Innovation to Deployment: Fixing the Pentagon’s Acquisition Gap

This episode of All About the Base, a video series analyzing critical industrial base topics, features a conversation from the CSIS podcast Cache Me If You Can: The Global Race to Innovate examining the Pentagon’s ongoing transformation of defense acquisition. Host Lauryn Williams, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS, sits down with Dr. Jerry McGinn to discuss the opportunities, obstacles, and reforms shaping the future of defense innovation and the industrial base. As strategic competitors move quickly to field advanced capabilities, can the United States adapt its acquisition system fast enough to maintain its technological edge? Their discussion highlights the progress made toward translating industrial ambition into operational reality and the intersection of emerging technologies, defense acquisition, and industrial competitiveness that will define it.

The All About the Base series is made possible by general funding to CSIS.