Defense Acquisition magazine Tools of the Trade Bimonthly magazine of the Defense Acquisition University for senior military personnel, civilians, defense contractors, and defense industry professionals in program management and the acquisition, technology and logistics workforce. Defense Acquisition Magazine September-October 2025 Vol LIV | No. 5 | Issue 306
DEFENSE ACQUISITION A PUBLICATION OF DAU PRESS | dau.edu SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2025
MAT ER I E L READINESS Interview with DASD Patrick Kelleher
A Tool for ACHIEVING CONTRACT AWARDS On Time
How to TERMINATE CONTRACTS
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06 Interview With
Patrick N. Kelleher, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Materiel Readiness Benjamin Tyree
A broad range is covered of topics im- portant to acquisition and sustainment professionals. 14 A Practical Framework
19 Achieve On-time Contract Awards
for Transitioning Technology to the Warfighter Debra Zides
With the Procurement Management Tool (PMT) Basil F. Gray III The government-owned PMT helps in- crease data quality, highlight schedule constraints, and encourage team collab- oration to improve procurement man- agement.
The Transition Maturity Framework is designed with actionable measures to facilitate delivery of cutting-edge tech- nological capabilities to Warfghters.
24 Contract Terminations— What You Need to Know Diferent kinds of terminations pose dif- ferent risks for the government and the contractor. 30 Acquisition, the Foreign Military Partner, and Strategic Thinking Kimberly Farah Baylee Woods-Carthen and Rodger D. Pearson
Working with foreign military sales part- ner nations requires strategic thinking, adaptability, tact, persistence, and team- work.
34 Military Services’ Ceiling Raised on
Architect-Engineer Fees Steven A. Fasko, D.H.A. The recent fee increase for military ser- vice contracts to 10 percent comes after standing at 6 percent for more than 80 years.
40 Acquisition 2.0—
Time for a New Paradigm Brian Schultz The pace of reform shifts into high gear.
23 MDAP Program Manager Changes
DEFENSE ACQUISITION VOL LIV NO. 5, DAU 306
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INTERVIEW WITH Patrick N. Kelleher Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Materiel Readiness
by BENJAMIN TYREE
6 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025
Prior to his current position, Patrick N. Kelleher was the prin- cipal deputy director for Strategic Logistics, Joint Staf, J4. Earlier, he served as executive director for operations and sus- tainment at the Defense Logistics Agency. Kelleher was interviewed July 22, 2025, by Defense Acquisi- tion managing editor Benjamin Tyree. Q Please share any specifc initiatives and what results you hope to see in the near and long term that are possible in terms of U.S. reindustrialization. A. The [government-owned] organic industrial base, or OIB, is an important component of the overall defense in- dustrial base. And I always like to make that point because I think a lot of times, when we use the term defense indus- trial base, people by default believe that we’re only thinking about the commercial industrial base. And so, I do like to remind folks at the outset that the defense industrial base writ large has two components, the commercial industrial base and the OIB. The OIB and U.S. industrial capacity generally are very much priorities for the DoD in making sure that we have the depth and resilience that we need. And this is not just to take care of any challenges today but to be prepared for protracted confict if it ever comes to that. So, we have an awful lot going on, as you can imagine, across the OIB. And all of the Services are doing great work. They are focusing on the challenges associated with maintaining legacy plat- forms, developing and maintaining a sustainment strategy for aircraft or what have you that are now 30, 40, or more years old. As part of that, we’re looking at emergent requirements and how we can leverage the OIB to assist the department. The OIB exists to provide depth, agility, and responsive- ness to emergent DoD requirements. I’ll highlight three initiatives that we’re working on. First, with the recent focus on critical minerals and the obvious importance of establishing greater independence with regard to critical minerals and the production of items that require critical minerals, we’re initiating a study to assess how we potentially could pivot the department’s industrial capacity aspects to reclamation capability of critical material. The DoD throws away an awful lot of excess every day, and there are quite a bit of harvestable resources avail- able in things we are disposing of that perhaps we could capitalize on more efectively. Now organizations like the Defense Logistics Agency [DLA] are already ahead of the game and thinking about this and looking at ways to en- sure that we have the capability to reclaim aspects of what we’re throwing away. But I think there’s a potential to assess across the OIB how we could more deliberately create a reclamation ca- pability and pivot from conducting maintenance to using that industrial capacity to disassemble excess and harvest critical material. We have a study underway that I think will be very in- formative in helping the department shoot its way forward
- - A sailor stationed at Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center show cases a gas turbine engine to Patrick Kelleher, deputy assistant secre tary of defense for materiel readiness, during a visit onboard at Naval Station Norfolk, in Va., Aug. 7, 2024. Source: U.S. Navy photo by Harrison Cox This image was cropped to show detail and was edited using multiple flters plus dodging and burning techniques.
September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 7
with critical minerals. And when we think about the OIB, it’s not just depot maintenance, although that is a very important component, but it’s also the arsenals where we manufacture weapon systems, our munitions production capability. The second initiative involves our manufacturing capa- bility. Across the DoD industrial organizations, we have the capacity to manufacture needed items and specifcally to manufacture parts. In order to tap into underutilized manufacturing capa- bility across the department, we’re developing what we call the OIB marketplace to enable an efective connec- tion between anyone in the DoD who needs something manufactured with anyone in the DoD who could do that manufacturing. Right now, our ability to tap into that manufacturing capability is often limited by who you know and who you can pick up the phone and call. We want to really open the aperture on that so that we can more efectively tap into the manufacturing capability. That will enable us to ofset many of the challenges with diminishing sources of manu- facturing and materiel, with parts that are not economi- cally viable for commercial production, with obsolescence, and all of these areas where we could leverage the organic manufacturing capability to drive readiness. In this way, someone in the Air Force could theoretically leverage a shipyard to make a B52 part, for example. We’re in the fnal phase of user testing and expect to roll that out in the very near future. The third initiative we are actively exploring has really been enabled by the secretary and the president’s priori- ties in leveraging commercial enterprises. That involves thinking about public-private partnerships in a diferent way, perhaps more aggressively and tightly by leveraging or connecting public or private equity with the depart- ment’s organic capability, commercial enterprise, and the OIB in a partnership. This could provide a way to leverage and repurpose organic industrial facilities that we are no longer efectively utilizing. I think there’s some signifcant opportunity there to accelerate the range of things that concern us for ratings including production and parts man- ufacturing. So those are just three initiatives that we’re working on. The Services and the DLA are all doing great work, and we’re just trying to integrate things that can help move the needle across the department. Q Defense technology is undergoing rapid change, es- pecially through digitalization and robotics. To what extent do you think this is changing the calculus toward producing lower-cost items that can be quickly upgraded or replaced as needed? A. In terms of readiness, it does change how we think about the type of maintenance that might be required on certain weapons systems that we would procure in the future. If we are taking the approach that low-cost, high-volume production items, drones if you will, are disposable and don’t require maintenance and repair, that’s something to
In order to tap into underutilized
manufacturing capability across the department, we’re developing what we call the OIB marketplace to enable an effective connection between anyone in the DoD who needs something manufactured with anyone in the DoD who could do that manufacturing.
factor in down the road. Maybe those become predomi- nant kinetic weapon systems as opposed to some of the platforms that we use now. From a logistics perspective, we need to tap into that type of capability more aggressively. The enterprise has really been focused on low-cost mass-produced autono- mous systems for kinetic efect, I think we need to think about those things for logistics delivery platforms as well, and certainly there are very good initiatives in the Army and the Marine Corps exploiting this. But these are things at the departmental level, at the enterprise level, we need to start thinking about how we can leverage cutting-edge technology to the advantage of logistics and perhaps get beyond the ability to deliver kinetic efect. And I think if we do that, we can really harness technology in a way that can help us ofset what we might see as some of the challenges associated with distribution, maintenance, and repair in theaters like IDOPACOM [Pacifc and Indian Oceans re- gions] where the delivery distances are so great. Q What do you think are the possibilities of expansion of private domestic U.S. production capacities for mili- tary supplies to meet possible challenges from abroad? Do you see an elastic expandability of the private industrial base? A. I think there are a couple of aspects to that. I know that, on the one hand, there is rightful concern about the con- traction of the industrial capacity in the United States, and certainly, inarguably, the contraction of the number of sup- pliers or commercial providers to the DoD.
8 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025
But I also think there’s a fip side to that wherein, given advances in technology, there is a proliferation, if you will, or democratization of advanced manufacturing capabilities in a way that we perhaps have not fully exploited. It might not be the large Ford factories that we envision when we think about manufacturing, but we now have the prolifera- tion of technology across neighborhoods where literally you can have an advanced manufacturing capability in your garage, making complex parts in a way that we have never done before. So that may be a diferent way to think about indus- trial capacity. Still further, go back and look at World War II models where the aggregation of parts manufactured across an ecosystem of smaller producers culminated in our ability to roll out however many B17s a day we were rolling out. Maybe that’s a way to think about things in a diferent way because of the expansion in the readily available advanced manufacturing capabilities that literally exist almost on every street corner. But the DoD does not really have a good understanding of how deeply those advanced manufacturing capabilities have permeated throughout the industry. I think we have a sense that, yes, there’s a lot of that out there. But, again, if you go back in history, even as far back as World War I, we had a national manufacturing registry, so the govern- ment had a pretty good idea of what manufacturing ca- pability was out there. And that’s perhaps something that we need to explore and could arguably develop. We could use artificial intelligence to scrape capital purchases across and get a better idea of what companies have digital CNC [computer numerical control] machines, what companies have advanced manufacturing capabilities, what compa- nies are purchasing the inputs to advanced manufacturing, and perhaps we could start to shape out a better under- standing of the depth of manufacturing capacity that might At Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC) onboard Naval Station Nor- folk, Va., on Aug. 7. 2025. From left: Capt. Jay Young, commanding officer, MARMC; Rear Adm. William Greene, commander, Navy Regional Maintenance Center; Pat- rick Kelleher, deputy assistant secretary of defense for materiel readiness; and Rear Adm. Dianna Wolfson, director, fleet maintenance, Fleet Forces Command. Source: U.S. Navy photo by Harrison Cox
be somewhat below the radar right now because it’s not a Lockheed Martin or Boeing etc. Another aspect, and we may have heard some conver- sation about this, is carefully creating a national manufac- turing reserve capability along the lines of the civil reserve. So, if we understand through a registry what manufactur- ing capability exists, we can start to enter into agreements with diferent companies, either to share manufacturing capacity in a way that we don’t do now or to enter into agreements by which they would provide manufacturing capability when needed in the future along the lines of how the airlines provide aircraft. If we back up all the way to the beginning, we can think about all of those things. We must remember that the OIB is the DoD’s frst source for depth, resilience, and fexibility. And so, we are looking at investments to increase produc- tion capacity through OIB infrastructure so that we can start or continue to build on the Services’ plans to mod- ernize and maintain those organic industrial capabilities. Q Given your premise that some of the U.S. manufactur- ing capability can actually be done by much smaller frms, it appears probable that interoperability between the U.S. and a lot of other countries and their manufactur- ing sources could be a signifcant challenge in any type of major military operation. Does the department develop matrices to ensure transferability and interoperability between different national militaries? Or have we not yet approached that horizon where we can really be more in- teroperable in the way that equipment is moved around? A. I think that there’s really two parts to that. Yes, as we de- velop new weapon systems, a greater degree of interoper- ability is something we think more about than we did in the past. With that said, many of our current capability legacy platforms were not designed necessarily with that in mind, and so we must work and are working with partners and allies to be very deliberate about the partnerships, arrange- ments, and agreements that we would need to improve our ability. Even if it’s not platform interoperability, it could be maintenance repair and overhaul interoperability and understanding to what standards we operate. And those things are underway within the context of the regional sus- tainment framework [RSF], by which the department has endeavored over time to develop a forward capability for maintenance repair and overhaul and maintain readiness. A deliberate part of that is the agreement with partners and allies to improve our ability for co-sustainment across the family of weapon systems. One of the things in our favor is the broad reach of foreign military sales, with many of our partners and allies operating the same platforms that we do. So we do have that degree of interoperability even if our standards of repair or tooling or calibration specifcations are diferent. So those are the deliberate ap- proaches, the two agreements and arrangements that the RSF team is working on, and they are an important part of ensuring that we can operate side by side with our partners and allies because that will certainly be a requirement.
September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 9
Q Your offce manages the Joint Technology Exchange [JTEG] group. On what kinds of technologies is that group focused? What results might you expect if the mili- tary Services are able to adopt them? A. My ofce is responsible for sustainment technology in the JTEG. This is one of the forums that we lead to improve the expansion or accelerate the adoption of technology across the department. The other program that we manage is the rapid sustainment improvement program, where we have been leading. That’s really a multi-year efort, sort of organized thematically by year in terms of what we are focusing on. That has been funded to some degree through the department. And I highlight this as opposed to really focusing on the JTEG because we have money behind it and are able to guide some Service investments to accel- erate adoption of available commercial technology that could improve readiness, help the Services with funding, and facilitate transition of that technology into the Ser- vices. Probably the best example of that is our focus on Condition Based Maintenance Plus [CBM+] capabilities. Each of the Services has outlined investments relative to CBM+, and we’re guiding that efort writ large and those investments are nearing execution. As they conclude, we’ll ensure or do the best we can to efectively transition tech- nologies that have proven worthwhile. Q Speaking of CBM+, on the updated Condition Based Maintenance+ Guidebook , what CBM+ initiatives is your offce managing and what is your perspective on how im- plementation is proceeding across the different Services? This is meant to help programs design systems and im- plement technologies enabling the Warfghter to provide maintenance upon evidence of need perhaps even before there is a break. A. We have recently re-energized our focus on CBM+. And I know that there are good things going on within each of the Services. What we don’t have as good a feel for right now is what all of those, what the totality, what that universe looks like across the Services. So, we now are conducting an assessment across the department of what specifc CBM+ initiatives are ongoing and what progress has been made in the department over the last couple of years. So that’s Part 1. As I mentioned earlier, we are focused on condition-based maintenance, so we’ve got 10 or 12 dif- ferent projects that the Services are executing that will be complementary to the things
side of that coin is predictive maintenance, so we must understand not only when we need to do maintenance and how can we anticipate that requirement but also keep things in service and not take them ofine when we don’t have to do the maintenance. And think diferently about our technical manuals’ call for changing the oil every six months regardless of whether an oil change is needed. I think the combination of both of those facet is sort of two sides of a coin—the CBM+ and predictive main- tenance. Again, a lot of good work is going on, and we’re going to continue to advance that because I think we will see that we can certainly reach some positive readiness gains out of accelerating the adoption of both of those. And frankly these have been around for a long time. And again, the Services are doing good things. So, there’s nothing new here, but I think you know what could be new is the application of, as you mentioned, ar- tifcial intelligence to do analytics in a diferent way. We have built at this point a very solid DoD data foundation, and so predictive maintenance is an area where I think the application of AI will enable us to do better analytics to improve maintenance. Q On the additive manufacturing and the initial capa- bilities document [ICD] that I believe your offce de- veloped, would you discuss that and your assessment of progress in advancing the depth and scope of additive or advanced manufacturing to improve Warfghter readiness? A. The ICD establishes advanced manufacturing as a required DoD capability. That validates and legitimizes investments across the Services into the capability; it is something they now must invest in as opposed to some- thing that maybe they don’t. So, program managers can walk around with the document that says, hey, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staf determined that this is a required capability—so it helps program managers make those investments. Now advanced manufacturing, I think, is well institu- tionalized in the DoD. Does that mean we’re perfect in ex- ecution? Absolutely not. And I think that there are pockets of excellence that have more fully embraced the benefts of advanced manufacturing than others. Yes, I would say it is by and large institutionalized, a permanent part of the DoD fabric. But certainly, there is more work to be done. And I think that from a policy perspective, there are a couple of things that we’re thinking about to help fur- ther institutionalize that technology. These include, frst, a policy to accept the certifcation of a part by one Service when that certifcation was completed by another Service. For example, if the Army certifes that a part Form, Fit, and Function for a Humvee, the Marine Corps doesn’t now need to redo that. So, we should have
that they already have going on because, at the end of the day, condition-based
maintenance is about readiness. The fip
policy that directs reciprocity of that certifcation so that we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. Now I understand that there will
10 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025
... I think that there are pockets of excellence that have more fully embraced the benefts of advanced manufacturing than others. And so, yes, I would say it is by and large institutionalized, a permanent part of the DoD fabric.
be some nuances with sub safety and airworthiness, but in the macro, I think that’s an area where we could help. The second area where we could help with reciprocity is the certifcation reciprocity for a manufacturing process . If the Navy, for example, makes a part, using this material— a printer in this case—and Navy certifes that this part is Form, Fit, and Function for application, that process should be certifed and therefore acceptable to the other Services so that they don’t have to, again, literally re-engineer that part, as long as they’re following that process. The third thing that we want to do is develop a DoD-ap- proved and -managed products list so that as each Service, approves advanced manufacturing capabilities, 3D printers for use on the network, the other Services don’t have to go and approve that printer for use on the network. I want to develop a centralized dynamic repository that sort of keeps the list. “Hey, I need a thing to do that. Oh, I’ll buy this one because it’s on the list.” At least it’s an option and you can understand that, if you want to buy this uncerti- fed item over here, you’re going to have to get it certifed. Once you get it certifed for the use on the network, it’s added to the list. We’re leading the efort to develop what we’re calling the digital manufacturing exchange or essentially a secure unclassifed network that we will use to transmit technical data packages with enough security so that you know that the fle is accurate. And when you print the data package from the fle, it will be the product that has been certifed. And that will be an important part of continuing to expand our advanced manufacturing capabilities throughout the department, such as building 3D printing farms, and we’re going to need a network to do that. And it’s not all going to be on SIPRNET [Secret Internet Protocol Router Network], but it needs to be more than just your standard unclassifed network. And so, we’re working with a couple of commer- cial partners to help us develop that. We’ve successfully demonstrated a prototype, and we’re going to be demonstrating again in an upcoming exercise. So, we’re going to continue to drive that because, in my opinion, that will be foundational to continued ex- pansion of our advanced manufacturing capability across the department. Q Do we have a cost-beneft metric for artifcial intelli- gence and additive manufacturing? How much money and time are saved when these technologies can be used, particularly at the point of need? A. I don’t know that cost-beneft is necessarily the right metric. To me, there is no cost to sufcient readiness. Are
there potentially cost savings? Maybe. I guess that would depend on the part, on the manufacturing process, how we manufactured it in the past versus the costs associ- ated with buying the machine and the printing material and all of that. So, frankly, I am less concerned about cost savings and more focused on readiness gains associated with advanced manufacturing capabilities. Now I think time is an important component of that. And so, if I could print it where I need it, I can save some time. However, I think sometimes in the department we get enamored with the idea that we can save all this time by printing it forward. Well, we still need to move the stuf. We still must maintain the printer. We must have the post processing equipment, and we need a network to trans- mit the technical data fle. So is that feasible? Yes, but not a panacea. It can also save us time if we could ad- ditively or use advanced manufacturing to manufacture a part for which we have no commercial supplier or where it’s not economically viable for a commercial provider to manufacture something. If we send out an RFP that says, “Hey, I need fve widgets,” nobody wants to make only fve widgets because they’re going to have to invest in the infrastructure. They’re not going to make a proft. Well, we can use the OIB and perhaps advanced manu- facturing to manufacture the widget and so that saves us signifcant time, particularly when it comes to readiness driver parts. There are, again, legacy platforms, lots of things, lots of parts we need. We did not anticipate 30 to 40 years ago that we were going to need parts, nor did we think they were ever going to break because we never thought the planes or aircraft or tanks would still be in service now. So, I think it comes down more to readiness and time, less than cost, although I know that cost is a part of the calculus at the unit level when they’re weighing the cost-beneft of buying that machine, or these parts. Q On the revised sustainment health metrics of a mate- riel availability, which have added new reporting envi- ronments, and established a new metric of cost per day of availability, what results have you seen from that revised instruction. And have you achieved additional insights with a new metric? Again, we’re getting into cost a little bit. A. I don’t want to be flippant and completely discount cost, I mean it is obviously an important consideration. I think we’ve made a lot of progress since the update to DoD Instruction 3110.05 was published and establishing operational availability and materiel availability as super- ordinate metrics for the department, along with cost per day of availability. That has been an evolutionary process
September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 11
and I think that, in large part what we have been focused on over the last year or so, since that has been published, is frankly building the data foundation—ensuring that we understood across the department how to calculate, en- suring that we understood that we had the automated data pipelines to report that which we were now calculating. Services had to understand how to gather the informa- tion necessary to calculate the superordinate metrics. In capturing metrics we learned that operational availability is a more efective measurement at this point than cost per day of availability, but there’s still some work to be done. We must continue refning how we report. I think we have to refne how we calculate and continue to develop a better common lexicon across the department in terms of what we mean when we say these things. Now, with all of that said, I think in the macro we now have a better insight into the overall health of the depart- ment’s weapon systems, even if some on the margin say it’s not being calculated right. I mean we’re not of by or- ders of magnitude, but it certainly does highlight and give us a quantitative data foundation to assess the readiness of major weapon systems across the DoD. So, in that way it is helpful because it’s a frst step in the journey to as- sociating, quantitatively, investment to readiness returns. And we continue to build this out and start to dig deeper into regulations and cost per day of availability and in my ofce we apply artifcial intelligence to the data that are available to us. Now we’ll be able in a quantifable way to better understand the root causes and drivers of readiness degradation and to more defnitively establish resource re- quirements to move the readiness needle. This is defnitely a journey. It’s a process, and we are well on our way along the journey but not to the end. Q On the statutory core in 50/50 statutes, how is DoD doing in terms of maintaining a ready and controlled source of technical competence and resources for depot repair and staying within the 50/50 limits for contractor depot maintenance? Is there a trend, and what is your assessment of the ability to trend positively given the number of new weapon systems? A. I think that the OIB remains solid. All the Services are very diligent in maintaining their capabilities, developing their plans for their future, advocating for the necessary investments to keep the department’s industrial capacity relevant and resilient. Is there work to be done? Of course there is. And the job of my ofce is to help advocate for those priorities to ensure that the OIB continues to be maintained. Our posture is efective for the future, par- ticularly with regard to preparing for protracted confict. Now with that being said, we at this point don’t see any challenges complying with 50/50. We monitor it closely and certainly this year with the workforce fuctuations there may be some challenges, but nothing insurmount- able, nothing defnitive that we’ve seen at this point. We’ll continue to watch it closely. And so, with that said, no negative trends regarding 50/50 and that’s something
that, again, we watch closely. And we don’t anticipate any problems complying there. Q Right. My next question deals with the DoD Mainte- nance Symposium. When is that scheduled? A. It is scheduled, and we’ll make sure we get you some of these so you can distribute them. It is scheduled for December 9–12 in Louisville, Kentucky. Q Now we understand that this year’s session has the theme “Advancing Readiness to Exploit the Logistics Deterrent Effect: Maintaining the Capability and Capacity to Fight and Win.” Can you tell us a bit about the individual topics you plan to cover and who should attend the sym- posium? A. Well, everyone should attend because it is the best symposium that the DoD ofers. It is the largest mainte- nance and readiness focus symposium. If you are involved in, interested in, have oversight, execution, responsibil- ity for policy regarding maintenance, readiness, logistics, you should attend because it’s going to be great. We have got a range of topics that are fairly well established, and we started working on extracts and panel members. So planning is well underway. We have the under secretary’s endorsement and don’t anticipate any challenges. We’re going to run in parallel again the software sum- mit as we do every year. We’ve got some senior logistician panels to talk about the logistics deterrent efect, under- standing what I like to call the logistics kill chain. We’re going to talk about maintenance, the innovation challenge, application of artifcial intelligence, strategic capital, and how we explore public private partnerships in a diferent way—the opportunities in leveraging private capital. We are going to have a panel on conditions-based maintenance and predictive maintenance. We’ll have a panel of congressional staf members providing their per- spective on maintenance and readiness. And we’ll cover the overall health of the DoD maintenance industry and autonomy. So, we’ve got a very good agenda that is pertinent and relevant to the current environment in which we’re, if you think about it, in a competition crisis where we’re hope- fully not trending toward confict but certainly trending toward crisis. Q Do you see a need to strengthen or add certain as- pects of acquisition training and human capital de- velopment? How best can this be achieved? A. I think it’s clear from the administration’s priorities and from what we have heard from the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment that shaping our acquisition processes to be more respon- sive is absolutely a priority. So that, to be honest, is more on the acquisition side, more on the maintenance, repair, overhaul, and readiness perspective. And from there, I think an important component is our
12 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025
Three F-15E aircraft undergo Planned/Scheduled Depot Level Maintenance at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., June 3, 2025. Each F-15 aircraft underwent extensive overhaul and repair to maintain readiness through sustainment and project lethality for global use by the Air Force F-15 fleet. Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Joseph Mather
workforce. And as we think about the acquisition process and all those good things that are going on with the ac- quisition system, I think we need to pay equal attention to our workforce. Frankly, as a refection of our larger society, there are some challenges in developing and maintaining a workforce that has the skills and the expertise necessary to do the things that we do. My colleagues here working for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Product Support are absolutely focused on workforce development and we are very close partners with them, particularly for the OIB. So, this is very much a priority and very much another area where we have to think about the workforce diferently to make sure that we’re incentivizing, that we’re able to recruit, that we’re able to retain and that comes with the right level of train- ing and fnancial incentive just to continue to work for the department. So workforce development is very much something that we think and talk about frequently. Q Is there anything that you would like to discuss or point out that perhaps hasn’t been covered thus far. A. First I appreciate everything that DAU does to enhance the ability of the department to fulfll Warfghting require- ments. I think that what we need to think about is that the en- vironment has changed dramatically over the last several years, and I think many of us grew up in a military where we were logistically dominant. We were not challenged. Frankly, the biggest logistics challenge often was fnding a Starbucks when I got of my plane in my forward operating base. That environment was very diferent.
I think people really need to internalize that the chal- lenges we now face and will face to a larger degree through which we could enter confict. The challenges are very dif- ferent, and they’re going to be much more difcult to over- come. And if we don’t start thinking about those things now, we may be arguably already behind the 8-ball to some degree. We’re going to be challenged in ways that we haven’t been challenged since World War II. And those like me who have been around the military for 30 years will be challenged ways that we have not been challenged before in our entire careers. So, I think there’s a danger, maybe of complacency, where our experiences have been shaped by logistics dom- inance. And we make assumptions about our warfghting capabilities based on how we have been able to support combat in the past without interruption. We’re facing just a completely diferent paradigm be- cause we will be challenged and we will not have the luxury of the logistics capabilities that we had in the past. We will face an adversary that will use precision munitions against us and will be a peer competitor in a way that we have not faced before. And I think we just need to assess our current invest- ments in logistics capabilities writ large and think about the readiness outcomes that we want, that we need, to fght and win and make sure that our investment inputs are equal to or can sustain the readiness that we need in order to fght.
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September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 13
A Practical Framework for Transitioning TECHNOLOGY TO THE WARFIGHTER by DEBRA ZIDES, NATALIE FAUCHER, TRICIA YOUNGBULL, ALEX COCCO, and RUTHANNE DARLING
14 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025 U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 11th Airborne Division, wait for CH-47 Chinook helicopters to arrive for an air assault gun raid at Donnelly Training Area, Alaska, July 22, 2025. Operating in the Arctic requires Soldiers to remain patient, prepared, and mission-ready in harsh and rapidly changing conditions. Source: Photo by Correy Mathews This image was cropped to show detail and was edited using multiple flters plus dodging and burning techniques.
C utting-edge technologies are essential for addressing evolving threats and maintaining operational readiness. As a result, the military annually invests billions of dollars in emerging technology Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E). For instance, in its Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 base budget, the Pen- tagon requested $142 billion in RDT&E funds. When these investments translate to technological advantage in warfghting capability, the United States and its allies beneft from increased military assuredness and deterrence. But the path from an innovative idea to a felded capability is strewn with obstacles.
From Idea to Capability and the Valley of Death A critical juncture in defense tech- nology development emerges where the goal changes from demonstrating feasibility (proof of concept) to dem- onstrating producibility and mission relevance (minimum viable product/ prototype aligned to a capability need). Navigating this transition and demonstrating technological matu- rity requires DoD domain knowledge often outside the strengths of a typi- cal Science and Technology (S&T) project team (e.g., manufacturing, cost estimation, defense acquisition, requirements, and operator training). This knowledge gap creates barriers to technology adoption and increases
the risk of falling into the “valley of death.” The Operational Energy Innovation Directorate (OE-I) in the Ofce of the Under Secretary of Defense for Ac- quisition and Sustainment developed the Transition Maturity Framework, or TMaF (Figure 1), to strategically man- age technology transition. The TMaF puts the Warfghter frst. It is designed to support S&T teams and RDT&E program managers in de- livering Warfghters superior techno- logical capabilities. It helps S&T teams identify critical activities necessary to navigate their technologies past the valley of death. It provides program managers a framework for strategic project selection and execution man-
agement. Although initially developed by OE-I, the TMaF is readily tailored for use by other defense programs. Interested readers can find links to the TMaF and complementary tools
at the end of the article. OE-I’s Challenges
The OE-I Directorate was created in 2012 to transition operational en- ergy capabilities to the Warfighter and is overseen by the Ofce of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of De- fense for Energy, Resilience, and Op- timization. OE-I manages two RDT&E funds (B.A. 6.3 and B.A. 6.4): the Op- erational Energy Capability Improve- ment and Prototyping Funds (OECIF and OEPF). To mitigate transition risks, OE-I rigorously vets proposals via a Pro- posal Evaluation Board (PEB), pro- actively connects innovators with transition partners (e.g., Program Executive Ofces [PEOs], industrial base collaborators, Service energy of- fces, and combatant commands) and tracks technology maturation during project execution. By the end of 2022, however, OE-I recognized three persistent chal- lenges to managing technology tran- sition. First, OE-I found that existing “readiness levels” missed key deter- minants of transition success. For ex- ample, a technology at high TRL and MRL (technology and manufacturing readiness levels) could still lack align- ment to a funded, validated require- ment or could prove impractical for Warfghter use. In other words, a team could be developing a technology
Figure 1. Transition Maturity Framework (TMaF)
Note: MRL = Manufacturing Readiness Levels; RRL = Requirements Readiness Level; TCL = Transition Confidence Level; TRL = Technology Readiness Level; WRL = Warfighter Readiness Level Source: The MITRE Corp. Reprinted with permission.
September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 15
for technology’s sake rather than for a mission. Second, OE-I realized that its proj- ect teams, typically led by technol- ogy innovators, lacked the informa- tion needed to develop and execute a strategic technology transition plan that demonstrates transition confi- dence and technical maturity to de- liver a needed capability. These teams needed actionable activities to guide them toward successful transition. For example, which PEOs should they contact? How could they get in touch? What should they discuss once con- nected? OE-I needed resources and tools to empower innovators that deliver impactful capabilities to the Warfghter. Finally, OE-I lacked an efficient, data-driven means of reporting tech- nology maturation and mission im- pact to its leadership and Congress. The FY 2021 National Defense Au- thorization Act (NDAA, Sec. 324) added urgency to these challenges. It man- dated OE-I to develop and utilize a tool that could (a) track technology maturation from applied research to transition to use and (b) provide in- formation needed by all stakeholders for technology acceptance. The Transition Maturity Framework In early 2023, OE-I, in collabora- tion with MITRE, convened a multi- disciplinary team of subject matter experts drawn from key stakeholder groups within the defense acquisition ecosystem: technology innovators, acquisition program managers, the re- quirements community, and operators (Warfghters and Warfghter-training specialists). They created the TMaF. The TMaF integrates fve readiness dimensions into a single framework designed to capture technology ac- ceptance criteria across all acquisi- tion stakeholders. Of the fve TMaF readiness dimensions, three already existed: TRL, MRL, and Transition Confdence Level (TCL). TRL, MRL, and TCL primarily ac- count for the priorities of technology
innovators and acquisition programs but do not fully capture the needs of the requirements community and operators. They leave open the pos- sibility for S&T teams to lose sight of the Warfghters and their needs. To close this gap, the TMaF team created two additional readiness dimensions. First, the Requirements Readiness Level (RRL) measures a technologi- cal solution’s alignment to a validated, funded requirement, i.e., to a War- fghter capability need. Requirements alignment alone, however, does not guarantee that a Warfghter is will- ing and able to employ a technol- ogy. Therefore, an operator-focused dimension, the Warfghter Readiness Level (WRL), was introduced. WRL measures the extent a tech- nology has been Warfighter-tested and adopted. It considers the tech- nology’s role in addressing capability gaps by evaluating solutions across D octrine, O rganization, T raining, M a- teriel, L eadership and E ducation, P er- sonnel, F acilities, and P olicy Analysis (DOTMLPF-P) to ensure use of the most efective and holistic approach. By complementing existing readiness dimensions with RRL and WRL, the TMaF ensures that OE-I S&T teams develop technologies the Warfghter wants and needs while resolving the transition measurement challenge posed to OE-I by the FY 2021 NDAA. Beyond measurement and report- ing, however, OE-I sought a tool that was actionable—i.e., that could pro- vide its project teams with strategic technology transition guidance. To this end, for each readiness dimension
and level, the TMaF concisely outlines critical activities needed for progress to the next level. For example, one of four critical activities to enable prog- ress from WRL 5 to WRL 6 is to “in- volve warfghters in shaping policies and procedures to ensure practicality and acceptance.” This example exhib- its essential characteristics of TMaF critical activities. It indicates which stakeholders to engage (“warfight- ers”), when to engage them (“when shaping policies and procedures”), and the engagement’s goal (“ensure practicality and acceptance”). The TMaF levels provide project teams with a set of transition mile- stones. Critical activities ofer them a starting point to develop a plan to strategically address transition chal- lenges as they move through those milestones. In this way, the TMaF gives OE-I the ability to efficiently provide each project team transition guidance tailored to their project’s maturity. Executing critical activi- ties helps a project team mature its technology while creating a record that allows efective program man- agement and satisfes congressional reporting requirements. The Transition Maturity Framework Rolls Out Leading up to its FY 2025 call for proposals, OE-I integrated the TMaF into its proposal solicitation, selec- tion, and execution management processes. It established minimum TMaF entry and exit levels and re- quired that proposal teams complete a TMaF self-assessment with the
16 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | September-October 2025
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