Last week, I attended AFCEA Belvoir Industry Day, and the prevailing theme that carried through across multiple speakers: the Army and broader DoW acquisition environment are changing quickly.The Army wants to move faster, engage industry earlier, and buy solutions that produce measurable outcomes. The changes are still fresh. Many of the new approaches are less than six months old, and the implementation details are still evolving. But the direction is clear: the train is mo

With the program now reauthorized through 2031, in doing so Congress updated the framework to put more emphasis on transition, commercialization, security, and long-term impact. One of the biggest changes is the creation of a new scaling pathway that allows certain agencies to make awards of up to $30 million over as many as 48 months for technologies that are ready to move beyond the traditional SBIR phases. That is a meaningful shift. At a very basic level, Econ 101 says th