America keeps trying to rebuild the industrial capacity of the past. What we actually need is the capacity to produce the outcomes the future demands. Years ago, I escorted a congressional staff delegation to Connecticut. Congressman John Larson joined us in his district and proudly reminded the group that Connecticut was the birthplace of Colt […]
Some of the most interesting companies in the defense market today have an intensity about them that’s difficult to miss. It isn’t necessarily that their people work longer hours. They don’t have more hours in the day, and many don’t have more people, money, customer access or institutional knowledge than the established companies they’re challenging.
Years ago, while commanding one of the Navy’s newest warships, I hosted an admiral aboard for a visit. At the time, the ship represented the cutting edge of naval technology. Information from our own sensors, aircraft, satellites, intelligence sources, and other ships was fused together and displayed across a wall of tactical displays. Compared to
The Most Valuable Employee Isn’t the Fastest Anymore Read More »
For years, I’ve shared one simple observation with business leaders: You can’t recruit an admiral from Amazon. If the Navy loses a senior flag officer, it can’t simply replace decades of operational experience with an outside hire. Those leaders are developed over years through increasingly demanding assignments, careful evaluations, growing responsibility, and the confidence of
My extended Navy deployments all took place during the summer, which meant repeated Mediterranean port calls during Wimbledon, the World Cup, and the European football championships. At the time, most Americans, me included, paid little attention to international soccer. But once we tied up overseas, it was impossible to ignore. The waterfront bars were packed
What Do You Know About Quantum? Imagine waking up tomorrow to discover GPS no longer works. Not because the satellites disappeared. Because they’re being jammed, spoofed, or denied by an adversary. Suddenly, military formations, autonomous systems, precision weapons, commercial aircraft, financial networks, and even your smartphone are all trying to answer the same question: Where
“We don’t inherit history to preserve it. We inherit to extend it.” I was thirteen during America’s Bicentennial in 1976. Like many Americans, I remember the tall ships filling New York Harbor, the International Naval Review, fireworks that seemed larger than life, and the patriotic keepsakes that found their way into nearly every home. To
Signals From the FY26/FY27 Defense Market Over the past several months, I’ve run a series of LinkedIn polls focused on the FY26/FY27 defense environment, congressional engagement, execution risk, and contractor strategy. Individually, they looked like quick pulse checks from the GovCon community. Taken together, they tell a more important story. What I see is not
At my recent Meet the Ringmasters gathering, we spent two days in a room with CEOs, founders, and operators comparing notes. Not just on strategy, but on what actually moves a business forward. It wasn’t a room lacking ideas or experience. If anything, there was an overabundance of both. What became clear, however, was that
At Sea-Air-Space 2026, something unusual happened. For the first time, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, took the stage. That alone is worth noting. OMB doesn’t typically show up in industry forums like this unless there’s intent behind it. Credit likely goes, at least in part, to Jerry Hendrix, who
Backlog: Signal of Failure—or Symptom of a Broken System? Read More »
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