On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran. Within days, the Strait of Hormuz became a contested waterway, resulting in an oil shortage and spiking global energy prices. The US Navy suddenly faced a maritime environment saturated with threats it needed to detect, classify, and track, all in real time.
The solicitation references Pacific Fleet needs across the INDOPACOM area of responsibility. Given the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz, it is fairly safe to assume what operational reality this is pointing to.
When operating in waters dense with fast attack craft, unmanned threats, and GPS jamming – where sensors cannot reliably distinguish a cargo vessel from an approaching threat – the need for realistic signal emulation to train those systems is not theoretical. It is immediate.
Historically, defense procurement follows war, not the other way around. Governments fight with what they have, then spend years afterward writing requirements for the next conflict. By the time a solicitation reaches industry, the lessons are often stale and the technology has already moved on.
What is happening here is different. The conflict is still active. The need is current. And the solicitation is already on the street.
The Hormuz situation demonstrates how recent structural changes are no longer theoretical – they are working in practice.
Just weeks ago, the US Defense Innovation Unit published a solicitation called EMU – Emulation Module for Unmanned Systems – seeking a modular payload capable of generating realistic ship radar and communications signals on small unmanned surface vessels. Responses were due April 8. Prototype delivery is expected within 180 days.
On its face, this is just another solicitation. But the timeline behind it is what makes it remarkable.
In traditional defense procurement, a capability gap identified in the field passes through layers of validation, requirements definition, budgeting cycles, and acquisition planning before ever reaching industry. That process is measured in months, sometimes years, and is governed by more than 2,000 pages of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). This framework made sense when defense programs centered on heavy hardware – planes, tanks, and ships – with multi-year development and delivery timelines.
The EMU solicitation appears to have moved from operational need to formal request in under 30 days.
That is not just fast. It is unprecedented.
And until very recently, it would not have been possible.
The Trump administration compressed this process not through incremental tweaks, but through a deliberate overhaul of how defense acquisition operates – the first of its kind in over 40 years.
The FY2026 NDAA’s shift to portfolio-based acquisition, the appointment of Portfolio Acquisition Executives explicitly measured on speed and outcomes, and the aggressive expansion of flexible pathways, such as the Commercial Solutions Opening under which EMU was posted, are central to that shift.
Just as importantly, authorities that once existed largely on paper are now being actively used – with contracting officers empowered to move faster, accept commercial solutions, and prioritize deployment over process. What once took months – often years -- is now being compressed into parallel workflows measured in weeks. For the first time, the system is not just designed for speed; it is being operated that way, translating operational urgency into procurement action at something approaching real time.
When official need catches up
Israeli founders are on the battlefield developing those exact solutions in real time – often while still in uniform.
Skana Robotics, founded by veterans of maritime special operations, builds autonomous surface vessels running on a software-defined, open-architecture autonomy stack designed for precisely this kind of modular payload integration. Sensorz, based in Kfar Saba, has built SWORD – an edge AI-powered RF spectrum dominance platform that detects, classifies, and orchestrates responses against emitters in contested and GPS-denied environments. One builds the platforms; the other operates in the RF domain. Together, they represent both sides of the capability the US Navy is now seeking.
Neither company was built in response to the EMU solicitation. Both were built in response to problems their founders encountered on the battlefield; founders who are part-time CEOs and part-time reserve soldiers, cycling between boardrooms and operational theaters since October 2023.
That is what makes this moment different from the traditional defense innovation cycle. Start-ups typically build ahead of demand and then wait years for procurement to catch up. Here, the opposite is happening. Founders are building for today’s battlefield, and the US government is, for the first time, issuing requests while that battlefield reality is still unfolding.
This is not ahead of its time. It is aligned with it.
A convergence of speed
This is not a one-off. It is a signal of where defense procurement is heading.
For the first time, the US procurement system is operating at something closer to the speed at which these start-ups are already building. When the world’s largest defense buyer begins issuing solicitations at the pace of conflict, the advantage shifts to companies that were already solving these problems before the request was ever published.
For Israeli defense start-ups, particularly those operating at the intersection of electronic warfare, unmanned systems, and combat-tested innovation, the message is not that a door is opening.
It is that the clock on the other side is finally ticking at the same speed as theirs; and for the first time, the system is keeping up with the battlefield.