Acquisition
The guided missile destroyer USS Dewey, front, and the Iittoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords, rear, conduct joint operations with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer JS Akebono in the South China Sea, Oct. 17, 2023. Credit: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Lucas Herzog
America Should Build Its Own Warships While Buying Tankers
Sam Slocum, War on the Rocks
The United States should focus its limited resources on building advanced naval warships, such as apex submarines and unmanned vessels, domestically, and rely on key allies like Japan and South Korea to produce commercial vessels for security and sealift capacity.
- Commercial Folly: Reviving domestic commercial shipbuilding is billed as the key to maritime security, but advocates' claims that it will create naval "surge capacity" are misleading. Facilities that build large commercial vessels cannot produce nuclear-propelled submarines or the motorboat-sized autonomous vessels the Navy needs.
- Resource Competition: Commercial and naval builds compete for scarce skilled tradesmen, and subsidized commercial orders would draw workers away from more important naval projects.
- Allied Reliance: The U.S. should call on shipbuilding allies to produce the commercial tonnage needed for security. Allies can deliver merchant vessels at roughly a quarter of the cost of domestic production.
Startup Obviant wins $99M from DIU for AI acquisition data analytics
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Breaking Defense
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has awarded AI startup Obviant a contract worth up to $99 million to develop a prototype data analytics solution aimed at improving the military's understanding and tracking of its own spending on acquisition. This AI-driven tool is intended to provide a "single source of truth" about defense spending, helping officials map funding to mission capabilities.
- AI Function: Obviant's software uses an AI "data engine" to draw on open-source intelligence (OSINT), such as program briefings and Senate hearings. For the DIU contract, the solution will integrate both public data and internal DoD data feeds to provide a "comprehensive picture" of acquisition spending, identifying trends, opportunities, and problems.
- Target Users: The first planned user for the prototype is DIU itself. If the prototype is successful, the contract includes options to roll out its use across the armed services and the inter-service Combatant Commands.
- Advana Complement: Advana, DOD's in-house data platform, includes data beyond acquisition, such as military readiness data, while Obviant focuses on acquisition using both internal and external DOD data. While the two programs could prove to be valuable complements, they could also eventually become competitors.
Defense & Strategy
Image: Midjourney
When Trust Becomes Strategy: Rethinking America’s Innovation Posture
Lawrence Pixa, War on the Rocks
The United States' historical dominance in innovation, built on massive investment in defense-linked research and civilian science, has long been a source of soft power. That influence is now at risk because of political volatility and strategic inconsistencies. To restore influence, the U.S. must shift its focus from sheer scale of innovation to consistency and trust, establishing enduring institutional frameworks and ensuring domestic policies align with foreign commitments.
- Trust Crisis: Trust, which is the "invisible bridge between uncertainty and cooperation," is no longer the U.S. default setting, leading allies to hedge their bets. This loss of confidence is "measurable across sectors," causing partners to delay ventures, raise procurement barriers, and treat U.S. commitments as provisional.
- Policy Contradiction: "Strategy dissonance," or domestic contradictions that undercut allied cooperation, are America's diplomatic blind spot. For example, the U.S. AI Action Plan praises openness while tightening export controls.
- Rival Exploitation: America’s rivals, specifically Beijing, exploit U.S. inconsistency by presenting themselves as the "reliable partner". This can drive allies like Australia and the U.K. to diversify their defense and trade ties as insurance against US volatility.
- Actionable Principles: U.S. policy should be guided by three principles: institutional continuity insulated from partisan cycles; complementary domestic and foreign policies; and treating trust as a strategic asset by rewarding competence and disciplined execution over spectacle and outrage.
Logistics is the Achilles’ heel of China deterrence
Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem, Breaking Defense
Decades of prioritizing "peacetime efficiency" (i.e. cost-cutting) have left the U.S. logistics enterprise brittle and unprepared for a protracted conflict across the vast Pacific. This could invite attack if Beijing believes the U.S. lacks the endurance for a long fight.
- Historical Lesson: The current situation risks repeating a historical mistake: deploying forces, like President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1940 Pacific Fleet deployment to Pearl Harbor, without the credible logistical support needed for sustained combat, which ultimately invited, rather than deterred, attack.
- Systemic Decline: The U.S. maritime logistics system is particularly brittle, having shrunk from over 6,000 merchant ships in World War II to fewer than 200 today.
- Allied Support: Averting catastrophe requires partnering with allies like Japan and South Korea, which possess "world-class shipyards and robust merchant marines".
- Refocus Funding: The Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) must be refocused "laser-like" on logistics, moving away from being a "grab bag for unrelated priorities". Congress should give US Indo-Pacific Command more direct control over PDI funds to build the necessary hardened, distributed network to operate within range of China’s missiles.
Industry
Lockheed Martin announced in September that it intends to have Atacms and Hellfire missiles manufactured by Rheinmetall in Germany. Credit: Lockheed Martin
Opinion: How The Defense Industry Is Being Redefined
Byron Callan, Aviation Week
The defense industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation, driven by three emerging frameworks that are redefining its structure beyond the consolidation seen in the 1990s.
- New Entrants: New defense entrants, often specializing in autonomous systems and software and fueled by a substantial increase in venture capital, is creating a much-needed new middle tier of defense contractors.
- Global Rise: The industry is becoming far more international due to the growth of European and Asian defense contractors and the adoption of multidomestic business models involving cross-border investments and joint ventures, where production is shifted to benefit local spending.
- Corporate Restructuring: A wave of corporate restructuring is expected, prompted by management decisions or activist investors seeking to create less complex and more focused companies. This suggests the emergence of a more competitive and international defense sector by 2030.
American, South Korean shipbuilders ink deal to pursue Navy auxiliary ship programs
Justin Katz, Breaking Defense
American shipbuilder HII and South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) have signed a strategic memorandum of understanding to jointly pursue U.S. Navy auxiliary shipbuilding programs, signaling a deeper integration of the two nations’ industrial bases. Their initial focus is on securing the design contract for the Navy’s future next-generation logistics ship, a program vital for fleet resupply in contested environments.
Research
The Office of Naval Research TechSolutions-sponsored MK29 Mixed Gas Rebreather system developed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division undergoes testing at the Naval Experimental Diving Unit in Panama City, Fla., April 4, 2018. Navy photo by John F. Williams
Mitigating the Loss of Institutional Knowledge: Analyzing Knowledge Risk Management Strategies for the Office of Naval Research's Acquisition Workforce
Matthew Murray Jr, Naval Postgraduate School
This NPS capstone project investigates the potential risks associated with institutional knowledge loss within the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR’s) acquisition workforce. A comprehensive literature review, coupled with a survey administered to ONR’s acquisition personnel, revealed critical weaknesses in areas such as the current knowledge management system (KMS), offboarding procedures, and the practice of regular knowledge audits. In response, the study puts forth a series of KRM recommendations to bolster these vulnerable areas while also incorporating feedback from the survey – suggesting enhanced informal knowledge-sharing practices and a greater reliance on cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence.
Performance constraints in defence industry supply chains: evidence from case studies
Roland Hellberg et al, Defence and Peace Economics
This paper examines the evolution of the defense industry over the last decade, focusing specifically on supply chain dynamics and delivery capabilities. The research, based on case studies of four Swedish firms, analyzes how the shift in Armed Forces procurement priorities from cost efficiency to supply chain sustainability has exposed critical vulnerabilities introduced by previous New Public Management (NPM) reforms involving cost-efficiency, privatization, and market-based principles. The study highlights that cost-driven strategies, which led to short-term contracts and practices like just-in-time logistics, have limited the industry's capacity to quickly scale up production and maintain supply security during crises.
Navy Columbia (SSBN-826) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress
Congressional Research Service
The Navy's Columbia (SSBN-826) class ballistic missile submarine program, consistently identified as the Navy’s top priority since 2013, aims to procure a class of 12 new SSBNs to replace the 14 aging Ohio-class SSBNs and maintain the nation's strategic nuclear deterrence capability. The program is challenged by significant delays and construction issues, leading to increased costs and concerns about the ability of the industrial base to sustain other critical shipbuilding projects.
Events
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
2026 Naval Nuclear Submarine and Aircraft Carrier Suppliers Conference
NDIA Delaware Valley
21-22 January 2026
Philadelphia, PA
36th Annual NDIA Special Operations Symposium
NDIA
17-18 February 2026
Washington, DC
40th Annual National Logistics Forum
NDIA
17-19 February 2026
Tampa, FL
Creative Disruptors in the Desert
Creative Defense Foundation
20-21 February 2025
La Quinta, CA
Accelerating Warfighting Capabilities
Naval Postgraduate School 23rd Annual Acquisition Research Symposium and Innovation Summit
6-7 May 2026
Monterey, CA
One more thing...
Smells like ... victory. (National Archives)
Boiled Eagles, US Military Victories and the Real History of Thanksgiving
Blake Stilwel, Military.com
The history of Thanksgiving as celebrated today is a complex narrative far removed from the simplified story taught in primary schools.
- Original Menu: The menu of the original 1621 feast was drastically different from modern tradition, lacking sweet potatoes (introduced mid-1700s), cranberry sauce (sauce form created in 1670), mashed potatoes (introduced to colonies in 1750), and green bean casserole (created in 1955). Surviving documents mention "waterfowl," which would likely have been boiled.
- Forbidden Dish: Another bird likely served was the eagle, but the early American settlers boiling the symbol of the United States - which is now illegal to kill for food - has been removed from the origin story.
- Military Origin: The first U.S. Thanksgiving holiday was declared in 1777 by George Washington, at the request of the Continental Congress, to celebrate the Continental Army's surprise victory against the British at the Battle of Saratoga. As president, Washington declared the first national Thanksgiving Day on November 26, 1789, to celebrate God's assistance in the war for independence.
- Civil War Holiday: Thanksgiving was not regularly celebrated as a national holiday until the Civil War. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving to thank God for the Union's successes.
- Pumpkin Warfare: The establishment of the holiday ignited a culture war, as Southerners viewed pumpkin pie, a New England tradition, as an "act of aggression to impart northern values on the South".
- Federal Law: Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt finally signed Thanksgiving Day into law in 1941, making it a federal holiday on the last Thursday in November.
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