The Defense Information Systems Agency announced June 8, 2026 that it will begin migrating all 11 of the U.S. military's combatant commands to a unified IT architecture called CommandNet, developed under its Mission Network-as-a-Service (MNaaS) program, starting in fiscal year 2028. The initiative is among the most sweeping network consolidation efforts in recent Defense Department history, touching every geographic and functional warfighting command in the U.S. military and setting the stage for a significant wave of procurement activity over the next two fiscal years.
What CommandNet Is and the Problem It Solves
For contractors unfamiliar with the structure, combatant commands — COCOMs — are the geographic and functional commands, such as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, and U.S. Strategic Command, that each hold authority over military operations in a defined region or mission area. Today, all eleven of these commands run their own distinct IT infrastructure, built up over decades and largely isolated by geography. The result, as DISA Vice Director Sharon McMillon put it plainly: "We have acknowledged that there are many disparate networks and many disparate systems operating in stovepipes."
CommandNet is DISA's answer. Built under the Mission Network-as-a-Service framework, it will consolidate those siloed command networks into a single enterprise architecture hosted on a centralized cloud-based secret fabric with federated transport. Once fully deployed, personnel across any combatant command will be able to access the network globally, regardless of their physical location or command affiliation. DISA would assume responsibility for commodity IT functions — hardware refresh cycles, patching, and baseline security management — freeing the COCOMs to redirect resources toward mission-critical work. As Deputy Chief Engineer Rob Johnson explained, "Now they can focus on the whole reason they exist and the whole reason that we need them."
The program was first surfaced publicly by the Pentagon's chief information office in September 2025, and DISA formalized its MNaaS priorities earlier this year. The June 8 announcement marks the first time DISA has publicly committed to a concrete migration start date and a command-by-command execution plan.
The Three-Phase Roadmap
DISA has outlined a deliberate three-phase approach. In 2026, the agency is conducting preliminary coordination with the combatant commands — "very preliminary coordinations," in the words of DISA Deputy Program Manager Kelli Garczynski — along with high-level requests for information and data gathering to understand each command's current environment. FY2027 shifts into a formal discovery and planning phase, where DISA will map existing infrastructure, develop migration sequencing, and engage industry more formally. Full migrations are then slated to begin in FY2028 across all 11 combatant commands.
DISA has acknowledged the complexity of the undertaking. Each command's network carries its own legacy systems, operational requirements, and local mission dependencies. The agency intends to apply lessons learned from the ongoing DODNet migration — which moved defense agencies onto a standardized enterprise network — before scaling that same model out to the COCOMs. That prior experience, officials indicated, is expected to shorten ramp-up time and reduce integration risk when migration activity accelerates in FY2028.
Thunderdome Zero-Trust and Federated ICAM
CommandNet will not simply consolidate networks for efficiency's sake. The architecture is designed from the ground up around DISA's Thunderdome zero-trust framework and a federated Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) capability. Thunderdome enforces continuous verification of users, devices, and sessions rather than relying on traditional perimeter-based security, which has proven inadequate for geographically dispersed military networks. The federated ICAM layer will manage user identities centrally while allowing granular, role-based control over which personnel can access specific network segments — a critical requirement when a single enterprise network spans commands in Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East simultaneously.
DISA officials have described the goal as a standard security baseline built on zero-trust architecture alongside on-demand network services and global reach with local mission agility. DISA has noted that CommandNet is intended to improve cross-command interoperability, aligning with the Pentagon's Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) initiative to link sensors, shooters, and decision-makers across all warfighting domains.
What It Means for Contractors
The immediate procurement signal is the RFI cycle already underway in 2026. Contractors with capabilities in enterprise network architecture, zero-trust implementation, or ICAM should track DISA solicitations closely — the data-gathering phase this year will directly shape requirements documents for FY2027 and beyond. Vendors who engage early, whether through formal RFI responses or industry days, will be far better positioned when formal solicitations drop. No contract values or awardees have been disclosed at this stage, and DISA has not yet named a preferred acquisition vehicle.
FY2027 is the critical positioning window. DISA's discovery and planning phase will almost certainly produce market surveys, draft RFPs, and possibly bridge contracts to support planning activities. Contractors offering network assessment services, migration roadmap development, and cloud-based secret enclave design should be actively marketing those capabilities to DISA's DODNet and J-6 program offices now, not waiting until solicitations are posted.
When FY2028 migrations begin, the demand profile will be broad. Zero-trust integration, federated ICAM deployment, wide-area network engineering, cloud migration for classified workloads, and legacy system decommissioning will all be in play simultaneously. CJADC2-enabling capabilities — data fabrics, edge computing, cross-domain solutions — will carry a premium given CommandNet's role as the underlying transport for that initiative.
For contractors currently holding network operations or IT support contracts with individual COCOMs, the transition to CommandNet represents a structural shift in the competitive landscape. As DISA absorbs commodity IT responsibilities, some incumbent task orders may consolidate into larger enterprise vehicles or wind down entirely. Contractors in that position should assess recompete timelines against the FY2027-2028 migration schedule and begin repositioning for the enterprise contracts that will replace fragmented command-level awards. Those who can credibly demonstrate cross-COCOM experience and deep familiarity with DISA's enterprise standards will have a meaningful advantage as the migration wave builds toward FY2028.
