The Army Innovation Program is "shifting to this more deliberate, spiralized approach, where we can have rapid tech upgrades and tech refreshes throughout the life cycle,” the program's director said.
“My best guess is that they will start to realize in the coming days, weeks and months, that they are going to have to adapt and change or die. We are not going to come to bail them out again as a nation," said Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll.
The jet-powered transport’s speed, survivability and multi-mission agility position it as a viable option to the C-130 for the US and NATO allies.
This op-ed argues that now is the time for venture capitalists in the defense industry to build, buy and create.
“We are in active conversations with many of the stakeholders who are relevant to things like Replicator and we’re excited to collaborate with the government when the time is right,” Saronic exec Rob Lehman told Breaking Defense.
Masao Dahlgren in this op-ed offers reasons why venture capitalists and the Pentagon aren't yet on the same page, and calls for them to work together so that both can reap the benefits.
"I can't really imagine a world where something like a Joint Strike Fighter program goes to a privately traded company," Luckey told Breaking Defense. "I can't imagine that ever happening."
With potential adversaries no longer predictable, training must move beyond just live exercises and flight simulators.
“We are witnessing a cultural shift. Engineers want to work on problems for the DoD. We’re going to have an explosion of defense technology. Capital is following the engineers and following DoD opening of the aperture who want innovation,” said Alex Moore, partner at 8VC.
"If we are to meet the innovation goals of the NDS, we must incentivize the primes to move beyond the short-term partnership model and encourage them to form more holistic relationships with promising early-stage companies, including investment into operating businesses," writes Chip Walter.
An investment into a startup like Hermeus that is looking at commercial hypersonic tech could lead to leap-ahead approaches that benefit defense applications.
Despite investments of nearly $200 billion in commercial space since 2012, the US will lose what the authors paint as a vital race with China without more strategic vision, study sponsored by DoD's Defense Innovation Unit says.
Protecting warfighters requires fast, accurate, and dependable systems that work flawlessly to military standards.
The F-35 aside, the report recommends that the Air Force "resist future participation in any joint aircraft procurement or development programs."
It's sort of like we're exclusively dating. We agreed to not see other people right now but we haven't committed to anything else yet," explained one Lockheed Martin official.
"There's a massive scramble for autonomy engineers, software -- you name it," says Chris Moran, Lockheed Martin executive director.
Because open-source software lacks the same kind of cyber certification that comes with more sensitive information, it is fertile ground for start-ups looking to work on military data, provided each service makes an open-source library available.