The document discusses sourcing, acquiring, and deploying technology in modern warfare, highlighting that future innovations will primarily emerge from the commercial sector driven by consumer demand. It outlines paradigm shifts in acquisition strategies, the barriers to reform, and asserts that real progress is being made in areas like software development and commercial outreach. Several thought-provoking questions are proposed regarding public awareness and future frameworks for warfare.

1. Technology, Innovation,
and Modern War
INTLPOL 340; MS&E 296
Steve Blank, Joe Felter, Raj Shah
Lesson 3:Sourcing, Acquiring and
Deploying Technology for Modern War

2. Agenda
• Class Logistics
• White Board Session
• Lecture: “Sourcing, Acquiring and Deploying Technology
for Modern War”
• Discussion
• Lesson 4 - Preview “US Defense Strategies and Military
Plans in an Era of Great Power Competition”

3. Winning The Wars We Knew

4. And through all this welter of change and development,
your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable:
it is to win our wars

16. Two Paradigm Shifts
in Acquisition

17. ● Innovations that will shape future conflicts will
increasingly occur in the commercial technology base.
● Advancements in these technologies will be driven by
consumer demand and the potential for profit- not
government directives.
● Requirements are not known years ahead of time

18. What we could make you experts on if we had 30
years instead of 20 minutes

19. Requirements Developed
Prototypes Developed
Production Developed
Sustainment

20. AWG
JIDA
REF
Technology Maturity
F-35
F-22
AEGIS
CH-47
DoD
Labs
“Valley of Death”
R&D Programs of Record
SOCOM, NSA, CIA, Services
LAB 41
CTTSO
Requirements Developed
Prototypes Developed
Production Developed
Sustainment
DARPA
DOE
Labs

21. Barriers to reform
• Congress
• Service culture
• Workforce incentives
• Traditional industrial base
• Process
• Requirements
• Acquisitions
• Imagination

22. Paradigm shifts:
● Exquisite vs commodity
● Buy vs build
● Driving urgency vs a patient adversary

27. For more see: Haggerty, A. and Wood, R. The P-51 Mustang: A Case Study in Defense Acquisition. October 2010. Defense Acquisition University (www.dau.mil)

30. https://www.dau.edu/cop/pm/dau%20sponsored%20documents/mrap%20history%20final%2030june2014.pdf

31. Real progress is happening
● Software color of money
● Middle-tier acquisitions
● OTAs
● Commercial outreach
● SIBR reform
● Software factories
● Talent pipelines

33. Issues to think about:
- Scale
- Change led by conops

34. Questions to discuss:
• What would it take to awaken the American public?
• What will your generation’s Sputnik Moment be?
• What frameworks could we use to speculate on how
the future of war will look?
• How can validate our speculations?