DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE
ecosystem and the open architecture that allows it all to “ snap together like Lego blocks .”
Enabling partnerships “ The list of commercial innovation partners is not endless , but it ’ s growing ,” he says , alluding to AFWerx , the incubator for new partners and their work with DAF . Dunlap calls it “ the front door to be able to make it easier for small businesses to integrate into the sphere .”
Those smaller companies hold the keys to a more nimble future in defence procurement . “ They ’ ve got a passion not just to serve commercial companies but to really work for the national security community ,” Dunlap says . “ That ’ s from the perspective of a public and global good . Roughly 80 per cent of the companies working in this transformative digital technology space would be companies that have never done a contract with the government before , or if they did it was very minor . Two years ago that would have been 10 per cent .”
That ’ s an impressive motion , which begs the question : what does the future look like for the Department of the Air Force ? Dunlap turns to an aeronautic phrase . “ We ’ ve got a lot of runway left . There ’ s an opportunity to get mission , operational and business data in a way that has tremendous impact . We ’ ve got the right relationships to compress the timelines that even the commercial greats in these areas have done , because we can learn from them . There ’ s a wave of digital transformation that ’ s at our doorstep . If we walk into it , it is going to have ripple effects so that no individual capability – your tank , your bomb or your satellite – is going to be good enough in the future . If that hypothesis of the future is true then that digital structure and foundation is just so important . technologymagazine . com 185