Kathleen Delano’s Post

If we want to leverage R&E investments we need a change. Small businesses need more work done and less innovation theater. There are so many amazing small businesses with great technology and folks in the government wanting to support their efforts….. Let’s get together and get it done. 🇺🇸

Is there anyone surprised by this report? If people you know embrace and protect the status quo... build an insurgency counter to it. If process and and bureaucracy stifles innovation in your organization... break the rules you know are holding progress at bay. And for the love of everything that is holy... if you are in charge of any organization that is part of weapon system development... be disruptive. If not for what you see in the world that unfolds in front of us... for the Republic.

NEW REPORT AVAILABLE | Top 3 Emerging Technologies in Defense Transformation This week, IDGA has published an exclusive report on 'Top 3 Emerging Technologies in Defense Transformation' ahead of the Disruptive Technology for Defense Transformation Summit (August 6 - 7, 2024 at The Downright Austin, Austin, TX). This report will analyze three of those technology areas having an impact on defense transformation and explore why they are critical, and how the U.S. DoD is addressing them. Read the Report here: https://lnkd.in/e_cTTXzf For its second year Disruptive Technology for Defense Transformation will bring together experts from the defense and industry communities to explore the game-changing technologies shaping modern warfare and addressing gaps in U.S. critical technology areas. Last chance to save up to $400! Register by tomorrow - Friday June 28, 2024. Get your tickets here https://lnkd.in/gSUQgu-j View the full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/ex5hirCm #DTDTUSA #DefenseTransformation #Conference

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks recently highlighted the accelerating pace of change and innovation within the Department of Defense (DoD). Key initiatives like the Replicator Initiative are driving rapid advancements in capability development, reducing acquisition timelines, and fostering collaboration with nontraditional defense companies. With over $57 billion flowing through new acquisition pathways and significant progress in software and hardware upgrades, the DoD is transforming how it meets national security challenges. 💬 What steps are you taking to accelerate innovation and adaptation?

Innovation really is a special operation! Only with a bias for action and appetite for risk can public and private entities move forward together. "As part of the change, DoD needs to work closer with its partners inside and outside of the government, the strategy says, which will require taking on 'bureaucratic, financial, institutional, and reputational risk in doing so.'" We applaud any government entity who openly embraces more #risk in service of #innovation and the delivery of real capabilities. Glenn Cowan Arjun Grewal Michael Smith Jeremy Constantineau Defence Research and Development Canada Ottawa Research Centre (DRDC Ottawa) Canadian Armed Forces | Forces armées canadiennes https://lnkd.in/euQY78-K

Unlocking #GenAI’s potential to enhance data quality and user experience across #Federal and defense agencies require thoughtful integration. Read key takeaways from new research on how #FedIT leaders are balancing innovation with responsible governance: https://bit.ly/4dxn16b #iwork4dell

The Defense Department is making progress on the technological front, but still has a long way to go in order to deter threats posed by China and Russia, according to a new report by the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption. “While US companies continue to demonstrate technological prowess, this rate of innovation serves little use in deterring conflict unless the DoD is able to procure and get new technology into the hands of warfighters at a faster pace,” according to the final report. “The current US defense acquisition system was not designed to keep pace with today’s rapid rate of innovation.” The commission, co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, released a report today that builds on an interim report released last April. The interim report included 10 broad recommendations for the DoD and Congress to enable faster adoption of new technology. As of November 2023, progress was made on all 10 recommendations from DoD and Congress, according to the latest report. But the commission acknowledged there were “broader, strategic matters” that “will take time to reach full implementation.”

"The Pentagon’s outdated weapons-buying processes are hampering its ability to integrate innovative technology and work with nimble start-up companies. A panel of defense experts wants to change that." #elaranova #Pentagon #spaceindustry #defenseindustry #nationalsecurity #nationaldefense #SpaceForce

Totally agree with this. I’m frustrated time and again by the slowness of capabilities being delivered to warfighters. Silicon Valley’s ability to tap commercial pressures’ speed to market was one of the biggest reasons we were able to maintain our technological edge with silicon chips and chip manufacturing from the cold war through the gulf war. We’re losing that edge in software, AI, and other new but critical technologies today. As a DoD, we NEED to figure out how we can deliver capabilities faster. Measuring time as a KPI for our programs would be a good start.

The US DoD still has a Cold War acquisitions system, but most all of our senior leaders in service today cut their teeth fighting violent extremists. There's two "iron triangles" I always think about. For acquisitions, it's about time, expense, and quality. Yet when I look at commercial solutions relative to defense primes, it's easy to find "faster, cheaper AND better." Yet when looking at the operational scale, I have a different scale. Mission: how important is this op? Time: what do I control, temporally? Risk: what's the risk to the team? And that last one extends back to the entire acquisitions food chain. When I'd be in a convoy with some fellow snake eaters and we'd come across an IED, we'd can'x our primary mission, EOD would come take care of it, and we'd go find that target another day. Mission risk was usually as close to zero as we could make it. Likewise, our garbage software, always several years behind what the commercial sector was capable of and filled with cyber vulnerabilities because of how the ATO process works from a bureaucracy perspective, was also that way because acquisitions personnel were inclined to take zero professional risk. But that was all okay because in that C-VEO/CT/COIN fight, for all but a small minority of missions (mostly done by my friends at JSOC TFs or OGAs), time was irrelevant. When mission is negotiable and time is irrelevant, it's easy to set mission and acquisition risk to zero. We're now facing Grand Power competition against a near peer (one with their own laundry list of problems). Mission is non-negotiable; free people and capitalist democratic ideals as well as economic and personal freedom as concepts are truly at stake on the global scale. Time isn't under our control either. Mike clearly articulates that time matters and how our acquisitions policy is hard broke and has continually failed to learn lessons from the very economy it exists to protect. Senior leaders, especially in acquisitions, need to get uncomfortable and start taking rapid calculated risks, because worrying about risk to their career sickens me. Tens of thousands of sailors and airmen are already at risk every day because of bureaucrats far more concerned about their own processes - that are mere habits, not actual policy much less law - who infuriate me daily within the Pentagon. It's my responsibility to start delivering more capabilities to my brothers and sisters, and it's going to take senior leadership owning more risk than passing it off to legacy systems, platforms and warfighters. Those men and women on the line ultimately have the most important framework of time to worry about: the time they may get to spend with their families if they get to survive the risk we ask them to shoulder. We owe it to them to do better.