Focusing Forward, Inc’s Post

🛡️ The DOD's National Defense Industrial Strategy emphasizes collaboration with industry partners and agencies. Assistant Secretary Laura D. Taylor-Kale highlights the generational change, urgent need, and broad support both needed and offered. The strategy focuses on resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition, and economic deterrence. The involvement of each and every one of us is crucial for success! 🚀 #DefenseInnovation #Collaboration #NDIS2024 #IndustrialPolicy #AdvancedManufacturing

My Thoughts: Eagerly waiting for this. I personally am expecting a huge change with a focus towards the future as I wrote earlier here: https://lnkd.in/eRXNwSP2 It's high time for a change for good and the betterment of the defense industrial base and the National Defense Posture. So much has been done and there is still so much more to do. Source: https://lnkd.in/et5EQ5pD /dod-aims-to-publish-1st-national-defense-industrial-strategy/

Great to attend the 2023 Reagan National Defense Forum marking 10 years of promoting “Peace Through Strength.” This forum brings together leaders from government and industry to address how we can strengthen our national security in coordination with allies and partners. A theme throughout our dialogue was sustaining a resilient industrial base that advantages warfighters and deters adversaries in alignment with the upcoming release of the National Defense Industrial Strategy. We look forward to supporting the first of its kind industrial base strategy with vital capabilities to help foster a safer, more connected world. #RDNF https://lnkd.in/gdX2C-v6

Very, very excited to dig in next year when we get into the implementation phase of the National Defense Industrial Strategy :) Core focus areas: Creating resilient supply chains Having an industrial base that can produce capabilities, services and technologies that are needed at speed, scale and cost Ensuring workforce readiness and development 

Last month, the Pentagon released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS). The strategy acknowledges the dreadful plight nontraditional defense companies endure when attempting to partner with the Department of Defense, including prolonged periods required to adopt new capabilities. It also serves as a long-needed clarion call to modernize the US defense ecosystem. The report’s strength as a rallying cry for a robust industrial base is hampered by an absence of specifics on implementation. Like a captivating manifesto light on concrete recommendations, the report risks igniting enthusiasm without a clear path forward. https://lnkd.in/dgBUZMYw

This first of its kind strategy will be a game changer for accelerating defense industrial base security initiatives. Looking forward to the quickly approaching launch.

Thanks to the mid-week update from Federation of German Security and Defence Industries e.V. the first ever released US national defense industrial strategy came back into my focus. The timing of the elaboration of this strategy shows a precise deduction of the current situation, which now needs to lead to immediate action. The four priorities are already self-explaining by their headlines: 1. Resilient Supply Chains 2. Workforce Readiness 3. Flexible Acquisition 4. Economic Deterrence Bundesministerium der Verteidigung there is a suitable blueprint which is set up to overcome the state of a "paper tiger" Germany with its ambition as European and NATO lead nation needs to push forward and take the hard decisions. Software-defined defense is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. Germany's engineering excellency needs to evolve to an engineering and software excellency. The convergence of IT and OT. #softwaredefindedefense #pioneeringsmartforces Martin Karkour Marc Akkermann https://lnkd.in/esDFVNFG

The National Defense Industrial Strategy focuses on four key areas critical to building a modernized defense industrial ecosystem over the next three to five years: resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition, and economic deterrence.  "While we say that the #NDIS will guide us for the next three to five years, we're also very much talking about having a generational change," Dr. Laura Taylor-Kale, ASD(IBP), said of the newly released strategy during a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last week. "In my view, we can't afford to wait. We have seen over the past few years the importance of why we need resilient supply chains – the importance [is] not just to us domestically, but also for our close allies and partners." Learn more about this bold vision for the future of the defense industrial ecosystem and how it aims to meet the needs of warfighters today and in the future at https://lnkd.in/dUp-pDem #ExpandTheBase

We read the National Security Industrial Base Strategy so you don't have to. I'll start with a little grace. Maybe the classified version of this report and the attendant tactics, techniques and procedures is useful or maybe a follow-up report is supposed to be actionable. I can't comment on that. Now: There isn't a single objectionable thing in the report (or rather each point made in the report is the broadly understood consensus opinion). The report catalogues all or just about all the 30K foot level issues facing the defense industrial base (DIB) with a long list of high level proposals for addressing each identified failing. They clearly spent time going through the "complaint box". There is no discussion of costs, prioritizations or trade offs. We do get elements of the report dedicated to telling us what horrible things will happen if we don't address issues x, y, or z. It does a good job of driving home how much trouble we could be in but I worry it doesn't provide us with a roadmap for getting out. As I said, there are plenty of proposals but many have either been around for 30 years (lets buy more COTS!) or read like a Christmas wish list. What I really wanted to see was a much smaller list of recommendations (3-5) with budgets (within an order of magnitude) attached and I would have liked to see some out of the box thinking. Everyone who reads the report should be walking away angry at some parts and inspired by others. Instead what we get is a report someone can read without feeling anything at all, or indeed even remembering what they just read. Nobody lost in this report, which means everybody lost. As a friend said to me yesterday, "well I suppose at least we wrote it all down again." I hope I'm wrong and when the saltiness fades I recognize some genius.

Collaboration, working together, getting after the future now, before it gets here tomorrow, is a call to action. We must reach for it to be ready for it. Adoption and application of innovative ways, means, and methods of development to reinvigorate communities we depend upon is a key piece to improving our industrial base. We must put focus upon an underpinning need of it, the communities of people on whom we depend. People make the things we want. We must consider how we enable them to get what they need with high levels of satisfaction as they pursue happiness. People live in settlements. How we dwell affects how we can meet our needs. Let's reimagine how we dwell and make, or remake - revitalize and stimulate new and improved "future reaching" settlements - to maximize people's opportunity structures and quality of life experiences in support of our need to grow and sustain our industrial base.