Acquisition
A TPG-18 radar is positioned at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Aug. 5, 2025. The system provides precision tracking support for launches and test missions across the Western Range. Photo by Airman 1st Class Olya Houtsma Space Launch Delta 30 via DVIDS.
Space Force launches ‘first-of-its-kind’ acquisition training course
Anastasia Obis, Federal News Network
The Space Force has launched a 10-week, in-residence initial qualification training course tailored for space acquisition professionals. The program is designed to immerse new acquisition officers in the complexities of their roles.
- Specialized Skills: The curriculum focuses on program management, engineering, contracting, and testing of space systems and
directly addresses the service's need for an expert workforce to deliver critical capabilities quickly. Officers also have the opportunity to learn directly from senior Space Force leaders and industry experts.
- Training Overhaul: The new acquisition course is part of a broader effort to overhaul personnel development. It follows an initial qualification training that ensures 100% of officers receive fundamental instruction in space operations, cyber operations, intelligence, and acquisition fundamentals before their first assignment.
Summary Report: Lessons Learned from DoD OIG Reports on Acquisition Oversight
Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General
The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) reviewed 16 audit and evaluation reports from April 2020 through August 2025 to identify key themes and lessons learned regarding acquisition oversight, concluding that the DoD frequently fails to meet its goals of acquiring quality products and services due to systemic management challenges.
- Effective Requirements: The DoD often fails to develop and continually evaluate performance requirements to ensure they address relevant capability gaps.
- Adequate Testing: Acquisition officials frequently fail to plan and execute effective test and evaluation procedures, which are essential for assessing system maturity and determining if a system is operationally effective and survivable.
- Maximize Investment: Acquisition officials must weigh weapon system benefits against their risks earlier in the acquisition life cycle to ensure the DoD is investing wisely.
EXCLUSIVE: DoD envisions prize competition for boost-phase SBI prototypes
Theresa Hitchens, Breaking Defense
The Pentagon has unveiled an unusual acquisition plan for developing boost-phase space-based interceptors (SBIs) for President Trump’s Golden Dome initiative, proposing a prize competition where companies must largely self-fund the development and launch of prototypes in exchange for relatively small initial awards and the chance at future production contracts.
- Bias Concerns: Critics believe the structure favors large companies with deep pockets or those owned by wealthy private individuals, rather than major DoD primes or smaller firms beholden to shareholders. One source noted that "None of the Big 5 DoD primes would make that size of investment with so little of a return on investment".
- Production Uncertainty: As a further disincentive to participation, a follow-on production contract would not be awarded until well after the 2028 presidential election - at which point the entire Golden Dome initiative might be at risk due to its enormous projected costs.
PPBE Impact on Technology Transition Findings and Recommendations
Jeff Kojac, Olivia Letts, et al, Baroni Center
This white paper examines how the Department of Defense's Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process affects the adoption of new military technologies. The paper offers six case studies and provides a set of recommendations designed to inject more agility into the PPBE process to accelerate the transition of technology into operational capabilities.
- Congressional Impacts: Congressional CRs delay "new starts" by five to seven months, and legislative marks (redistributing funds elsewhere) can disrupt and delay program performance beyond the marked program.
- Accelerating Progress: Programs accelerate progress by leveraging existing authorities outside of PPBE, such as Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA), Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contracts, and Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA).
- SDA Model: The Space Development Agency (SDA) successfully fields capabilities rapidly by conducting programming-before-planning, building budgets for future tranches before requirements are fully known, in close collaboration with Congress.
Full Report: Case Studies of Technology Transition
Air Force to Finally Take Lead on Network for Joint Fires as It Consolidates C2
Greg Hadley, Air & Space Forces Magazine
On October 1, the Air Force Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (PEO C3BM) office will stand up an integrated program office for the Joint Fires Network (JFN).
- Networked Future: JFN is integral to the vision of Combined Joint All-Domain Command & Control (CJADC2), which aims for a totally networked force where sensors (like radar, surveillance drones, and satellites) are connected in real time with military shooters (including Army artillery, Navy cruisers, and Air Force fighters and bombers).
- Joint Effort: The JFN integrated program office will be a combined program office, including participation from the Air Force, Navy, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Army.
Innovation
Reliable Robotics, an AFWERX Autonomy Prime partner, takes off from Mojave Air and Space Port, California, in its autonomous Cessna 208B Grand Caravan to deliver cargo to Travis Air Force Base, California, during AGILE FLAG 24-3 on Aug. 8, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Matthew Clouse
Air Force Gets Ambitious with Yearlong Test of Autonomous Cargo Craft
Greg Hadley, Air & Space Forces Magazine
The Air Force is escalating its efforts to incorporate autonomous cargo aircraft into its operations, moving beyond demonstrations to launch a yearlong operational test of a modified Cessna 208B Grand Caravan.
- Agile Supply: Autonomous cargo is seen as a key solution to supply challenges created by the Air Force's agile combat employment (ACE) concept. Smaller aircraft like the Cessna 208 can act as a cargo "feeder," delivering smaller loads from larger aircraft to dispersed locations envisioned for ACE.
- Open Architecture: Reliable Robotics signed a cooperative research and development agreement with the USAF last month to work on the Autonomy-Government Reference Architecture. This open architecture is being developed by the service to ensure that different contractors' autonomy systems, including those for cargo and combat aircraft like Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), can "mesh as needed."
Defense & Strategy
man in fatigues in field next to a truck with a missile launcher in the bed
War and the Modern Battlefield: Insights from Ukraine and the Middle East
Edited by Seth G. Jones and Seamus P. Daniels, Center for Strategic and International Studies
This report from CSIS analyzes how recent conflicts are driving the evolution of military strategy and technology. In addition to the rise of networked warfare and continuing importance of landpower, the protracted conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed major shortcomings in Western munitions production and supply chain resilience, demanding a massive, urgent overhaul of industrial posture to meet the scale and speed of twenty-first-century combat.
- Industrial Shortfalls: Recent conflicts starkly exposed critical shortcomings in the industrial production of end items and munitions. For instance, in 2022, the U.S. monthly production of 155 mm artillery rounds amounted to considerably less than Russia's daily rate of use in Ukraine.
- Production Deterrence: There is a crucial, rediscovered truth that "production is deterrence," which necessitates urgent investment in defense industrial capacity and surge readiness, particularly for munitions, to support high-intensity, protracted conflicts.
- Inventory Challenge: The massive expenditure rate of munitions (both offensive and defensive fires) in modern war highlights an unsolved inventory problem. The high cost and limited shelf life of expensive precision weapons make stockpiling sufficient quantities for a protracted conflict difficult, a problem that necessitates supplementing existing inventory with cheaper solutions like directed energy and low-cost missiles
- Rapid Refresh: The industrial base and accompanying acquisition systems must become agile enough for rapid technical refresh—operating on cycles measured in weeks or days, rather than years—to incorporate battlefield innovations like drones and electronic warfare countermeasures.
Big Ships and Little Tech: A Barbell Plan for Deterrence
Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem, a16z
The U.S. must adopt a "Barbell Plan" - combining massive industrial capacity expansion with high-tempo, agile technology adoption — to restore credible deterrence against rivals like China, whose current industrial momentum favors them. This strategy supports deterrence by accelerating the translation of ideas into fielded combat capabilities, demonstrating the ability to sustain a fight, and raising the perceived cost of a long war.
- Heavy End: The heavy end of the barbell strategy requires multi-year commitments to expand munitions and energetics lines, clear shipyard backlogs, stabilize submarine production, and pre-position hardened stocks forward.
- Agile End: The agile end of the barbell requires high-tempo integration of commercial technology, such as attritable uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), autonomy for sensing, resilient comms, and rapid counter-UAS. This is vital because reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, and rapid replenishment decide campaigns.
- Sustainment Constraint: Logistics is the connecting element that joins the two end of the barbell. Especially in the Pacific, essential capabilities like transportation (lift), forward positioning, repair, and re-arm at sea limit or enable the strategy's effectiveness.
Small Drones, Big Limits: A Smarter Drone Strategy
Crispin Burke, Small Wars Journal
DOD is pushing for the rapid adoption of small, inexpensive drones to enhance warfighter capabilities, but this strategy risks repeating past military mistakes due to the operational limitations of current commercial systems and the absence of a clear, disciplined procurement vision. While small drones have proven potent in specific conflict scenarios like Ukraine, the U.S. Army must prioritize comprehensive defense against these systems and maintain combined arms principles rather than prematurely replacing conventional combat platforms.
- Context Critical: The extensive success of drones in the Russia-Ukraine War is due to unique circumstances, including the lack of air superiority, shortages of conventional artillery, and the attrition of howitzers within Ukrainian forces, conditions that may not apply to a future war involving U.S. troops.
- Acquisition Risk: With the Army aiming for "domain dominance" by 2027 and billions of dollars at stake, the absence of a clear procurement vision risks inviting fraud, waste, and abuse. A piecemeal approach could lead to dozens of non-standardized drone models, complicating repairs and spare parts procurement.
- Defense Priority: The Army must focus more attention on drone defense than on offense, recognizing that small quadcopters provide mid-tier powers and non-state actors with a significant combat boost.
Related: Let Drones Play Defense
Industry
The USS Bataan rests in port at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, Sept. 11, 2016. Photo by Marine Corps Sgt. Matthew Callahan
South Korean manufacturers outline plans to bolster US shipbuilding
Zita Fletcher, Defense News
South Korea's three largest shipbuilders — Hanwha, Samsung, and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries — have announced more detailed plans for cooperation and investment to bolster U.S. naval power and revitalize American shipbuilding. This collaboration seeks to expand U.S. maritime strength to keep pace with an increasingly aggressive China by leveraging South Korean expertise for both production and critical maintenance/repair operations.
Policy
UAV at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia, Aug. 16, 2022. (Tech. Sgt. Jeffery Foster/U.S. Air Force)
How Washington’s drone policy is catching up to reality
Elizabeth Dent & Grant Rumley, Defense News
The United States is reforming its long-held strict policy on exporting drone technology, driven by the realization that its previous approach, rooted in a restrictive interpretation of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), has allowed competitors like China and Turkey to expand their global influence and defense sales.
- Policy Change: For years, the U.S. restricted the sale of its advanced drone technology by applying a strict interpretation of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)—an informal agreement from 1987 to limit missile proliferation—to certain uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Trump administration recently announced widespread changes to this interpretation as part of a broader effort to reform weapon sales and transfers abroad.
- Competitors Capitalize: While the U.S. tied its hands, countries like China and Turkey expanded their defense sales and influence across the Middle East, Africa, and beyond, filling the market gap created by U.S. restrictions. China is noted as a top-five global arms exporter.
- Interoperability Boost: Increasing the speed and efficiency of U.S. arms transfers is crucial to precluding China from making inroads in new export markets. The new interpretation opens the door for American UAVs, such as the MQ-9 Reaper, to be available to more countries, increasing interoperability with partners and blocking out competitors.
Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N)
Congressional Research Service
This CRS document provides an overview of the ongoing debate surrounding the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), a weapon proposed by the Trump Administration in 2018. The source details the historical context of similar naval nuclear weapons, noting the Navy's previous deployment and eventual retirement of the TLAM-N missile during the Cold War era. Key issues involve whether the SLCM-N is necessary for deterrence credibility, alongside concerns regarding arms control, operational tradeoffs, and the substantial cost estimates of the program.
Research
The Virginia-class attack submarine Minnesota (SSN 783) is under construction at Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding. (U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Newport News Shipbuilding/Released)
Analyzing Factors That Contribute to Cost Overruns on Department of Defense (DoD) Contractor Programs
Dawn Funches Allen, George Washington University
This study seeks to understand the root causes of cost overrun on DOD contractor programs by identifying significant contributing factors and then employing supervised machine learning algorithms (specifically logistic regression, gradient boosting, support vector machines, and random forest) to predict the likelihood of cost overruns. The ultimate goal is to evaluate which machine learning model is most effective in analyzing the relationship between various contract factors and the occurrence of an overrun.
From Bootstrapped to Boots on the Ground: Evaluating the Impact of Funding Sources on Early-Stage Defense Technology Startups
Arul Chandra Nigam, George Washington University
This thesis analyzes how different funding mechanisms — including government grants and various forms of venture capital — affect the innovation, intellectual property management, and transition success of early-stage defense technology startups. The study concludes that while funding sources create specific constraints, successfully navigating the transition from prototype to production depends more on overcoming entrenched cultural barriers within the defense acquisition system than on securing capital alone.
Ukraine’s Drone Industry: The role of volunteerism and policy in building an emerging UAV Industry
Pontus Braunerhjelm & Maryna Brychko, Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum Working Papers
This article examines how the 2022 Russian invasion spurred the rapid development of Ukraine's domestic drone sector. The authors analyze this technological surge through the lens of "reluctant innovations," where existential necessity, rather than planned strategy, drives advancement. Key factors propelling this growth include widespread civilian and volunteer mobilization, fast-tracked government reforms, and foreign partnerships, all contributing to a hybrid model of defense innovation supporting a highly responsive war economy. The case offers broader insights into how societies, when under extreme geopolitical pressure, can rapidly pivot toward achieving technological self-reliance.
T-BIRRD: Transforming the Future of Military and Humanitarian Logistics
Jacob R. Bright, Joint Force Quarterly
The article examines the Terrestrial-Based Inserted Rocket Resource Delivery (T-BIRRD), a cutting-edge logistics solution that leverages commercial space launch capabilities to offer unprecedented speed and reach for resource delivery in contested or remote environments. Successful deployment of T-BIRRD requires developing a comprehensive legal, regulatory, and operational framework to mitigate significant strategic risks and ensure adherence to international norms.
Resources
How To Sell to the Dept of War – The 2025 PEO Directory
Steve Blank, steveblank.com
The 2025 PEO Directory is designed to help startups navigate the complex process of selling to the Department of War (DoW). The directory acts as a "Who buys in the government?" guide, addressing the information asymmetry that prevents new defense startups and investors from identifying the correct Program Executive Offices (PEOs) and developing an effective Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy. This updated edition includes a 30-page tutorial on various acquisition and funding pathways.
Full Directory: The 2025 PEO Directory
Events
Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Small Business Programs Conference
National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) - Tennessee Valley Chapter
Huntsville, AL
21-22 October 2025
28th Annual Systems & Mission Engineering Conference
National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)
Tampa, FL
27-30 October 2025
USSOCOM Innovation Foundry
SOFWERX
28-30 October 2025
Chantilly, VA
CALL FOR PAPERS & PANELS: Accelerating Warfighting Capabilities
Naval Postgraduate School 23rd Annual Acquisition Research Symposium and Innovation Summit
DUE: 18 November 2025
I/ITSEC 2025: Optimizing Training: Ensuring Operational Dominance
National Training & Simulation Association (NTSA)
1-4 December 2025
Orlando, FL
CCM Institute Academic Symposium 2025
Commerce & Contract Management Institute
2-4 December 2025
Virtual
Creative Disruptors in the Desert
Creative Defense Foundation
20-21 February 2025
La Quinta, CA
One more thing...
Marines are fighting over who gets to rebuild Tun Tavern
Jeff Schogol, Task and Purpose
Two rival efforts led by Marine veterans are currently underway to establish a replica of Tun Tavern, the legendary birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps, near its original site in Old City, Philadelphia.
- Birthplace Legend: The original Tun Tavern is a crucial site in Marine Corps lore, known as the location where the first Marines signed enlistment papers on November 10, 1775. Located just blocks from Independence Hall, it was a center of early American activism before it burned down in 1781.
- New Location: Marine veteran Monty Dahm recently reached an agreement to buy a restaurant near the original site of the Tun Tavern. Dahm, who served in the Marines from 1984 to 1988, owns the trademark to "Tun Tavern" and plans to name the new restaurant accordingly.
- Foundation Rival: A competing non-profit, The Tun Legacy Foundation, is pursuing a similar project for a replica known as "The Tun," which would be located roughly a block away from Dahm’s planned site. The Foundation is led by a board and advisory committee that includes respected Marine veterans, Pennsylvania Freemasons, and leaders of fraternal organizations with a heritage at the original Tun.
- Historical Purpose: The Tun Legacy Foundation's replica is expected to operate as a tavern offering food and refreshments influenced by Philadelphia's colonial period, along with historical documents and educational exhibits. Dahm views his own project as being for "people of the United States" and the world, focused on patriotism and recreating the history of the nation.
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