprise networks down to about five from 19 over the last few years. It started out with more than 42 different networks.

Garciga said the goal is to get down to three by the end of 2026 and move fully to a unified network by the end of 2027.

“I believe we’re like a 90% of what we would call the unified network, completely deployed around the world with Network Command centrally operating that at scale. There still are a handful of places that are still left to get done, but they did a great job moving really fast in the Pacific, in Europe and here in the continental United States,” he said.

“Our next big one is going to be finishing up the reserves and National Guard, so we continue to chip away at that, which will put us in a really good place. We have some other areas, like supporting civil works for the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s going to be a little bit different, little bit more long term on how some of those capabilities converge.”

A part of the network consolidation and modernization is the deployment of software-defined capabilities across the network. The Army is working with the Defense Information Systems Agency to take more advantage of commercial technologies on its next-generation command and control effort.

Garciga said the benefits of moving to a unified network are clear, from the saving of money to creating a single standard for the network that all soldiers can train on to making it easier to operate the network at scale across the globe.

“My sense is two or three years from now, the Army will be in an even better place. We’ll be talking about things like, ‘How did you build that tool on this platform? Not, how are you managing and running the network?’ I think we’ll be way past that,” he said.

“This idea of being able to reach across capabilities at echelon and having those standardized means we live in a world where we can use Microsoft Teams at the enterprise or tactical level. A world where it doesn’t mean that when I get deployed, I have to spend two weeks trying to hook into a combat command. We know what it looks like. We’re ready to go. We can just land somewhere and plug in. I think that’s the big piece we continue to push on that. As we start scaling the unified network at echelon, it’s the ease at which capability can be employed and what you use in garrison is also what you’re using to fight, which makes a big difference.”

Demonstrating CATO success

The second piece to that need for speed is the continuous authority to operate (CATO). This concept has been a long-held goal for agencies, but few have implemented it widespread.

Garciga said the Army is on the cusp of getting full approval from the DoD CIO’s Office to implement a new policy across the service.

The Army currently has four approved CATO platforms. One is at a command and three are within program offices.

Garciga said the move to a continuous ATO already is demonstrating how the Army can add speed to capability.

“Probably the pipeline that we’re seeing the most success from is one where we actually have hardware in the middle, which is a really interesting and slightly different approach than what most people are seeing. They went from only being able to do really two development efforts at the same time to deliver onto the platform to now they’re running 23 simultaneous development efforts through that pipeline,” he said. “The last work that they did went from what would have normally taken them about 30 to 45 days to deliver in the more traditional way to about a week.”

Another one of the CATO platforms is delivering code to improve defensive cyber capabilities with little human review on a daily basis.

“Our goal is to make sure that we have the right DevSecOps pipelines that are approved across the Army and that folks are making use of those to move more into continuous delivery of software in a secure way versus the more traditional way of building some software, using some tools and still having humans look at it. Really our big thing is, how much can we automate and leverage artificial intelligence to really increase speed?” Garciga said.

“We’re seeing folks who do have their pipelines approved doing all of that and really reducing the time it takes for humans to do review to find cybersecurity flaws a lot faster. Then the other piece, which I think is the most important, is: Can we get that capability into the hands of warfighters a lot quicker than we are today?”

The CATO process replaces an 80-page document the authorizers would put together for each system. Garciga said the standard ATO process was not only time-consuming, but bureaucratic.

“Now, we have that real tight coupling between what the requirement owner needs and the developers. We can see a lot of those changes happening in real time on the network in a safe way and then head straight to production. I think the more important part is not it’s the gaining of capacity but the ability to deliver capability that really matters in this space.”

Discover more articles and videos now on the DoD Modernization Exchange event page.

Copyright © 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.