For warfighters, the defense industrial base’s (DIB) strength comes down to speed: whether industry can anticipate demand, solve production problems, and deliver critical systems on time. Breaking Defense discussed the challenges facing the DIB with Ana Garcia Olson, Managing Director, Navy & Marine Corps Business Lead, Accenture Federal Services, and Amy Bahrani, Managing Director, AI and Data, Defense Industrial Base Lead, Accenture Federal Services.
Breaking Defense: In today’s security landscape, technological dominance isn’t just about who has the best asset on the frontline; it’s about who can design, build, and field capabilities the fastest. How do we move the Joint Force and the defense industrial base away from legacy, multi-year development timelines and into a true pace of rapid innovation?
Ana Garcia Olson, Managing Director, Navy & Marine Corps Business Lead, Accenture Federal Services.
Garcia Olson: The reality we’re facing is that the traditional way we build military platforms—where it takes years, sometimes a decade, to move a system from a whiteboard to operational deployment—is a strategic liability. The biggest move underway impacting the DIB is the evolution of the way the Department of War is aligning the acquisition process to prioritize commercial innovation, speed, and outcomes to ensure greater impact for the mission and the warfighter. I see both small and large companies seeking more information on how to move quickly to make that happen. We know the services want to move faster and having those avenues to meet that demand is a bit of a challenge. The ability to out-engineer and out-field the adversary is a baseline necessity. To do that, the DIB has to evolve into a highly agile, software-defined enterprise.
