Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System

The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) was the formal United States Department of Defense (DoD) process which defines acquisition requirements and evaluation criteria for future defense programs. JCIDS was created to replace the previous service-specific requirements generation system that allowed redundancies in capabilities and failed to meet the combined needs of all US military services. In order to correct these problems, JCIDS is intended to guide the development of requirements for future acquisition systems to reflect the needs of all five services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Space Force and Air Force) by focusing the requirements generation process on needed capabilities as requested or defined by one of the US combatant commanders. In an ideal implementation of the JCIDS process, regional and functional combatant commanders would give early and continuous feedback into the acquisition and sustainment processes to ensure their current and evolving requirements are known and met. In August 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg "directed the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to immediately start the 'disestablishment' of JCIDS".