An Agile Approach To Bring Trusted Solutions To The Defense Industry

Dr. Bill Conley, Chief Technology Officer, Mercury Systems, Inc.

We live in a fast-changing geopolitical and technological landscape. The convergence of near-peer rivalries with China and Russia, along with a growing array of new threats and technologies from hypersonics to artificial intelligence to cyber, has quickly and radically impacted the considerations and approach needed to uphold American national security.

These trends also necessitate a shift in our ways of working within the defense industry – something that’s long been considered, but must be acted upon now more than ever.

A New, Innovative Mindset

In 2018, then DoD Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin released the Department’s Digital Engineering Strategy, a framework to transform its approach to decision-making that would keep pace with the realities of a new era.

Then, just last year, Dr. Will Roper, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, published a document calling for a disruptive, agile new approach to defense acquisition. In remarks delivered at the AFA’s 2020 Virtual Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Dr. Roper noted that given the breakneck pace of technological change and an uncertain geopolitical future, “we have to do our part in acquisition and that means being able to develop war-winning systems at a pace that today's technology, trends and threats require.”