Not a day goes by in DC without someone grabbing a microphone, stepping to a podium—or settling into a cushy seat on a panel—to declare the need for “more innovation” and a “revitalized industrial base.”

It’s become a ritual without results.

However, with the recent release of the U.S. Department of War’s (DoW) Acquisition Transformation Strategy, we have a real chance to drive meaningful change. It’s more than a political directive; it’s a blueprint for the leaders within the defense industrial base to make it a reality.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has just thrown the game-winning pass into the air. Scoring means turning strategy into capability, which hinges on how quickly industry can prepare the operating forces to receive Hegseth’s pass. With DoW and Congress behind this effort, the question becomes simple: how do we continue to move the ball down the field and get it over the goal line? Industry can do that in three ways.

First, we need a true, shared tactical command-and-control backbone across the Services—replacing today’s patchwork of soldier-level controllers and incompatible software that can’t integrate with other Service-level C2 systems.

Second, we need rapid-fire prototyping that puts hardware into soldiers’ hands, rather than abandoning promising tech in the Valley of Death—or worse, shrink-wrapped in warehouses.

Third, we need Field Service Representatives (FSR) who can accelerate the DOTMLPF-P process through hands-on training in the field and by providing feedback to develop doctrine for the force. It’s the process no one budgets for, even though it ultimately determines whether anything reaches the fight or adds any real value once it gets there. (Lay readers: DOTMLPF-P is the framework for planning and building capabilities that aligns new technology with the American way of fighting, policy, resources, training, and manning.)

This is the beginning of a shift from ritual to results, and it’s going to reshape how our troops score touchdowns in the years ahead.

1. Common Control: The New Rifle and Radio

The next war will be fought by squads remotely commanding robotic systems: unmanned ground vehicles hauling gear, drones scouting ahead, loitering munitions circling above… Incredible capability, cognitive overload.

If we expect troops to fight and manage all that tech simultaneously, we need a single pane of glass—one intuitive control platform that feels as natural as a rifle and radio. Common control isn’t about user interface design; it’s about survival under pressure.

Key philosophy is ‘one-to-many.’ There will be a sharp rise in the number of ground, aerial, and maritime robotics systems procured and deployed across the Department.  As the number of systems employed by the soldier increases, we should avoid the desire to give every soldier a controller. One soldier can control a swarm of one-way attack systems while employing the ISR to initiate and close the kill chain. Also, systems that are fully autonomous won’t require ‘control,’ but they will need to be tracked in and out of the battlespace, which is why interoperable software like Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) will be critical.

Programs like the U.S. Army’s Human Machine Integrated Formations (HMIF), under the newly established Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires (PAE Fires), are pushing in the right direction with modular architectures and open APIs. But let’s stop pretending interoperability can be bolted on later. If a system can’t plug into a common architecture from day one, it shouldn’t make it past the gate.

In the end, command-and-control is the real high ground and the side that seizes it early will shape the fight long before the first shot is fired.

2. Prototype Like You Mean It

Ukraine proved what most of us already knew: Concepts are validated in contact, not in meetings.  

The U.S. can’t wait for perfect requirements or five-year procurement cycles. It needs continuous experimentation, real soldiers, Marines, and special operators running gear hard in dirty conditions, feeding lessons back to designers in real time. Because the truth is brutal: our adversaries iterate faster than our acquisition system, and the first time that gap shows up will be in combat, not a conference room.

We finally have alignment: Congress, the Pentagon, and industry all want faster prototyping. The fix is to make it permanent. Here’s how:

1. Expand Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) contracts. Fund multiple vendors per capability. 

2. Push prototypes to more units by shifting early S&T funding into applied research for more testing and experimentation. 

3. Take advantage of units the Army, Air Force, and Marines have stood up for this purpose. 

The Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative to adapt its organizations and technologies rapidly and continuously on the modern battlefield is a glimpse of the future: brigades re-organizing on the fly, integrating manned and unmanned assets, building strike companies where scouts, EW teams, and loitering munitions operate as one lethal formation.

We need to embrace that future and put the hardware in the dirt. Let the warfighters break it, tweak it, and own it. That’s how we’ll close the gap between PowerPoint and performance—and how we’ll keep that gap from becoming a battlefield surprise.

3. Bring Back the FSRs (to accelerate fielding)

We used to know how to do this. When M-ATVs and MRAPs rolled into Afghanistan, the only reason they worked was because industry flooded the fight with FSRs. They taught troops how to operate this lifesaving equipment quickly and effectively and kept them in the fight.

Unfortunately, the FSR experience in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed poignant shortcomings of relying on civilian contractors on a battlefield. Today, adding FSRs into a contract can get a bad rap as the Services seek self-reliance in operation and repair of systems.

That’s a valid critique, maintaining equipment at the lower echelons should be a given. But the battlefield we’re preparing for, including autonomy at the edge, open architectures, and rapid software pushes, moves too fast for traditional schoolhouse training to keep up. As we field systems from multiple vendors, ideally all riding on a common control platform, units will be asked to self-train across half a dozen new interfaces at once. Therefore, DoW should embrace FSRs for training and fielding new systems in user-friendly ways so that FSRs are not required to operate those systems in theater. For its part, industry must be ready to provide FSRs early, hit the ground running with new equipment training teams, and turn complex unfamiliar gear into usable combat power on day one.

Vendors need to be prepared to hire and bake FSRs into every major test, experiment, and early fielding event. These embedded experts will accelerate the DOTMLPF-P as they close the loop between design and doctrine, between factory and foxhole.

If a system shows up to a battalion and no one knows how to use it, that’s not on the operator, that’s on the planners, acquirers, and vendors.

CONCLUSION: Modernize the modernization

It’s easy to mock Pentagon flow charts and acronyms like DOTMLPF-P, but those structures exist for a reason: to protect our troops. We can’t just give soldiers new equipment without the opportunity to learn and train. When it comes to combat, brilliance in the basics keeps Americans alive. Rigorous training on common platforms in peace is the operating system of war.

Secretary Hegseth’s pass is already in the air, and for the first time in a long time the field is wide open. If industry leans in now to build common control from the start, push prototypes into the dirt, and embed the experts who turn complexity into confidence, the force will catch that ball at full stride. That’s how we move from strategy to capability, from talking about modernization to living it. This moment is an opportunity disguised as a challenge, and if we seize it, the next generation of warfighters won’t just be better equipped, they’ll be decisively ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Chris Meyers is a Senior Director at AV. He is a retired Marine Colonel who served as an Armor Officer, a Joint Terminal Attack Control (JTAC), Legislative Liaison, and Program & Budget Officer. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, commanded 1st Tank Battalion, and led the Marine Corps’ liaison office to the U.S. House of Representatives.

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