The nation’s biggest military contractor is rethinking how it does business in a bid to match the speed of innovation in the commercial digital industry.
The change was unveiled Wednesday in a YouTube conversation that Lockheed Martin
Lockheed, a contributor to my think tank, has heard government customers complain for years that the pace of innovation in the defense industry isn’t fast enough to keep up with America’s “near-peer” rivals or the rate at which new technologies are emerging.
Taiclet, who came to the company after 16 years as head of cellular infrastructure provider American Tower
Lockheed Martin Chairman & CEO James Taiclet
Taiclet argues that Lockheed actually has a good track record of fast innovation in what he calls the physical world, for example in turning out novel aircraft at the company’s legendary Skunk Works.
Where it lags, along with its defense-industry competitors, is in matching the pace of innovation in the digital world, the high-tech sector concentrated in places like Austin, Boston and Silicon Valley.
Taiclet says that is going to change.
In fact, the change has already begun as the company moves to become a pathfinder in adapting commercial digital technology to the nation’s military needs.
Much of the change will come from applying open architectures, agile software development, and networking technology to warfighting platforms in which the company is already a leading player.
In some cases this will require partnering with commercial tech enterprises, but Taiclet notes that the company already employs 10,000 software engineers. So the main challenge is just learning how to field advances faster.
How much faster?
Taiclet talks about accomplishing platform upgrades every six months rather than every six years, drastically reducing cycle times for every facet of system enhancement.
He readily acknowledges that doing business this way in order to keep the joint force ahead of adversaries will require a different profit model, but having accomplished such a shift in the telecom industry, he thinks he can do much the same in defense.
One way of eliciting customer buy-in is to provide dynamic cost models that rigorously demonstrate the value of tradeoffs in system development.
The implication is that in many situations, it makes more sense to move faster than to wait for the perfect solution, especially given what potential overseas enemies are doing.
The company has held meetings with leaders of top innovators in networking, gaming and other digital enterprises with an eye to finding areas where their experiences can be applied to the Lockheed culture.
Taiclet notes that “we don’t need to write all our AI software,” hinting that the company may partner with commercial companies to tap their talent, but his main goal seems to be developing internal talent capable of rapid digital innovation.
To that end, the company has developed a series of highly classified technology roadmaps that will help it think through where it needs to get to in support of its government customers.
CEO Taiclet can’t say much about those roadmaps, but he makes one point clear: he intends to get there fast, ahead of his competitors, and ahead of American’s rivals.
