Radha Iyengar Plumb, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said the Department of Defense is utilizing its acquisition tools and authorities to advance the delivery of capabilities to the warfighter and stay ahead of China’s whole-of-nation approach, DOD reported Thursday.
“To counter China’s whole-of-nation approach, what we need to do is what only the American system can do, which is let industry iterate and develop while we in the government create the conditions to rapidly scale those key technologies — that’s the secret sauce,” Plumb said.
She highlighted the Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative, which aims to overcome bureaucratic and cultural barriers to delivering capability at scale to warfighters.
“We identify high-tech-ready capabilities that meet a warfighter[‘s] need, and then, we see where the sticking points are when we try to just rapidly push it to scale,” Plumb said. “We develop a solution for that problem and keep going and solve the next issue and the next issue and the next issue.”
DOD is also working to improve the integration of emerging technologies to address current and future requirements of the joint force by setting up an acquisition integration interoperability team within the acquisition and sustainment office to align service-specific systems acquisition strategies.
Moreover, the Pentagon is building its acquisition workforce through programs like the Defense Civilian Training Course.
