“Quite often there are ethereal words about a vision of where to go, which is very important,” said Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's former top acquisition official. “But I think that needs to be reduced to what are we going to do? When are we going to do it and who’s going to do it?”
"It's getting that data talent into the combatant command, knowing that it's going to be there so that they can begin understanding what they have and what's within the art of the possible there," Dave Spirk, the Pentagon's chief data officer, said.
US leaders this year faced difficult decisions against a backdrop of rapidly growing challenges from potential adversaries, and a booming commercial space sector that innovation-wise is leaving the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community in the dust.