Innovative Outliers: Breaking the Code on Acquisition
March 4, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
All right, I guess we’ll go ahead and get started. I want to say good morning to folks and thank you for coming to our panel here. We’re going to talk about Air Force acquisitions and breaking the code. So I’m Colonel Nathan Stuckey. I’ll be the moderator today. I’m currently the deputy with the Rapid Sustainment Office in the Air Force. We look at bringing commercial technology to help in the sustainment area of the Air Force. I’ve been a career acquisition person. Started out as an electrical engineer. Worked in lab, worked in the space side. Last couple jobs before this were in both the B1 and the C5 program offices. I’m here with some outstanding panelists. I’ve got Stacey Rock and Carlo Viray. So I look forward to the discussion today. Both Stacey and Carlo share their experiences and thoughts on DOD acquisitions. So I’m going to first turn it over to Stacey to introduce himself.
Stacey Rock:
First of all, thank you, sir. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and share my experiences. I am the division president for Kratos’ Turbine Technologies Division. I’ll tell you up front, I’ve been a defense contractor for my whole career, so 35 years. No experience on the government side, but the perspective that I can bring today is having worked for very small companies that were defense contractors, less than 100 people, all the way up through mid-sized companies, companies that were acquired by large companies. And so today, Kratos, we are a mid-tier company, about 4,400 employees. But I’ll tell you that the lessons I’ve learned along the 35 years, they all transfer all the way through on what works and what doesn’t work. And so hopefully we can have a good discussion today and maybe provide some advice for smaller companies that are looking to get into defense contracting, but also some feedback to the acquisition professionals on how we can work together to do a better job.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
All right, Stacey.
Carlo Viray:
Thanks again, sir. My name’s Carlo. I’m the director of growth at Rise8. Appreciate everybody coming here. I know it’s kind of been crazy given all the situation that’s happening with travel. My background’s kind of unique. So I actually, prior to Rise8, I was a core acquisitions officer in the Air Force and the Space Force. And I have the, it’s pretty funny, I typically say that I have the fortune of being part of two major ACAT-1 programs that failed. And that kind of drove my career. And so the first program that I was majorly part of as a program manager, I was a program manager for the AOC 10.2 weapons system modernization program, which ended up becoming the beginning of Air Force Kessel Run. So I was part of the team that started Kessel Run, and I was the very first acquisitions PM that became a software product manager. So I was actually on a software team building intelligence capabilities and C2 capabilities for the AOCs, and I went out to a bunch of those AOCs. After I left there, Dr. Roper was trying to figure out, “Hey, we got to do something very similar but for a space program of record.” And I just happened to be one of the first lieutenants, along with another lieutenant with me, that PCS’d from Kessel Run to SMC. And I was brought into the JSPOC mission system program office, JMS, which ended up being canceled and became what was now known as Kobayashi Maru in Section 31. And so I was the director of product that led the entire portfolio of modern software development for space command and control and space domain awareness. So super interesting, I got to be part of these efforts that were forced to figure out a way to do something different. Because the mission does not change, the requirements didn’t change, but the way that we executed had to be different. So I got to go and experience and figure out all of that as a young CGO. Ended up leaving, joining Rise8 because this was just still a passion project of mine, and really trying to figure out… Honestly, it’s crazy being on the other side. So the perspective that I’m hoping to bring is both coming from my experience in the government and now being on industry and showing the juxtaposition and the things that I never knew that I think would be really important for both industry and government.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Yeah, so the title of this was Breaking the Code and Acquisition. And I will say, if anyone out there has broke the code, come find me afterwards, because I’m still trying to figure that out for 20 years. I think when we look at DoD acquisitions in the future, I think there’s some things we’ve got to think about in ways to do things differently. I think we’ve got to look at how do we make DoD acquisition, Air Force acquisition, more agile, more rapid. I think we look at where we’re at today with technology, we are in a rapidly changing world. There’s rapid advancements in things like AI, automation, low-cost manufacturing, drone swarms. I mean, we’re in a really much a rapidly changing world. The latest, hottest technology of today is going to be obsolete, in some cases in one year. And so because of that, it’s also leading to rapidly changing threat environment, as our adversaries are also rapidly taking on some of these new technologies and really is changing the threat landscape, where you can have smaller and more compact systems provide threats. It’s really a rapidly changing world. I think we’ve seen that with, especially with the rise of China and how quickly they are modernizing, how quickly they’re bringing on new technology. If we’re not able to keep pace, kind of multi-term, like live in that same OODA Loop, I think that’s going to be catastrophic if we aren’t able to keep pace and be more agile and more responsive and quicker at bringing on new technology than our adversaries. So I think that’s something that we’ve really got to look at how we do acquisitions, because it’s, I think, essential for our national security in responding to this ever-changing world. I think part of that, too, is really looking at how we can build stronger partnerships between the government acquisition community and the companies that we work with. In order to really be agile, we’ve got to have those strong relationships. It’s got to be a partnership. Instead of maybe where you throw some requirements over the fence and wait a few years and see if you get what you think and then you don’t, that’s not going to be rapid and agile. We’ve got to really form those strong partnerships, be a team. I think only through a strong team approach are we going to be able to keep pace. So I think as part of that, we’ve got to maybe rethink how we do contracts so that they are more agile, flexible contracts that are more of the team type approach and allow us to be working that manner. I think a final part of that is when you look at the US industrial base and companies, we have a lot of very innovative companies out there. I think that is a strength of our country. But not all those companies have worked with the DOD and the government. Some are newer companies, some just may have not worked with DOD in the past. I think we have got to really look at how we bring in the full complement of companies and technologies and innovators into the fold. We can’t just rely on a handful of defense contractors moving forward. We’ve got to broaden that pool. We’ve got to bring on, wherever there’s innovation, whatever there’s new ideas and technologies and approaches, we’ve got to bring them in to the fold. I think some of those questions is how do we lower the barrier to entry? Government acquisitions is complex. It’s difficult. There’s tons of policies, rules, and it can be very, very difficult to navigate. So in some cases, I think who wins the contract is maybe who’s had the most experience navigating that complexity versus who’s got the most innovative solution out there. So I think as a community, both on the government and contractor side, these are some of the things that we’ve got to really look at and embrace to kind of change how we do DOD acquisitions. So with that, we’ve got some discussion I’d like to have. So Stacey, I’d like to start with you. And I’d just like for you, if you could share an example of a success story where you’ve worked with, you know, you partnered with DOD and were able to have a successful program. And when you do that, if you could kind of share some of those lessons learned along the way and what made that successful.
Stacey Rock:
Okay. I would say the number one lesson for anyone getting into defense contracting is you need to be resilient. You know, it is complex. It’s complex for a reason. It doesn’t move as fast as we like at times. You mentioned being rapid, agile. There’s one program that comes to mind that we’re working now, which is within Kratos we’re developing a small turbofan engine for cruise missile applications. And that seems like a recent thing, but it’s something that we’ve been pursuing for eight to ten years. And how that came about was we had the idea that we wanted, we knew we had the capability and the idea that we could design this engine, but the challenge was there was no program within the government to go and do that. And so at the core of our strategy is always building a team, building a partnership with our customers and with teammates. And the way that we started that in the R&D community was we found two or three different branches within Department of Defense that were interested. So one was DARPA. DARPA was interested in funding some trade studies. So we did that as one part of it. Kratos, we invested internally our own money to design certain parts of that engine. We then partnered with AFRL and AFRL funded different component developments, but none of these were an engine program. They were technology programs. And then Life Cycle Management Center came in and did some more studies towards production. And so by the time we got through with all that, that’s four or five years of hard work, persistence, working as a team, working to bring different government customers together. And by the time we’d done that, we had, I think, demonstrated the ability and the path to developing this engine. The challenge again, though, was there is no program of record. There was no program of record to go and do that. So our strategy, and this is a lesson I think for most defense contractors at Kratos, we have a saying that half of something is better than all of nothing. And so we’re not a small company. We’re a mid-tier, large publicly traded company. But still that hurdle of going from a 200-person company to a 4,000-person company to someone who wants to get in and be disruptive and bring a new product to market, you need the right teammates. And so last year, we announced that we’ve teamed with GE Aerospace on this. So it’s just another example of putting the right team together, realizing all of these hurdles that we have to get over. It’s not just a contractor team. It’s not just a government team. It is a long effort. It’s an effort of working with, frankly, with your congressional representatives as well, all pushing forward, getting the buy-in of the JPO. And so I don’t know if there are people out there that are new to defense contracting. That can sound overwhelming. But you take it a bite at a time. You find the right teammates at the right time, and you keep making progress. And so our success story is that that engine is on test. We’ll be delivering flight-ready engines later this year. So it may seem like a recent success, but it’s a decade of hard work in the making, and that’s often what it takes for new companies and smaller companies to break in.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Thank you. So Carlo, do you have a success story that you’d like to share?
Carlo Viray:
Sure. Yeah, I can kind of juxtapose from my experience on the government side and then also what I’ve seen now in industry. I’ll say that what I believe is the definition of a successful program is actually delivering value to the mission. And I would argue, given my time in the government, the majority of organizations are not even there yet where they’re actually continuously delivering some kind of value to their warfighter. And the reason why there’s those bottlenecks is that we focus too much on the wrong thing, and the wrong thing is typically process, alignment, debating on what is the right requirement versus actually trying to do something about it and then go and actually learn. And it leads to a lot of infighting, to be honest. I don’t know how many times that I just spent trying to defend my budget to protect my team to go and figure out how to deliver some app. And the politics gets in the way of our ability to be successful. And so the reason why I say that and paint that picture is that’s the harsh reality of acquisitions and program management. But the programs that are successful find a way to gain alignment across that triangle of acquisitions requirements and operations so that then you can effectively build and ship some kind of capability, get feedback, and then iterate against it. And it’s less about the process, less about the politicking, it’s more about the mission. And now that I’m on the industry side, I think the successful stories are when you find customers, the government, like government customers, that focus on the outcomes, that focus on the mission, the companies that actually align with the mission, that know the mission, and are able to go and help figure out how to actually solve a problem as opposed to figure out how to take advantage of the government and bring in more revenue. And that’s something that I’ve seen, and I’m just very transparent about it, because Secretary Kendall and his whole great power competition, we shoot ourselves in the foot because of the way that we manage and operate programs. So how do we change that? The way that you change that is you find those organizations and those partners in industry that are really aligned with just delivering value. How can we be valuable, and how can we do it quickly and learn fast? And I think one of the success stories as our company, Rize, we’re a custom software development firm, kind of in the spirit of what we did with Kessel Run and Kobayashi Baru of how do you build software quickly, efficiently, securely with the government. We work with Space Operations Command, and I think we’ve aligned ourselves very closely to the mission so that then we can actually figure out how we can help solve those problems. So I think trying to align that, get away from the politics and the bureaucracy, and focus on really what matters. That’s kind of what I would say.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Thank you. This one’s, I’ll start with Carlo for this one. If you could change one thing about the DOD acquisition system, what would it be?
Carlo Viray:
Yeah, this one’s super easy. I think it’s around the PPBE and budgeting process. I think there’s two components to it. Continuing resolution should not be the norm. My entire career in the military, I dealt with continuing resolution, and it immediately affects a program’s ability to execute. And then as soon as you get your budget, you’re rushing to figure out how to execute, and then you make the wrong decisions because of the timeline, and because you’re trying to protect your dollars. Because if you don’t spend your dollars, you’re going to lose it, but then you only got your money six months after the fiscal year has already started. So I think continuing resolution needs to, we’ve got to figure out a way to get around that. I think the POM process is not aligned with the way that the mission is happening today. Colonel Stuckey brought it up, right? The mission is moving so fast, we need to be able to adapt to that. If the government identifies something that is valuable now, we need to figure out, why do I have to wait two years minimum to be able to sustain that innovative solution? So figuring out a way to bridge that gap. Sibbers are great, it shouldn’t be the solution to cross the valley of death. There needs to be something there to help take something that’s from a pilot or a prototype, get through to manage and survive the POM process, and then get to a program of record. And then the last thing that I was kind of talking around when it comes to that is just the valley of death is something that is a huge barrier for a lot of innovative companies. So how do you figure out, how do you tie, how do you get programs of record to think about all of these things that are not necessarily on their radar? And I’ll just say from my personal experience in the government, as a program manager, having a budget and a set of requirements and building something against it, when somebody says, “Hey, there’s this innovative solution out here, it’s within your mission, within your programs like scope, but all of your budget is already allocated,” what ends up happening is infighting and you take away from something that might be executing. Or you get from something that is failing to execute, which, okay, it makes sense, you can transition. But those are all just realities of running a program inside the government, and then, boom, something new comes in front of you and you’re like, “How do I manage that and execute effectively?” So there’s a lot there around what I change, but it’s kind of around the budgeting process.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
No, thanks for that, Carlo. How about you, Stacey? Do you have something you’d like to change about the acquisition system?
Stacey Rock:
I do. And so again, from the contractor’s perspective, I have two thoughts. Recognizing the realities of where we are with CRs and budgets and all the other difficulties. But number one, we have to find a way to go faster in acquisitions. It is pretty typical for us to have 30, 45, 60 days to respond to a proposal. Once that’s done, even once you’re selected, it could be nine, 12 months before that contract’s awarded. I don’t know if that’s typical, but I see that routinely. Long drawn-out negotiations. So we tend to try to negotiate IDIQs that have task orders. We experience the same thing. I would expect that a task order could be awarded very quickly. However, if a year or two has gone by, you’re back into negotiations on price changes. We need to find a way to go faster because these delays, regardless of where they come from, they kill innovation in industry. They kill innovation because we don’t know where the government’s going. We don’t know what the priorities are, which leads me to my second point about what I’d like to change about the acquisition system. As industry, if we are going to innovate, we need clear demand signals from the acquisition community. We need to have forecasts for what systems you want and what quantities you’re going to acquire them and what time frames, because from a business standpoint, it doesn’t matter if you are a $50 billion business or a $1 billion business or a 100-person company. Your assets that you have to invest are limited and they’re precious. And those assets are money, capital, but it’s also people. And every day, we are making decisions about priorities on what we’re going to pursue, where we’re going to invest. And when I understand that in some ways, this is reality, but if from six months to six months, the messaging changes out of, I’ll say the Air Force on what’s wanted, then it makes it very difficult for us to commit our limited resources to pursue that and to innovate. So, we have to find a way through the budgeting process and everything that we can give clear demand signals to industry. We love competition. We’re willing to invest and to come up with solutions that the government wants, but we live and die by that. A few bad decisions and people lose their jobs. That’s the reality of being on the industry side. So, we have to make the best decisions we can, and we’re trying to follow the lead of what the acquisition community is telling us. And those are the two things. If we can go faster and have clear indications of what you want, when you want it, and in what quantities, we can align.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
So this is for you, Stacey. The data rights are frequently a source of contention in due to acquisition. Sometimes leads to those lengthy pauses and things like that, right? So, what recommendations do you have for both the government and industry folks in the room on how do we navigate that minefield and make that less of a source of contention?
Stacey Rock:
Yeah, it is a contentious issue because it plays into the decisions that we make on investments. It plays into what we consider return on investment. Understand that the government wants more rights, limited rights or unlimited rights. I think the solution is that the contract language cannot be ambiguous. The discussions up front have to be very clear and well laid out. And then the contract vehicles also have to have a life that on the next contract vehicle, you’re not renegotiating the same issues. And I don’t know that I’ve got the solution other than you have to sit down as a partnership and figure out what’s best for the program, what’s best for the country. And I know that the Air Force wants to have healthy companies that are willing to invest. And a part of that is that the companies have to retain rights to the background IP that they paid for. And so, my advice is unambiguous contract language that is understood and discussed up front by the entire team. And that’s very important because, as you know, individuals in the government can come and go on a two or three-year basis at times. And you’re dealing with the next person that maybe wasn’t a part of those conversations. So everything has to be captured without ambiguous language.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
So Carlo, maybe from a software perspective, kind of in vain of this, right, when it comes to software ownership. What are your some advice and recommendations on how to navigate that on the software side?
Carlo Viray:
Yeah, I think when it comes to the data rights piece, I think having a clear delineation about a product that is being built by a vendor that’s their own proprietary information versus the data that’s going in or out of that solution. I think the data piece, the government should own all of that data because they’re inputting it or they’re getting some kind of output based off of some proprietary technology that might be processing that data. But if the government, let’s say, is just licensing the product, then obviously that belongs to a vendor. But if the government is paying to improve and develop a product, that’s something that needs to be defined, whether it’s government purpose rights or being able to figure out, like, hey, if I want to go to a different vendor to take on that same kind of capability, how do you make sure that’s clear, that you’re not taking away from that original incumbent? So I think being pretty clear on that, there’s this whole movement early on in my career around the government owning the technical baseline. But I think at some level, there’s always going to be some kind of vendor lock-in. But it really should be focused on managing switching costs from one vendor to another vendor. And so, for instance, we all use Microsoft Office and Teams and G Suite, and imagine that’s kind of a vendor lock-in. But what you would need to focus on is if you took the entire DAF off of Microsoft and moved to Google and G Suite, what is that switching cost? What is that pain going to look like across the entire organization? Are you willing to invest in that? And so I think those are just some different decisions that just need to be owed, and to not necessarily be afraid of, like, I’m going to go with this technical solution long-term. Because if it’s solving the problems for your mission, then it’s probably the right fit for you. It’s just a matter of whether or not it doesn’t, and then how do you approach getting off of it if you don’t think it does? So I think those are kind of two things around data rights and then the lock-in conversation.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Yeah. So, Carlo, we’re talking about needing to be more agile, be more rapid, bringing that innovation. What recommendations do you have as far as how to write contracts that align with those goals? What are some ways that we can do things differently from contracts to try to foster that type of approach?
Carlo Viray:
Yeah, I think this one’s more particularly from a software perspective, because that’s primarily my entire background. But I think the biggest one is focusing on outcomes, not outputs and requirements. And typically what you’ve seen in a large requirements document put onto contract, when a vendor goes and actually tries to build that solution, you learn that some of those things are the right things and some of those things are the wrong things that have been built. And so by the time it’s delivered to the warfighter, it can’t be used or it’s not providing value, because what was put on contract were these features or requirements that actually don’t solve the mission today. Because as soon as you do a solicitation, the mission is changed and you need to be able to adapt. And so what you should focus on are the outcomes for the mission. I want to improve X aspect of the air tasking cycle, or I want to reduce the amount of days that it takes to execute some kind of SATCOM capability, like planning and management. So focusing on those that then allow you to figure out what is the right thing to go and build during the Agile-like software development process, where you’re really trying to learn whether or not you have built the right or the wrong thing. So that’s one aspect. I think when it comes to building government custom software, firm fixed price contracts focused on capacity and throughput are really the way to go. As the government, you just want to be able to have the capacity to go and build as many things as you want based on the budget that you have. And then you can realign those resources to whatever is needed for the particular set of problems that you’re trying to solve. And so maybe something happens in Ukraine and all of a sudden, like the way that my program is managed and focused, it’s not this thing that I’ve been prioritizing. I have to shift resources against this new mission or requirement that’s happened. So thinking about that where it’s like capacity-based contracts versus I’m buying a team to build this specific capability. And this one’s pretty spicy in my opinion. If I was in the government, I would just reveal my budget for a potential opportunity because otherwise you’re going to have a race to the bottom. And I really believe that when you’re making contractors try to estimate what is your budget for some kind of requirement, you’re going to get those vendors that will lowball the government. They will basically say, “My rates are lower to achieve the same level of scope as somebody that has that.” And I really believe that rates correlate to salaries and salaries correlate to talent. And if you create this environment where you’re evaluating against, you say best value but really it’s going to come down to the LPTA. And then you’re probably not going to get the skill sets that you need because of the people that have kind of underbid. And I’ve gone through this myself. I’m speaking from my government experience and I paid the price. And you shouldn’t have to pay the price. Figure out what is the best technical value for the government and focus on that.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
So for Stacey, what do you wish the government better understood about industry?
Stacey Rock:
I think I hit on a part of it earlier, which is every day we’re making decisions about the future of our company. Success is not guaranteed. Staying in business is not guaranteed. And so we’re looking to the acquisition community to help drive those priorities. And that’s one thing that I hope that the community understands is that our ability to invest and to do innovative things depends on our ability to take your information and forecast what’s going to happen. And when that’s rapidly changing, we can’t do that. You know, the other thing that I want to bring up is that the challenges that I have now are schedule risk. And so I’m talking about going from a research and development community, trying to get a product into production like a jet engine. The focus historically, I think, has been on lowering technical risk, dragging out these programs. I have a five-year-long program that’s a perfect success and low technical risk. But that doesn’t match up to the requirements that I’m starting to get now. I have customers that want something delivered nine months from now or 12 months from now. And the way that we’ve been doing business within the research labs, it doesn’t support that. And so I think, Carlo, you brought it up that what would be helpful is if we had acquisitions that focused on we need this capability, this is what we need you to deliver, but a little more flexibility to prioritize schedule over technical risk so that we don’t have to do things exactly the way they’ve been done before. Because a lot of the acquisitions will lay out, you know, you will do this. You will do this test. You will do this risk reduction. You will wait for review approval before you go to the next step. So that delays. That delays innovation. It drives up cost because, like it or not, more time is more money, you know. And so that’s another thing I would like for the community to understand is that find those companies that are willing to lean forward to go fast and deliver what you want and then support us, right? I think that’s what we want. We’re open to competition, but contract delays, uncertainties in procurements, they stifle innovation because we can’t make timely decisions and put our money where it’s going to have the best payoff for not just us, but for the Air Force.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
I appreciate that. So Carlo, I’ve got a question for you. What changes do we need to make on the government side to reduce those barriers for those nontraditional companies that maybe haven’t worked with DoD in the past?
Carlo Viray:
Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. I think the CBR program is a great program and the Air Force does it better probably than anybody else in the federal government today. It’s a great foot-in-the-door program, but the challenge has been once these companies are in their phase one or their phase two, it’s that valley of death. So figuring out how to cross the valley of death because of the lack of funding or a lot of times the sponsored organizations are kind of operational entities, but not the program of record. And so there’s a challenge of figuring out, like, cool, I’ve been able to make it through the first year to two years of this engagement. I’ve built a company around this innovative solution. And that’s a hard decision to make as a business, somebody that’s leading a business today, to basically make this investment that I’m going to go straight DoD on this pilot and then hope it’s going to last. And the success rate of very innovative startups is very low. And so the government, though, that they have this really great entry program, getting over and figuring out how to get connected to the right program of record to take on into a phase three or figuring out what is a different type of innovation pool of money to carry through to last through the palm cycle. So I’d say that that’s one aspect. The other aspect that I think has been a challenge on industry that I’ve seen from a lot of people that I’ve met and going through this process is just a lack of understanding of acquisitions in the federal procurement process. A lot of companies don’t even know that CR exists or how does CR impact their planning to be able to sustain the work that they’ve been trying to do to then get to the next follow on period of a government contract. So industry needs to be better about finding the people that can help them understand PPBE, JASAs, all of that. And then I think another blocker typically has been just the authority to operate. Getting an ATO to basically get your capability into the hands of the warfighter. Because you need to be able to deliver value as a small business. And if you can’t get that ATO to deliver value, you’re not going to get the support to then go and get the funding to continue the project that you have. So there’s a couple things that we need. I think there’s a lot of organizations inside the government and a couple companies outside that have been trying to figure out accelerated paths to operations. And that’s a really great first step. But a lot of companies aren’t actually thinking about how do I build security and compliance into the things that I’m working on. Because they’re so focused, rightfully so, on building a valuable product. But you’ve got to figure out how to align all of those different gaps to be able to be successful in getting something long term and making your business pretty successful in the government.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
All right. As our time winds to a close here, I want to see if you have one last piece of advice you’d each like to share on breaking this acquisition code. I’ll start with you, Carlo.
Carlo Viray:
Yeah. For any program managers, be best friends with your contracting team. They’re the ones that are going to be working with you side by side. And we often take it for granted of the work that they have to do. And especially now, there’s going to be even more capacity and workload that they’re going to have to take on. I became really, really good friends to this day still with all the CEOs that I worked with and the specialists. And then the last piece is, if you’re in the government, even if you’re in the industry also, actually, is just learn the mission. Learn acquisitions and learn the mission. When you know that, you can align yourself well with the different organizations, the different customers, and be really successful in the government.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Stacey, got any last advice?
Stacey Rock:
Yeah, two. I want to hit one that we didn’t hit, which is bringing non-traditionals into the industrial base. One of the barriers that I’m seeing are the flow downs for CUI or CMMC. And if you’re trying to be rapid and innovative and you want to use small suppliers that support the automotive industry or another industry, those requirements could prevent them from getting into the market, which there are good reason we do those things. My message to program managers would be, look carefully at what you put those requirements on, because it could drive our ability to respond and to scale production. Yeah, so my final thing is, we need to find a way as a team to partner and go faster. If we’re going to be successful and supply the war fighters with what they need, we have to find a way to respond faster.
Col. Nathan Stuckey:
Thank you for that. I just want to thank everybody for being at the panel today. And folks can join me in thanking our excellent panelists here. I appreciate that.