The defense industrial base is at a crossroads. The network of companies that supply the military with weapons, equipment and services faces an era-defining challenge—sustaining innovation while avoiding corporate consolidation that stifles competition.
The industry's narrowing has left entire product lines—everything from aircraft to missiles to rocket motors—overly dependent on a handful of players. Such a lack of competition breeds complacency. Why strive to enhance your offering when you're one of the only games in town? The resulting ecosystem enables overpriced, underperforming systems to become entrenched across military forces.
• Unlock rapid pathways for new, nontraditional vendors and small businesses to inject disruptive technologies into the ecosystem. Additionally, the DoD's intellectual property and data rights initiatives aim to prevent the excessive privatization of taxpayer-funded research that has previously hamstrung military capabilities. The DoD can facilitate this transition to new vendors if needed by retaining control over critical technical data and software.