The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has tapped Maj. Gen. Steven Butow to serve as its military deputy, effective June 1.
Butow currently serves as the commander of the California Air National Guard. According to DIU’s announcement this week, he was selected by the National Guard Bureau (NGB) to fill a dual-status tour with the Office of the Secretary of Defense as military deputy for DIU. Butow is the second general or flag officer to hold this position.
“As a member of the reserve component, Major General Bucky Butow possesses the dual fluency as both an experienced military leader and technologist with significant experience working with the commercial technology sector,” said Doug Beck, DIU’s director. “Bucky’s experience helping lead the Department’s leveraging of commercial space technology and experience in integrating and fielding new and emergent commercial technology will help to create asymmetric advantage for the joint force and allied warfighters.”
As military deputy, Butow will lead more than 75 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and guardians representing active and reserve components of the U.S. armed forces.
“Collectively, these service members, along with their civilian counterparts, execute DIU’s strategic vision as a national mission force for innovation supporting the combatant commands, the joint force, allies and global partners,” DIU said.
Butow joined DIU as the organization’s west coast military lead in 2015.
A year later, he assumed increased responsibilities as DIU’s first space portfolio director leading prototype projects focused on accelerating the adoption of commercial space satellites, launch vehicles, and other capabilities for national security and defense.
According to DIU, Butow’s successes include catalyzing domestic sources of commercial synthetic aperture radar small satellites, prototyping small responsive launch capabilities, accelerating the advancement of in-space servicing and multi-orbit logistics, and launching commercial integration efforts to realize a hybrid space architecture providing secure, assured, low latency, multipath and resilient communications to all terrestrial domains from space.
