The Ukraine Mission, Golden Dome Milestone and Department of War Tech

Aaron Mehta:
This is just a fascinating major shift in how major acquisition programs are managed. If we see the navy doing the same, and then maybe the army, although they've got their own reorg situation going on now that might preclude this, all of a sudden, the deputy secretary of defense is now the top acquisition official in the Pentagon.
Roman Schweizer:
From DoD to Congress, and from the White House to Wall Street, the NatSec Need to Know podcast, an unrehearsed podcast presenting insightful discussion and forecasts of the major national security and defense issues of the day. Welcome to the NatSec Need to Know. We've got a reporters' roundtable to discuss the top national security issues in Washington and around the world and preview what to expect over the next several weeks. This edition is a special pre-Thanksgiving look-ahead. We've got Tony Bertuca from Inside Defense, and Aaron Mehta from Breaking Defense. They've each covered Washington and the Pentagon for decades, and are as well sourced as anyone in town. Thank you all for joining. Let's get after it.
Thank you for joining us for a special Thanksgiving edition of the NatSec Need to Know. There's been a lot going on and we're going to try to get through it as quickly as possible. This edition is going to be featuring Aaron Mehta and Tony Bertuca. We are down a couple of people. We've thought about calling this edition, the Two Men and a Baby episode. We'll see how you feel at the end of that. So let's just get right into it. I think the first thing to discuss, or maybe just make observations because this is happening in real time, President Trump has sent Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to the Ukraine to discuss a 28-point peace plan to bring the war between Ukraine and Russia to a close. I don't want to get into the details of that plan and how that may play out. Obviously, this is going to be something that happens in real time over the next week or so. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has not dismissed the idea and said he is willing to negotiate despite reports that the plan would be quite negative for the Ukrainian strategic position and perhaps long-term survival.
We'll dismiss with the foreign policy implications and likelihood, but to me, I think the one thing that is most interesting is that Dan Driscoll got the nod here and got put into the game. The only reason I say that is typically you would expect Marco Rubio as national security advisor or his capacity as secretary of state, or Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, perhaps Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg, Undersecretary of Defense Bridge Colby, who is by all accounts running into some negative job approval ratings from Congress. But so Dan Driscoll drew the nod. Again, not to speculate, but this is certainly a high-profile mission for him. And I wonder if it is something of an audition to be secretary of defense... Or excuse me, secretary of war someday. I believe he's well regarded in the administration, and he's been incredibly proactive about acquisition reform and changing the way the Pentagon does business. So gentlemen, I know in your day jobs you're not foreign policy wonks, but you guys do cover the Pentagon and Congress for a long time. So I just wonder if you have any thoughts on Army Secretary Driscoll's mission to Ukraine?
Tony Bertuca:
I think you cannot discount his relationship with the vice president in this situation. Clearly the inner circle of the White House, they want someone that they can trust, and that's clearly someone the vice president thinks he can trust. When he had to be confirmed, the vice president was there telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that Driscoll should be army secretary. It was an unusually high-profile endorsement from a vice president. I don't remember a vice president ever showing up to vouch for another service secretary. So obviously their relationship is very strong because of their past together. Yeah, it's unusual to send the secretary of the army to do something like this. This is something that, like you said, is typically you'd go higher to do something this high-profile, or you'd go more specialized. You'd have the undersecretary of defense for policy or the state department. You'd have somebody besides the secretary of the army.
And it just, I think speaks to Driscoll's stock with the White House, which is very, very high. And also, if you talk to defense contractors who are not particularly thrilled with his right to repair stuff, he does come off as very competent. I have talked to defense contractors who told me they like dealing with him, they like his team, they like him in terms of doing business with him, maybe not necessarily all the policies he wants to put out there right now. Some of it is like, "Name another service secretary," for some people. I did that the other day actually. I was like, "Just tell me the secretary of the navy real quick." Contractors know Driscoll. So that's just very anecdotal there for you. No hard data, but he's got a high profile now.
Aaron Mehta:
Yeah, look, the army secretary has no foreign policy role. These service secretaries are potentially internal Pentagon roles. Yes, they sometimes meet with counterparts and glad hand, but this is not something that we've ever seen before from a service secretary. It's impossible to ignore the politics here. There have been a number of articles that have openly stated what I'm sure Tony has also heard, and I've certainly heard, which is that a lot of people look at Driscoll as if and when Pete Hegseth exits the Pentagon, Driscoll gets the job. This foreign policy role is an interesting shift, and potentially could be Driscoll looking around, I'm purely casting ideas out here, but saying, "Okay, maybe Hegseth's not leaving anytime soon. Maybe there's another role for me somewhere else. It's more foreign policy focused, this is a good way to boost my accolades on that." The J.D. Vance of it all is clearly the big red flashing Bat-Signal here, though. There's no way that the army secretary gets set in this role if he's not best friends with the vice president who has made his feelings about Ukraine very clear in the past.
Roman Schweizer:
Great, thanks guys. Yeah, we'll just have to see how this plays out. Again, no real insight on how the 28-point peace plan comes together, and whether it's valid or tolerable to the Ukrainians, I think likely not, or the Europeans, but certainly I think this is a renewed push and maybe expressing some of Trump's frustration with the inability to bring this to a close.
Okay, let's shift gears and talk about the other massive visit to the U.S., Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in D.C. For multiple days of meetings, dinners, celebrations with the president, as well as top executives and policymaking officials. We will just stick to the military implications. The president preemptively announced that he intended to offer the F-35s to Saudi. They're rumored to be in the market for, I think 50 jets in around the six to $8-billion range or something like that, as well as 300 tanks, which we would assume would be General Dynamics M1 Abrams tanks. There have not been any foreign sales notifications filed to my recollection as we sit here and report, but you would assume those are in the works. So I guess guys, the tank sale, not really too controversial, they've got them, they use them, but obviously F-35 would be the Tectonic shift in the region. And Congress gets a vote, or can vote if they so choose. So what do you think the reaction has been so far?
Tony Bertuca:
Saudi Arabia is going to be the first country apart from Israel to fly the F-35. So like you said, that's a tectonic shift, and it's one that clearly the administration wants to see, and one that they want to be able to benefit from. I think this also goes back to in general the Trump administration, when you compare it to the first Trump administration, they view foreign military sales as a very robust extension of U.S. foreign policy. And this is probably the most robust we've seen, the F-35 going to Saudi Arabia. The reaction? I haven't seen a whole lot of very deep analysis of this yet, because we haven't really seen the actual details, how many it would be, how much money, that kind of thing. But I think it's safe to say that it's probably maybe just the beginning of the type of military deals that they're going to try to accelerate with Saudi Arabia.
Aaron Mehta:
There's a couple of angles here that are worth exploring. To me, the thing that made my eyebrows stand up was not the announcement of an F-35 deal, because that's something that frankly the rumors have been flying and, I think we may have even talked about in the last episode is likely to happen. What made my eyebrows stand up was when Trump was sitting with MBS and was asked about Israel's qualitative military edge, which is a legal standing the U.S. has, which says, "Basically we'll make sure Israel's stuff is at least slightly better than everyone else's stuff." The F-35I, Adir jets, they fly and have used in combat and actively against Iran, we don't know exactly what's on those, but there's been a lot of reporting and open source stuff about sensors and stuff that's on there that the U.S. doesn't even necessarily have. We know those jets are, if not the most capable F-35s among the most capable F-35s. So the thought was, "Okay, maybe there's a more stripped down F-35 version that the Saudis could get." Trump sat there and said quite openly, "No, they're going to get the same stuff the Israelis have, because they're great partners, the Israelis are great partners. Why would I shortchange our great partners over here?" That has set off a lot of alarm bells in Israel.
Roman Schweizer:
And I'll make a couple of observations. I think this all hinges on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and making some sort of ironclad commitments in terms of that relationship. So we'll see how this plays out. And again, there have been F-35 deals announced in the past in the Middle East that have not come to fruition. I believe it was UAE during Trump 1, and not Qatar, but yes. And I think more broadly the Israelis are concerned about aircraft being extended to the Turks as well as others in the Gulf. Tony, just to be fair, just for listeners out there, I just do want to make sure you said that Saudi Arabia would be the second country. Trust me folks, Tony knows there are other international partners and FMS customers he is talking about specifically in the region. So don't flame him in the comments, please.
The second thing though that I think is tremendously interesting is two things. One, the president also announced that Saudi Arabia was going to receive any and all AI chips, I assume the latest and greatest from Nvidia and others. And so really Saudi Arabia is being offered some of the best-kept secrets or American technology, both commercial and defense. And I think there are concerns, there have been concerns publicly addressed about vulnerabilities, that information both from the semiconductor-export-control perspective and the military-hardware-knowhow perspective could somehow find its way to China. Again, I'm not going to make a determination on that. I will just state that those are some of the concerns that we've seen and heard expressed from Congress.
Third part is, which I find tremendously fascinating, and again, Lockheed Martin is not a sponsor, nor are we affiliated in any way, shape or form, but it is amazing to me that for all the negative headlines that the F-35 receives, F-35 is actually a incredibly powerful foreign policy tool, as was mentioned. I mean, foreign leaders, whether it's India, or Turkey, or Saudi, or elsewhere, want the F-35. And that is something that the president of the United States, whoever the president is for that matter, whether it's Donald Trump or others, can bestow upon them. For all those F-35 haters out there, it's expensive, but as we've seen just this year, whether it's the Israelis or the Americans, or whoever, it works. The pilots and aviators that I've talked to have flown it, love it, but I have not talked to any maintainers who are in charge with getting that thing up in the air.
One fascinating point I would point out, and I went back and double-checked this, the Israeli Air Force has a mission capability rate of over 90% with their F-35s. So if they've got a squadron of 10, nine of them are ready to go on mission. I think the U.S. mission capability rate is a little bit over 50%. I would encourage DoD to... or excuse me, DoW to maybe sit with their Israeli counterparts and figure out how they get those jets into the air on a regular basis. And there's no point in having a Ferrari in the garage if you can't drive it. So let's shift gears and let's talk about the arsenal of freedom. And more importantly, secretary Hegseth and others have laid out impactful or ambitious plans to reform the defense acquisition system. As some people say, no good plan survives contact with Congress. What have we heard from the Hill? And particularly as they consider the NDAA and various counter acquisition reform proposals, FoRGED and SPEED Act to be shaken out in the NDAA. Who wants to tell us how Congress has received the arsenal of freedom?
Tony Bertuca:
Sure, there has been lots of praise for it. The authorizers really like it, but authorizers, they were getting ready to enact a lot of this into law anyway with the FoRGED Act and SPEED Act, which are part of the ongoing NDAA negotiations. So it makes perfect sense that they would be big champions of it. And it's got bipartisan support to make the Pentagon system less bureaucratic and to go faster. Now, the whole first contact-with-Congress thing though involves some other characters here. It involves appropriators. And appropriators, as everybody knows, are the ones who signed the check and are often the first ones to say when the department wants flexibility on money, like the PPB Reform Commission recommended last year, they're the first ones to go, "Nah, we're good. We like the way things work because we have oversight over it. If you just come to us all the time and are radically transparent all the time, we'll give you all the flexibility you want, DoD. So go right ahead."
Well, DoD is trying for something different now, because if you look in the acquisition transformation plan, one of the things it creates among many is it creates these new PAEs, these portfolio acquisition executives. And I quote, it says, "They will be able to flexibly apply funding to emergent needs while maintaining maximum transparency." But it also says, "They're going to be able to move money around more freely to buy new technology and fix problems without congressional approval." So right there in the plan, without congressional approval. I talked to some lawmakers who quietly said they didn't care for that on the appropriation side. Now publicly, everybody is really a big fan of this.
Roman Schweizer:
I must interject and say that is the most polite no way possible. Sorry. Yeah.
Tony Bertuca:
Everybody of course is a big fan publicly, but they thought it was a head-scratcher to put directly in the plan the words without congressional approval. That was a big like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are these guys planning? What are you guys talking about?" But I did talk with some appropriators for the story I most recently ran, where they're cautiously like, "Look, there is a path forward to do this if we get a whole lot of transparency from DoD." And they don't have that right now. They didn't get transparency on Golden Dome, complained about it, they don't get transparency on army transformation, complained about it. Even authorizers don't have the amount of transparency they want from USD policy right now, and that was just on moving some policy offices around and changing some names. And you saw Senator Sullivan hit the roof when they merged the arctic mission with something else. And not enough meetings, not enough memos, and too closed of a circle here.
So Congress really is going to push back on this type of stuff if DoD doesn't come up with a plan for, "This is going to be our double-secret dashboard. We're going to brief you guys this time of day, this time of week, we're going to send these people over." There's not really a plan for that yet, and that's what appropriators really want to see. But everybody was like, "Hey, we did MRAP. We were a blank check. If it's an emergency, we're ready. DIU wanted their extra $1 billion, we gave it to them, but with a lot of oversight over that $1 billion." So if they want to get PAEs moving money around at the Pentagon, they've got to make some phone calls and they got to call appropriators yesterday.
Aaron Mehta:
So I'm going to take a rare step for me and defend the Pentagon here. And what I'm going to say is this, at no point in the last 10 months has Congress shown any sort of spine to push back on anything that the Trump administration has wanted to do. So if you're a Pentagon official, why do you feel like appropriators are actually going to raise a fit about this? Especially if you have Russ Vought, who by the way is apparently going to be speaking, at least 10 to be scheduled to speak at the Reagan Defense Forum, which is a very unusual spot for an OMB director to go. If you have Russ Vought saying, "We don't think appropriators legally have the power to tell us how to spend money," then what the Pentagon put in there saying, "Hey, we don't need Congress to tell us how to spend money," is actually very in line with what the administration has been saying. Appropriators can complain all they want, and I'm sure they will, but if they don't show real spine here and actually push back, and they haven't over the last 10 months, then I don't see why the Pentagon shouldn't shoot the moon on this.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah. And that was a lot of the reaction I got from industry too, just same as Aaron's reaction. Industry saw this and they were like, "Well, yeah, obviously we normally say all the time appropriators are going to kill this, but we've seen a very permissive Congress, and obviously the administration thinks that they can try to get their way and that they've got an opening here." And it's a great point to bring up that Russ Vought is probably going to come talk to the defense industrial base at the Reagan Forum, because yeah, the OMB director does not normally go to that type of a venue to talk with defense contractors. So yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see what the message is going forward, and if appropriators who have struggled to appropriate money are going to care to even grab the reins of this.
Roman Schweizer:
I think those are great observations. And I think this ties in with a couple of things. We'll also talk about just maybe quickly on what approps looks like, and also this new super DRPM appointment this week, which we'll get to in a bit. I guess a PAE is a super DRPM. So the one observation that I would make is just going back in the day a little bit, and this is reflective of my own career history is, and again, this started before I was born, but Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, was a super DRPM or PAE, and he had incredible authority to create the nuclear submarine force as well as a marine launch ballistic missile force. A more minor example of that is Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, who is the father of Aegis, the Aegis warships, and he was in charge of both the ship and the combat systems development for those.
So again, this stuff is not unprecedented, but you guys got to the root of the issue, appropriators like their jobs, they're usually the most important or plumb jobs in Congress, but to be an appropriator, you got to appropriate. So I guess let's just shift gears a little bit to some spending implications. Two things, it does look like we might get appropriations. We got a CR to open the government, but there were three appropriations bills attached, three done, nine to go. It looks like there are various minibuses working their way through, and we might get a defense appropriations bill. I would even say there's a chance we might get the $21 billion increase that the SAC wants, Senate appropriators. We'll see, we'll see. So that's in the works. And then the worst-kept secret in town perhaps is the idea of a second reconciliation bill next year.
At some point, I reflecting my traditional zeal for snarkiness, have coined that Another Big Beautiful Act, or ABBA, and so it shall henceforth be named such in the future. And so you've got this idea of ABBA. And Senator Lindsey Graham has talked about it, the White House has talked about it. It could be a bunch of things, including ACA reform. But more importantly in our context, I think for our listeners, it's more money for defense. And I would say Republicans would be foolish not to take a shot at this before the midterms, because this goes away if the House flips. Guys, what do you think of approps and the idea of ABBA?
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah, I think the idea of ABBA, using the word foolish to not try for it again, yeah, that's sort of what I'm hearing from staff when I talked to staff. When I was talking to appropriators recently, I threw this question to them, and they all were basically like, "Yeah, we should definitely go for it." I mean, it's a leadership decision, but the stakes are very high. But in terms of defense, that's where I think a lot of them right now think they're going to get their money, is another bite at the reconciliation apple. Other things are going to be attached to that, but I really think that they're going to come back again and go for another one.
Aaron Mehta:
Yeah, I mean why not? You got a shot, you may as well.
Roman Schweizer:
This is a situation, we're on the clock until January 30th to get approps done and over the line, and then obviously ABBA is a next-year thing, and we'll see how that all comes together. I don't know who to give the proper shout-out. Maybe you guys can duke it out and claim first reference, but under the category of all that glitters is Golden Dome, there was reporting this week that the department confirmed the architecture has been approved and now it is on to the next phase, the implementation plan. And of course, to me, the implementation plan means how are they going to buy it? What are the acquisition strategies? What's the timeline? What are the solicitation and contract award timing and things like that? Guys, feel free. I don't know who had the story first.
Tony Bertuca:
I think that is the work of my most excellent colleague Jason Sherman, who filed a story saying that the baseline architecture was completed, and now it's shifting toward reviewing and implementation, which is a big milestone for where they're headed. So sources told Jason that Feinberg, Deputy Secretary of Defense, had approved the architecture that cleared the way to map out how the system's going to be built and deployed. So that's only after a few months of really fast work by General Michael Guetlein, who's the super DRPM for Golden Dome. It looks like the initiative really hit the accelerator to get it done.
Aaron Mehta:
Yeah, I mean the Golden Dome thing, obviously this is a major program, everyone's desperate to find out more. Some of that has been held up by this process. We ran an op-ed by Tom Karako who's the missile guru among defense circles in D.C. this week, specifically saying it's great that they're moving ahead with this stuff, but they got to talk about it. If nobody knows what's going on, industry can't respond, there's no way to message this geopolitically. And while it's understandable that the Pentagon wants to keep certain technical details under wraps, they can't just hide this thing. And it's going to be very interesting, I think once this architecture is finalized, once everything's been signed off, to see how they message it, if they try to keep it fully quiet or not, because I do agree with Tom that if they don't talk about this stuff more, one, industry's going to have a hard time responding, and two, I think there's just going to be a lot of confusion. And if you're trying to sell, they say $175 billion, I think everyone agrees it's going to be more than that, new system to the American public, you need to justify it.
Roman Schweizer:
I'm going to go the other way on this, and what I'm going to say is I don't think they're going to disclose much about it. I think they are going to keep it super classified for actually one very good reason of operational security and not wanting China, Russia and others to know what even the technology or contracts, or where to spy or steal or hack their way into figuring out what Golden Dome is. So I think there's an operational-security aspect of it, but I'm also curious about the concept. And I would just say briefly, and this is my opinion only, I think the idea of a Golden Dome that can defend against a all-out 300 to 3,000 ICBM strike is just not achievable for any amount of money or any amount of technology. And certainly happy to be wrong, because I know there are certainly brilliant people working on this.
I will say that China and Russia have developed some pretty crazy first-strike decapitation-type weapons. There's reporting in the public domain about these fractional-orbital-bombardment systems and space nukes and hypersonics and that kind of stuff that literally avoid our detection capabilities, and certainly are limited capabilities. So I think that if a chunk of Golden Dome is focused on rebalancing the nuclear-parity aspect, the mutually assured destruction nuclear-parity aspect of it, that will be money well spent and is probably achievable. The greater aspect of putting up a literal bubble over the U.S. airspace is probably not.
Aaron Mehta:
So just to be clear, I agree with you that they're not going to talk about this stuff. I just think there's a strong case to be made that they should, or at least need to speak more than they have been to this point.
Roman Schweizer:
I love data. I mean, I'd love to see some numbers to drive my analysis, and it's certainly hard as an analyst to figure out... I get questioned all the time, "Who's going to win and get Golden Dome?" I mean, company management in terms of talking about future revenue growth and things like that, there have been some heavy estimates out there. I don't want to say outrageous claims, but it's like cyber or JADC2 or all these other things back in the day that were going to drive growth. So that's one aspect of it.
And then the second thing, which I think is not trivial, during the last quarter's earnings calls, the CEO of Lockheed Martin and the CEO of Northrop Grumman, they both disclosed that they were working on self-funded space-based interceptor concepts. And so the one thing I would say is writ large, maybe industry doesn't know, but I think that the companies that need to know actually are talking to Guetlein and missile defense agencies and others, and that this is not going to be a, "Hey, everybody out there, come get a bite of Golden Dome." I think it's going to be pretty targeted in terms of the solution set. So I think there is some communication, but again, we've got programs out there, like the B-21, like F-47, like the classified UFO that Lockheed Martin Aeronautics is building, we don't know the details on that, and it's happening. And I think there is a couple of reasons for that, but one is truly the operational-security issue with China or Russia or whoever.
Tony Bertuca:
And another thing, I think to point out too, is the president of the United States has taken a personal interest in this, and he might want to talk about it if he hears about it, and he might want to tweet about it. And I don't really know what that would entail, but he'd have to be briefed about exactly what it was, and he'd have to understand what he could say, what he couldn't say. And that's been a challenge for the staff at the White House and at DoD in the past.
Roman Schweizer:
This is not a political statement, but I will just remind everyone that Donald Trump did say as president, he could declassify things just by thinking about it, that information could be in a tweet someday. And yeah, we'll see what that means. Again, not a political statement, but more importantly, along those lines, we do have a new DRPM or super DRPM, Lieutenant General Dale White was nominated to manage Sentinel, B-21, F-47, and Air Force One. I don't know the general's background, but I get the feeling that his family is not going to see him for the next few years given that workload. I mean, seriously, that's probably tougher than Marco Rubio's job as national security advisor and secretary of state. Just general thoughts on this in this instance, I mean, that's a lot of program and a lot of hard stuff to do. And then where else we might see this, I know this has been talked about in shipbuilding, I think that's likely, where else this could be applied across the government.
Aaron Mehta:
So Tony got to claim the win on the Golden Dome scoop. So I'll put our flag down for this one. We wrote back on August 8th that Dale White was going to be appointed to this role. We didn't know quite all the programs, but we had most of them. White is the Air Force's basically military deputy acquisition guy. He's been a three star, he's now been nominated for a fourth star. So he has an acquisition background. He was involved in the F-47 talks, getting the push across and getting the White House to okay it back earlier this year. Generally well liked in the Air Force, gets good reviews, considered a smart guy. But this is a different role.
And the important part that we didn't mention is that this isn't just the Air Force creating a job where, "Okay, you're now the acquisition guy for most important projects." This is a role that reports directly to Steven Feinberg, and essentially takes these programs out of the Air Force's non-traditional acquisition system, which is where the B-21 had actually been, and creates this entirely new portfolio reporting directly to the deputy secretary of defense. So there's a couple of things there. One, this is a massive consolidation of power under Feinberg, who already had this same setup with Guetlein doing Golden Dome directly reporting to him. And there's been reporting out there from us and Tony as well that there's a navy one in the works, although that has yet to be announced. So Feinberg seems to be gathering all of the biggest projects and saying, "Hey, you guys report directly to me, not to the services anymore." That's a very interesting dynamic to watch.
The other aspect is these are major programs obviously that have a lot of eyeballs on them as well. You have the president's personal F-47 plane. You have the Sentinel ICBM, which is under a massive cost overflow and having major reorganizations, changing plans. Now we're talking about digging new holes instead of old holes. B-21 is clearly an important strategic project. And then you have Air Force One, with all of its, let's just say eyeballs across the world on how that's going. So this is, as you said, dude, there's not going to be a lot of sleep for Dale White. He's going to be working pretty hard. But this is just a fascinating major shift in how major acquisition programs are managed. If we see the navy doing the same, and then maybe the army, although they've got their own reorg situation going on now that might preclude this, all of a sudden the deputy secretary of defense is now the top acquisition official in the Pentagon.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah, that was what I was going to say was that this for me is a Feinberg thing. This is the management background saying, "Give me a single neck to choke with high stakes, and give me somebody I can go right to who's fully accountable for a lot of stuff." Because I think a lot of it has to do with what he wants to manage himself. He doesn't want to go through different channels. And I think he wants more direct oversight over these programs. And that's what he's getting with this, it's a single official who goes right to him. Remember how we talked about Driscoll earlier having this really high profile? Well, Steve Feinberg is the opposite of that. I think he's appeared publicly twice, his Senate confirmation hearing, and then I think it was at the War College before Hegseth spoke about acquisition reform, he did the opening. That's pretty much it, but he meets behind the scenes with industry all the time, and he's very active. He is very much all bite and no bark. And I think a lot of people are not surprised that he came into the Pentagon and made moves like this, and did it quietly, and very, very strongly. So I think this is all very much just evidence of how Feinberg wants to manage the Pentagon.
Roman Schweizer:
Tony, I'm going to give you bonus points. He is all bite, no bark, phenomenal. And I mean, honestly, Steve Feinberg is the most important guy in the war department that no one sees. So for all of the public media and social media that Pete Hegseth exudes or sucks up, or however you want to say it, Feinberg's just working behind the scenes. One thing I would just point out, interestingly, I just realized this, perhaps I'm slow on the uptake, but Sentinel and B-21, Northrop Grumman programs, F-47 and Air Force One, Boeing programs. What does that mean? I don't know. I think it just means that certainly General White is going to be talking two CEOs a lot in terms of program execution, and perhaps, as you said, expressing Steve Feinberg's displeasure upon them if they don't perform as planned. Okay, we're going a bit long, but I think there's one just last thing that I wanted to touch on, because I think it is notable long-term DoD or... God, I got to stop that. I'm going to create a swear jar and I have to put a quarter in every time I [inaudible 00:36:07].
Tony Bertuca:
It's still the Department of Defense.
Roman Schweizer:
I know.
Aaron Mehta:
It's the name. It's the Department of Defense until Congress changes it.
Roman Schweizer:
The war department released its six new critical technology areas. Notably, they downscoped that list. And I'm just going to read them here for folks, "Applied artificial intelligence, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technologies, quantum and battlefield dominance, scaled hypersonics, scale-directed energy." I mentioned this because I mean, if you think about future R&D, as well as companies spending their own internal R&D dollars to look at future business, and again, I think of this more as the science and technology and R&D, but certainly commercial prototype, importing best commercial solutions, this is where it's at. And I think it's very interesting. And of course, the only big question is, in February when we get the '27 budget, how are the dollars going to be stacked up? Because if you show me where you spend your money, I'll tell you what your priorities are. So guys, any thoughts on this?
Aaron Mehta:
The word scaled stands out to me with some of this in so much as it seems to be saying less about, we're interpreting this, but less about early R&D and more about actually getting this stuff out the door, which I find interesting. One thing that I think is worth noting is that at the Hegseth speech, one of the big themes, and something that was also in the memos themselves, is they want companies to be doing more R&D and spending more of their money internally to develop stuff. And Hegseth hammered that point a couple of times during the speech. And so it'll be interesting to see if companies make at the very least a public showing of saying, "Hey, here's these six technologies. Well, we're investing in those six technologies." But beyond that, like I said, until we see the budget, we'll see how real this is. Technologies reshuffle all the time, nothing in there is shocking, it's all stuff that was already underway. So we're going to have to see what actually comes out of this when the budget drops.
Tony Bertuca:
Yeah, I just think for now the most interesting thing, aside from the fact that they do want scale, is that they went from 14 to six. It shows that they felt like they had to prioritize or maybe give a stronger, more focused demand signal to industry. I think they still have, I'm checking here, it's still, I think 10 of the former 14 are still considered enabling technologies. It's directed energy, trusted AI autonomy, energy resilience, that kind of thing, where it's related to the six imperatives. But yeah, I think the fact that they trimmed it down and prioritized it and packaged it the way they did, that's the signal. So we just have to see what the real signal is, how much money they're going to ask.
Roman Schweizer:
Yeah. And just one thing to close it out, I mean, when I look at these areas, and I don't want to give short shrift to bio manufacturing, because I understand there's a more expansive view about that, as well as supply chain risk with China and some other things, but I mean, some of these technologies are war-winning, war-losing technologies, and certainly if you proliferate them across the forest... And I think that hypersonics and directed energy, I do agree the the terminology scaled is important, because that implies making them cheaper, making them fieldable and more readily distributed across the force, and making them perhaps ubiquitous. And I think that's the thing. DoW's hypersonic programs right now are incredibly expensive weapons. Whether you look at conventional prompt strike or a long-range hypersonic weapon, Dark Eagle, one of the best names to come around in a while, and others, I mean, they are expensive per shot. But if you can scale hypersonics and put them on shipborne air defense or air-to-air missiles or other things like that, you're really multiplying the impact of those.
Gentlemen, we covered a lot of ground in, well, a long time. So I want to thank you so much for your insights, your comments. And I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving and safe holiday travel out there. Good news, government's open, FAA's back in business, travel's going to be great. For all you listeners, thanks again for tuning in. Really appreciate your time. Take care.