[GcVmvNhBsU]

I’m going to disagree with all three points.

1. To think that the military does not know what they need shows a very narrow understanding of the people fighting a war. If you ask a pilot “What do you need to accomplish your mission”, they will tell you. They may not know how to necessarily do sensor fusion or “cyber” things or the math/physics involved, but the way they will describe the problem and what their solution would be will show that they are thinking outside the box. Now, I will be fair and say that there is probably a disconnect between the end user and Air Force Materiel Command and it’s therefore up to the program management office to solicit feedback and requirements from the expert users.

2. The military follows the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. There may be instances where contracting officers prefer and write requests for proposal that target specific contractors, but that should be an edge case and not the standard. I’d argue the real challenge is the scale of federal acquisitions and consolidation of industry players. In order to meet certain contractual obligations, you have to be large enough, which brings us to...

3. Security clearances take a long time to adjudicate, but it does not follow that that causes the inability to rapidly develop products. Going back to size, the problem is DOTMLPF - you cannot just design and purchase one thing, you need to build the entire logistics support chain for the next XX years. Maybe you squeeze a JUONS out that gets a capability “rapidly” developed but there’s still the expectation that you re-evaluate and create that long supply chain at a certain point.

[dragonwriter]

> To think that the military does not know what they need shows a very narrow understanding of the people fighting a war.

To think that they clearly and unequivocally do shows a very narrow understanding of the rather extreme diversity of opinion within the defense establishment.

And if you recognize the disagreement but are somehow deluded into thinking that the actual policy decisions always reflect the side with the objectively stronger case within the community...well, that's also wrong.

[jeffreyrogers]

I don't really disagree with your criticisms, but I don't see them as direct rebuttals. For what it's worth, I work in the defense industry.

Edit: I should also mention I was writing this with regards to the challenges a new entrant to the defense industry would face (i.e. a company that wants to start selling to the military with no prior experience doing so).

1. I agree the military knows what they want. The problem is the military does not know what is possible. And they do not know what could be possible. In the past contractors came up with products (e.g. the sidewinder missile) that no one in the military was asking for, simply because they could not conceive of it. The engineers could conceive of it however and were able to build it and then sell it to them. This does not happen today.

The military can only ask about things it can imagine. It can't ask for things it can't imagine, and those are the things that ultimately lead to breakthroughs in warfighting ability.

2. If you are not Raytheon or Lockheed or whoever you aren't going to get in the room with the people who make purchasing decisions. That's why I said you'd need to hire an executive from one of these companies. They have the relationships already and know who to talk to. I'm not saying it's literally impossible, just that it isn't going to happen in practice. If you wanted to sell something to say GM or Tesla you could get on LinkedIn or ask around for someone who could put you in touch with someone high-up there. And if your product was interesting they would probably meet with you. Who do you even contact if you want to sell to the military? There are people, but no one is going to tell you who they are if you're just some random person with a company.

3. With regard to clearances. Let's say I'm developing some new weapon system. We're now dealing with classified information. So now everyone working on that needs a clearance. It is absolutely a barrier to getting new ideas off the ground because you need to wait > 1 year for the clearances to finish processing before they can start doing real work. There are a lot of smart people who could bring new ideas into the industry, but they basically have a choice between making a bunch of money working at a high paying job or doing make-work while they wait for everything to process. No surprise that many talented people choose to go work elsewhere.