From Legacy to Lethal: DISA’s Mission to Turn Tech Debt into Warfighting Power

May 14, 2025

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Colonel Jeffrey Strauss, U.S. Army Deputy for Programs at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is on a mission—and it starts with paying down the Department of Defense’s (DoD) technical debt. At TechNet Cyber in Baltimore, Col. Strauss shares how DISA is tackling the complex challenge of retiring outdated technologies while steering the agency toward a more modern and efficient digital infrastructure.

For Strauss, technical debt isn’t just a technical problem—it’s a strategic one. He compares it to personal financial debt, emphasizing that, like unpaid credit cards, technical debt continues to accumulate interest, draining valuable time, energy, and resources. “Eventually that debt gets to a place where all I am is paying interest and I’m not getting after the principal,” he says. That’s where DISA’s modernization approach begins: identifying legacy components that no longer serve the mission and redirecting those resources toward newer, mission-ready capabilities.

One example he offers is the divestiture of individual network components—such as specific cards or time division multiplexing (TDM) systems, which are still in use across parts of the DoD despite their obsolescence in the commercial sector. When DISA is able to remove one of those components, the effort, funding, and manpower once used to sustain it can be rolled directly into modernization. “We’ve done that in many cases,” Strauss says, framing the effort as a sort of “debt snowball”—a method where small wins compound into broader transformation.

Strauss stresses that industry must be a key partner in this process. He urges vendors to avoid one-size-fits-all sales pitches and instead understand DISA’s specific operational challenges. Effective business development, he says, does three things: it understands the global problem, grasps the local problem, and proposes an actionable solution. He also highlights the need for incremental improvements—modular, backwards-compatible solutions that fit into DISA’s existing infrastructure while opening pathways for innovation. “We cannot rip out the whole DoD network and start afresh,” Strauss points out.

While speed is often hailed as the goal of modernization, Strauss views capacity as equally critical. DISA operates as an enterprise service provider, and every bit of bandwidth spent maintaining outdated systems is capacity lost elsewhere. “If your capacity is fixed, and you’re spending it on technologies that are less than suitable for your mission, that’s capacity you’re not applying somewhere else,” he explains.

Measuring progress isn’t just about ticking boxes. Strauss says readiness—both operational and cybersecurity readiness—is the real metric that guides DISA. He underscores the importance of aligning modernization with risk reduction and mission performance, not simply checking off modernization milestones.

Ultimately, Strauss sees modernization as a balance of strategic discipline and long-term vision. “You can go buy the boat,” he says with a smile, referencing the temptation to chase shiny new technologies. “But maybe that’s not the right place to invest.” For DISA, the right investment is in capacity, capability, and a future-ready force.