The key is backward planning your modular approach to DoD GenAI capability development…

Remember the tech constantly improves regardless of your investment, so start your use case testing on current leading edge closed source models, then acquire and build a modular system that will utilize a future open source model. Use the consistent time lag between the release of leading foundation models to their equivalent open-source competitors to your advantage. With a roughly 6-12 month time gap between the best LLM of today, to the release of an equivalent performing open source model of tomorrow, you can capitalize on both to optimize your DoD project plan.

If one model can do it then eventually others will too, so use the best paid models of today to prove a concept, then use future free models of tomorrow to operate your use case at scale. In the DoD all acquisition and project implementation takes time, so marry that fact up with these tech development characteristics to optimize your acquisition and implementation plans. If done right, you can optimize all your costs for efficiency, as well as deliver cost controlled guaranteed performance at scale.

All this is possible…if you plan accordingly.