Stephane Manuel

If you're involved in a #startup or work within #industry looking to collaborate with the DoD, particularly the #USAF, understanding their future direction is crucial for strategic alignment. The USAF is evolving its commands, mirroring the Army, offering valuable insights for seamless industry transition. The four key commands are: - Air Combat Command: transitioning to manage readiness for the entire service - Airman Development Command: focusing on education and training throughout a service member’s career - Air Force Materiel Command: overseeing acquisition programs across the force - Integrated Capabilities Command: responsible for long-term planning Stay informed on the USAF's strategic shifts and how they could impact your business. Read more: [Air Force Times - Can Four Big Commands Prepare the Air Force to Win Wars](https://lnkd.in/ePAQudb7)

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Dual-Use Technologies - A short-term phenomenon or a long-term trend? 💹 Lately we hear a lot about DefenseTech and Dual-Use - Why? 💫 What happened? The world 🌎 became more tense and turmoil due to geopolitics, wars, crisis, and more. At the same time many technologies were accelerated due to commercial incentives. These days, when defense and security needs are uncovered - there is a great incentive to adopt commercial capabilities for defense purposes. 💫 Why it matters: Technology is unlimited. Once we open our minds we could see various and new purposes. 💫 What's applicable: Everything! methods, models, formulas, materials, algorithms, and much much more. 💫 Dive Deeper: follow Scout Ventures as a pioneer in the field. read more in Venture Capital Journal, Lawrence Aragon, Iris Dorbian https://lnkd.in/dErZNqwc DDR&D (MAFAT) - Directorate of Defense Research & Development #dualusetech | #defensetech | #innovation | #vc

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In tech, pivoting is a completely acceptable and necessary part of innovation. Pivoting means moving away from what is not working or what no longer works. "Failing fast" as the military likes to say, but rarely does, is what pivoting is all about. Good summary article here from John G. Ferrari, American Enterprise Institute #DefenseIndustry #Funding #Congress

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In my previous posts, I discussed the Army's 500 Day Artificial Intelligence Plan and the concept of #DefendAI, an AI-layered defense framework, The article below from the ASA (ALT) senior leadership expands on the concepts in the Army's 500 Day Artificial Intelligence Plan with an overview of #BreakAI and #CounterAI. "#BreakAI is geared toward testing algorithms through traditional government “testing and evaluation” and “verification and validation” processes, ensuring the AI is eventually fully operable and error-free when it gets to the warfighter." “#BreakAI is about how are we going to make sure that our AI models work, and when we put them in the hands of soldiers, we are totally confident that they’re going to give the right answer and the right outcome” "#CounterAI is more of a defensive initiative. It’s aimed at making “sure our platforms and our algorithms and our capabilities are secure from attack and from threat” "The #BreakAI and #CounterAI initiatives join the #DefendAI initiative that was announced in June as part of the Army’s 500-day AI plan — a plan that piggy-backed off its 100-day plan which was launched in March and ended in June." "The #DefendAI initiative is designed to create a AI layered defense framework to help mitigate risks that come with third-party algorithms, while working to operationalize industry AI." "#DefendAI and #CounterAI are similar, but the latter focuses more on adversarial threats while the former is focused on weeding out issues that may naturally come with using an outsourced version of AI." #defenseindustry #army #artificialintelligence #AI #innovation #modernization

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Fully agree with Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor in their analysis of winners and losers in the House Appropriations Committee's FY25 Defense Appropriations Bill. Pay raises for service members are great, but prioritizing aircraft (many which are already delayed) over missiles is a poor signal to industry. "Yet at a time when our aircraft, ships, and munitions inventories are at historic lows, while the CCP churn out massive quantities of new systems, this is the worst time to cut procurement budgets. This does not enable production at scale. This does not incentivize new entrants into the industrial base to compete for production contracts." "Aircraft are undoubtedly important assets but at a time when munitions are acknowledged as being in critically short supply, the cuts to those accounts are not encouraging." https://lnkd.in/exu7Y337 #defenseindustry #defensebudget

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Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, presented the roadmap on the future of U.S. military-industrial development. What really stands out to me is his emphasis on the role of commercial technology, the importance of Silicon Valley, and the need to reform the acquisition process to ensure innovative technologies can be quickly acquired and deployed. This is a crucial step forward in bridging commercial innovation with defense needs. Key points from the roadmap: 1. Ramp Up Production of Key Capabilities: Prioritize long-range munitions, air defense systems, autonomous platforms, and critical stockpiles. A critical munitions acquisition fund could stabilize demand and stockpiling efforts. 2. Strengthen Public-Private Partnerships: Increase production capacity, invest in workforce development, and expand DoD-owned facilities for greater resilience. 3. Accelerate Defense Acquisition Reforms: Rethink traditional processes to welcome nontraditional, innovative tech providers. Collaboration with Silicon Valley and securing new acquisition authorities will be game-changers. 4. Integrate Defense Industrial Bases with Allies: Partner with allies to boost readiness, production capacity, and supply chain resilience, reinforcing deterrence through unified capabilities. 5. Invest in Talent and Leadership: The focus on recruiting and retaining top talent ensures the U.S. military remains unmatched, with personnel who can translate advanced equipment into operational strength. #DefenseInnovation #MilitaryModernization #PublicPrivatePartnerships #SiliconValley #AcquisitionReform #DefenseTech #NationalSecurity #AI #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #InnovationEcosystem #TalentDevelopment

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🤔 QUICK QUESTION: How much do you know about Federal systems integrators and the role they play in public sector sales and partnerships? If you bring tech to the public sector markets, you need to know the role they play and how to work with them. I'm referring to companies such as Leidos, Raytheon, Boeing Defense, Space & Security, and L3Harris Technologies 🙋🏼‍♂️ I'm asking because you're in luck, if you want to know more. On today's #SalesGameChangersPodcast, my guests give a masterclass on how to build, maintain, and grow your relationships and partnerships with these types of companies. 🎤 EPISODE 707: Building Strong Federal Systems Integrator Partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Leaders Michael Blake and Jillian Swenson. 📖🦻🏼 Listen to the show or read the transcription at https://lnkd.in/eS2iRwsf. 🎙️Subscribe and rate the podcast at http://bit.ly/sgcitunes ⭐ JILLIAN’S ‘TIP: “Differentiate yourselves from your peers by leveraging new #GenAI tools to reduce repetitive time-consuming tasks and gain new insights into your customers. It’s going to free you up and help you bring more unique value to your customers.” 🌟 MIKE’S TIP: “Cultivate a positive mindset and resilience. Selling to large integrators can be very challenging. Develop techniques to maintain motivation, overcome rejections, because there will be rejections, and celebrate your successes. Prioritize building those relationships and really understanding these companies. Focus on the customer’s needs, earning their trust, rather than just going for the hard sale.” ❓Have you partnered with large systems integrators in your career? #governmentcontracting #primecontractor #cloud #fedramp #fisma

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Vannevar Labs is aiming for $1 billion in revenue by 2030. 💰 They are one of the fastest-to-profitability defense tech stratups... ever. 🚀 And their founders, Brett Granberg and Nini Hamrick, are two of the most candid, caring, and driven in the industry. This week's #CrossingTheValley is an absolute masterclass in what separates innovation theater from mission-impact. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, and read on for some top takeaways 👇 1. Peers are the real support network of a business school… not (necessarily) the professors. Outside of the Hacking for Defense ecosystem, Brett got an icy reception from professors when he spoke about dropping out of Stanford. One went so far as to say, “if you drop out, I’m not going to help you.” 2. You can fundraise with problems and users… you don't (necessarily) need product. The world was different in 2018… but the Vannevar team didn't have a prototype. They had a deep background and extensive network of end users because they chose to solve a problem that they had experienced personally their previous lives. This made it easy for them to pick up the phone and get together with users who understood the problem deeply. 3. The best "first" deal is the first (real) deal you can get. “Whatever you can get, the fastest you can possibly get it, is what you should go after.” But crucially (and this will stand out from the typical deftech startup), they deprioritized SBIR, innovation money, and anything that sounded like innovation money or research funds. If it wasn't real money, it wasn't an important enough problem. 4. "Selling" in defense isn’t about sales… it’s about solving a problem with a customer who lacks existing capability. Many of the areas the team focused on were new to the government; they didn’t have to focus on competitors, and they didn’t have to obsess over a business model - they had to figure out what it would take to make the problem go away, and then deliver. Check out the full case writeup on Frontdoordefense . substack . com for the complete list of lessons and some 🌶 quotes!

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Friday Spicy 🌶️: Earlier this week I spoke at the MISSION 2044 conference on the ethics of defense investment. What follows is part 1 of 2 (or 3?). Organizations with a blanket ethics policy against defense investment are lazy, unserious, or both. First off, all the policies I've come across are based on industry or category, in other words, they are not company specific. This is a deeply flawed approach to one's ethics. A few examples of companies or technologies to kick off the discussion... 1) A missile technology [Bad] 2) A small drone company whose team won't develop kinetic (explosive) payloads [Good] 3) An ecommerce company selling discount goods [Good / unrelated] Easy calls right? WRONG; lazy calls Example 1: The missile is the Standard Missile 2 (SM2) and the Standard Missile 6 (SM6) of which ~150 were fired by the Eisenhauer carrier strike group over the last several months. These missiles were used to shoot down other missiles and one way strike drones which were aimed at civilian shipping and civilian population centers. Countless lives were saved by the use of these missiles. These missiles can also be used to attack ships, planes, or ground targets but the US Navy used them to protect innocent lives. Now tell me, ethical investment or unethical? Example 2: The company manufactures a small group 1 UAS. Extremely capable, beats essentially all of their many direct competitors on ease of flight, stealthiness, speed, range, etc. The company's team meets internally to discuss how they feel about working with the Department of Defense and they decide that they will not develop kinetic payloads. They will however develop reconnaissance payloads AND a laser designator. Reconnaissance payloads are used to sight artillery, and identify targets and laser designators essentially serve no purpose other than guiding in laser guided munitions. This company is up and down the kill chain but won't actually get its hands dirty. Is this company ethical or unethical? Example 3: Temu is a Chinese company founded two years ago and is directed by members of the Chinese Communist Party. Temu will generate almost $60 billion in sales in the US this year. The sales are highly subsidized which makes everything extremely inexpensive. This unfair competition has allowed Temu to capture 15%+ of the discount online retail market in the US, killing US businesses and hoovering up vast quantities of Americans' data. It is crop top fentanyl. Is this company ethical or unethical? Whether or not an investment is ethical or unethical MUST come down to the intent of the company. Why does the company exist? Who will they sell products to? How do they envision their technology being used and for what purpose? Any analysis that fails to ask these questions is a morally bankrupt one that is simply looking for easy answers.  Please don't push the easy button when it comes to ethics. America deserve better. Jay Wisham Jackson Moses 🇺🇸 Dr. Markus Federle

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Another great report / discussion from The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Very important topic with major budgetary and force structure implications. Some key takeaways and humble observations: 1. Air Base Defense Mission Funding: a) Significant push from air power advocates for the Army to fund the air base defense mission. Will be interesting to see if this gains traction on the Hill / within OSD. b) IMO, sufficient budget increases are very unlikely. Could enlisting regional allies (JPN / RoK) to help subsidize DoD procurement of air defense systems be an option? (with the stipulation that these systems be deployed to the region). 2. Cost-Effective Point Defense Systems: a) Panelists emphasized the need for cost-effective point defense systems while reserving PAC-3/THAAD for long-range ballistic missile threats. They highlighted the potential of gun-based defense systems that can fire maneuverable projectiles. They also stressed the importance of point defense systems being transportable by C-130. b) The Army’s Stryker-based M-SHORAD not seen as ideal. I am reminded of DARPA’s MAD-FIRES and AFRL’s GLADIATR programs. Gun-based air defense systems are also experiencing a renaissance, particularly in Europe due to their deployability / cost exchange ratio. 3. Report Recommendations: a) The report emphasizes the need for agile combat employment (a direction the USAF is already moving towards), hardened shelters, and rapid runway repair capabilities. Additionally, passive defenses like decoys and multi-spectral systems are also important. 4. Cost and Feasibility Concerns: a) A critical question remains: What would it cost to close the gap and field an adequate number of air defense systems? This analysis should include: - Number of airbases to be protected - Types and quantities of systems required - Munitions needed - Related operations and maintenance costs - Force structure changes - Training requirements I’m sure there are already classified assessments of this. But an unclass assessment is also feasible with open source info. b) It's important to be realistic about the price tag and timeline for fielding this additional capacity. Given budget constraints, it may be more cost-effective to field a larger force of mobile, long-range ground-launched ballistic missiles that could achieve similar effects. Would be interesting to see more debate on this, i.e., long range missile force vs a tac air inside force. 6. B-21 Raider Concerns: a) While there is near-unanimous agreement on the B-21 Raider being a highly effective platform, there are concerns about its long-range missiles’ ability to penetrate very dense enemy air and missile defense capabilities. This is something that needs further consideration.

7

My recent War on the Rocks article, "Moving towards Defense as a Service" (post in comments below) was principally about the need for a more adaptive U.S. military given the current pace of adversarial battlefield adaptation. In it I make 3 recommendations I believe the U.S. should consider in order to speed up adaptation. One thing I couldn't fit neatly into the article but believe is essential for supporting an adaptive capacity is something I'm tentatively calling Platform adaptation enabling depth (PAED)** Adaptation is driven by failure. In nature it's the success/failure of individual members of a species and in defense it is the failure of a platform. When an individual platform fails, there is a learning mechanism that incorporates lessons learned in either new CONOPS or in physical adaptations to the clone of the platform which failed. Implicit in all of this however is that the species or the platform needs to survive its failures in order to adapt and become successful. If every member of a species dies, there is no evolution. Similarly if every platform of a given type fails, there is no opportunity to adapt it. Said more plainly, if the Russians had only a single tank and it was destroyed by Ukrainian UAS, there would be no cope cages and if the Russians had only 100 tanks, they would still be on version 1 or 2 of the cope cage instead of being on version 150. There is a minimum number of units of a platform or a minimum capacity to manufacture that platform below which adaptation becomes impossible. e.g. The U.S. has 19 operational B2 bombers. That platform doesn't have the luxury of adaptive learning, it is below the minimum PEAD. If it has a catastrophic failure, it is a dead platform. The biological analogy is that species below the minimum PEAD are on the endangered species list. They lack the biological diversity to sustain their population against threats without active intervention and support. I write this because I believe this is yet another reason we need to shift more of our defense spending away from large singular and exquisite platforms towards smaller more mass produced platforms. If we believe that the most adaptive great power military will be the triumphant one in a conflict (which I do), then it is incumbent upon us to minimize our reliance on platforms below the minimum viable PEAD. I'm not naive enough to believe that group 1 UAS or turbocharged jet skis are the answer to all of our problems but neither is another Ford class carrier. **Why? Because making up new acronyms that sound important is fun.

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I’m at #SOFWeek2024 currently, and this morning, Military Embedded Systems published 2 articles summarizing yesterday’s sessions that are rather contradictory and confusing if read through the lens of a VC-backed startup. First, there was an article about Ms. Melissa “Mojo” Johnson’s keynote expressing SOCOM’s interest in expanding its ecosystem, to include proactive engagement with the VC and investor communities and their portfolio companies. Second, there was an article summarizing key takeaways from the PEO Rotary Wing session that stressed the importance of modular open systems architectures (MOSA). In the second article, Dan Taylor the author writes: “…industry should be focused on helping [PEO Rotary Wing] solve problems with technology the agency already has rather than developing their own proprietary solutions.” If executing on Ms. Johnson’s vision is a priority, this statement needs to be revised to state: “…industry should be focused on helping …solve problems USING technology the agency already has WHILE developing their own proprietary solutions.” This is the only way everyone will win—startups, VCs and investors, and especially the government. Just my $.02! #nationaldefense #executionmatters #onward

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Is there a room for new #DefenseTech Giants? The simple answer is probably yes, the reality, like always, is more complicated. 💫 Why it matters: The defense market is growing fast due to the tensions around the world 🌍 The market continues its growth in fast pace. 💫 The Big Pic: The defense total addressable market (TAM) is 2.3 trillion USD 💰 and governments allocates more and more budgets to the field. New players enter to the area and try to harness the advantages of small, new agile player to gain a piece of the market. 💫 What are the chances of success? No one can tell but you can take a look on 3 shining stars: Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies & Helsing. 💫 Latest News: Anduril Industries expands solid rocket motor production facility with investment of $75M, and thereafter wins a contract to develop a solid rocket motor for the navy SM-6 - signaling the giants it becomes a major player, 💫 Dive deeper: https://lnkd.in/dA4Pq-UD, WLOX-TV ABC CBS Bounce #defensetech | #innovation | #startup | #technology

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⚠️ Whoever wins the upcoming U.S. presidential election will face a chaotic geopolitical landscape. Over the past two decades, we've seen the consequences of misguided military adventurism that has eroded public trust and the American appetite for democracy promotion tied to military intervention. Yet today, some policymakers are pushing for a new global struggle between democracy and autocracy. The problem? There’s a growing dissonance between what the American public believes and what some of these policymakers are attempting to achieve. Launching a new ideological struggle against ill-defined threats will limit Washington's strategic options in the long run. 🎥 Check out the below clip for my full take 🔽 👉 Do you think we need a foreign policy reset? Share your thoughts below! 🔄 If this message resonates, share it with your network. #innovation #futurism #socialmedia

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Reposting the last Friday Spicy 🌶️: Last week I spoke at the MISSION 2044 conference on the ethics of defense investment. What follows is part 1 of 2 (or 3?). Organizations with a blanket ethics policy against defense investment are lazy, unserious, or both. First off, all the policies I've come across are based on industry or category, in other words, they are not company specific. This is a deeply flawed approach to one's ethics. A few examples of companies or technologies to kick off the discussion... 1) A missile technology [Bad] 2) A small drone company whose team won't develop kinetic (explosive) payloads [Good] 3) An ecommerce company selling discount goods [Good / unrelated] Easy calls right? WRONG; lazy calls Example 1: The missile is the Standard Missile 2 (SM2) and the Standard Missile 6 (SM6) of which ~150 were fired by the Eisenhauer carrier strike group over the last several months. These missiles were used to shoot down other missiles and one way strike drones which were aimed at civilian shipping and civilian population centers. Countless lives were saved by the use of these missiles. These missiles can also be used to attack ships, planes, or ground targets but the US Navy used them to protect innocent lives. Now tell me, ethical investment or unethical? Example 2: The company manufactures a small group 1 UAS. Extremely capable, beats essentially all of their many direct competitors on ease of flight, stealthiness, speed, range, etc. The company's team meets internally to discuss how they feel about working with the Department of Defense and they decide that they will not develop kinetic payloads. They will however develop reconnaissance payloads AND a laser designator. Reconnaissance payloads are used to sight artillery, and identify targets and laser designators essentially serve no purpose other than guiding in laser guided munitions. This company is up and down the kill chain but won't actually get its hands dirty. Is this company ethical or unethical? Example 3: Temu is a Chinese company founded two years ago and is directed by members of the Chinese Communist Party. Temu will generate almost $60 billion in sales in the US this year. The sales are highly subsidized which makes everything extremely inexpensive. This unfair competition has allowed Temu to capture 15%+ of the discount online retail market in the US, killing US businesses and hoovering up vast quantities of Americans' data. It is crop top fentanyl. Is this company ethical or unethical? Whether or not an investment is ethical or unethical MUST come down to the intent of the company. Why does the company exist? Who will they sell products to? How do they envision their technology being used and for what purpose? Any analysis that fails to ask these questions is a morally bankrupt one that is simply looking for easy answers. Please don't push the easy button when it comes to ethics. America deserve better.

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Defensive missiles cost multiples of the price of an offensive missile. The same is true for drones. The cost to take out a drone by the US military is $100,000, according to this article. There are two implications of this. 1. Whoever can lower that cost seems to have a contract opportunity with US DoD. 2. You can make war very expensive for the US by putting up a lot of drones that require a $100k response. I would bet that lesson has not been lost on the Chinese.

6

Army Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Industry Solutions: I post and speak regularly about the importance of the team effort between government and industry, including the AI solutions effort. Some of my conversations with the DOD industry center around AI and the role of industry. Below is a great article written by Kimberly Underwood that provides a perspective from ASA (ALT) and the PEO IEW&S, which are my partners in this important endeavor. "Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the digital transformation of the U.S. Army is a key challenge for addressing the future of defense." "One of the key aspects of proper AI-powered digital transformation is increasing the speed of innovation and optimizing budgets." "The ASA (ALT) leaders are now pursuing a 500-day plan for AI, to see what is possible from industry, prepare for the POM cycle and develop requirements to field of actual AI solutions to soldiers. They are building on their so-called 100-day sprint plan completed in June." "The 100-day sprint resulted in a “playbook” for AI acquisition, the identification of Army and Department of Defense Science and Technology investments that could be aligned to the service’s AI strategy, the creation of a generative AI policy and #DefendAI, an AI-layered defense framework, as well as AI training for the ASA (ALT) acquisition staff." #defenseindustry #army #artificialintelligence #AI #innovation #modernization

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Heading to SOF Week this year? I want to talk to you about how you're leveraging rapid prototyping to model outcomes and make decisions. I think there's an incredible way to increase operational capability ROI for our warfighters by incorporating design extremely early in the build/buy/transfer cycles. The Department of Defense's ability to effectively deploy capital is the ultimate combat capability. Lean prototyping through fast iterations can help teams risk-manage, model, and prioritize capital investments that will enable the US to project power, gain geopolitical leverage, and to be prepared for the next major conflict. #design #capital #defense

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15 Comments