Month: August 2024

The Defense Department will be starting a new program for “commercial tool demonstrations” to help small businesses learn about and strengthen cybersecurity measures “within the next year,” a department official said Aug. 8. In fiscal year 2023, Congress required DoD by 2027 “to establish a new program where we actually do commercial tool demonstrations for small businesses to help them to understand what their risks are when it comes to foreign control and influence,” Farooq Mitha, director of the DoD Office of Small Business Programs said. The strategy was designed to make it easier for small business to “do business with us, reduce barriers to entry, create some more alignment between our small business programs and provide more resources to small companies that are looking to do business with us,” Mitha said.

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The Department of Defense is executing a warfighter-centric innovation strategy to meet the urgent needs of the National Defense Strategy. Recognizing there is no silver bullet that can solve all the challenges DoD faces, DoD’s innovation initiatives span every stage of capability development and every process step, from policy to acquisition.

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In 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III directed the creation of a “tiger team” to look into ways the Defense Department could make the Foreign Military Sales system less foreboding for partner nations interested in purchasing U.S. military hardware. The team wrapped up operations in the spring and transitioned into a Continuous Process Improvement Board, or CPIB, meant to implement solutions recommended by the tiger team and to also be on the lookout going forward for new and novel ways of their own to improve the FMS system. Since then, the department scored wins by implementing four tiger team recommendations: establishment of the CPIB, creation of the Defense Security Cooperation Service, standing up of the Security Cooperation Execution Focus Forum, and the development of an acquisition and sustainment tool kit.

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