W orking with foreign military sales (FMS) partner nations requires strategic thinking, adaptability, tact, persistence, and teamwork.
After a long career in academia, I transitioned back to working as a logistician in FMS acquisition. While the two felds may seem disparate, my experiences in academic re- search, communicating with diverse groups, procurement, and public ser- vice all aforded me the opportunity to leverage strategic thinking skills, identify obstacles, and fnd solutions with partner nations. The older, highly complex, and unique radar system on
which I currently work is deployed throughout the partner nation as a critical component of its defensive radar systems. Systems acquisition doesn’t end with the delivery of equipment—it includes deployment and sustain- ment of the system. Traveling to the partner nation’s facilities, talking to their maintainers, and engaging with their experts provide insights into the issues surrounding both the
system’s deployment and sustain- ment that may not easily be gained from written communications. During one of my frst site visits to our FMS partner, members of the program management team and I found that a remote test station had been un- utilized. This challenged me to dem- onstrate how I could ofer innovative and efective solutions. Previous eforts had failed to con- vince the partner nation that their
September-October 2025 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION | 31
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