Jeff Thornburg: U.S. and allies jeopardized by "broken" acquisition system

Axios

5 days ago

The current military model for trying and buying weapons and technology is the "biggest risk" to the U.S. and its friends abroad, according to Portal Space Systems CEO Jeff Thornburg.
"The allied nations, Five Eyes, AUKUS, NATO, take your pick — the acquisition process is too slow and broken. Requirements development process? Broken," he told Axios in an interview.
"It's taking too long to field systems the warfighters need right now, or they needed years ago."
Why he matters: Thornburg is an industry veteran. He led development of SpaceX's Raptor engine and has ties to Stratolaunch, Ursa Major and Amazon's Kuiper.
Q: When you hear "future of defense" what comes to mind?
A: "All things space" is the shortest answer.
But, really, there is not a single land, air or sea mission that doesn't require a space asset. Space programs, the Space Force and space missions, in general, are the future of defense for the U.S. and all allied nations.
Q: What's a national security trend we aren't paying enough attention to?
A: Quantum encryption and decryption is not something that people are keeping an eye on. But our adversaries are.
Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why?
A: The obvious one is the South China Sea, just because of China's plans for Taiwan. But that's everybody's answer.
We need to be looking at the engagements in the Middle East, Ukraine and South China Sea collectively, because China is watching the U.S. response in all of these areas and making calculations.
In my opinion, there's not one region. But, collectively, we need to be paying attention to all these hot spots and how they're draining our military capacity, because that's going to be an indicator to our adversaries on when they should make their move.
Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?
A: Probably well over 100. I like this question, because it's all a game of prioritization.
I have a multifaceted approach to email. Obviously, I organize them as best I can. I never delete anything because I like the metadata searches for stuff. Part of it is my assistant helping me prioritize tasks.
Sometimes there's a bit of an insurance company approach here. I know what's most critical for the business every week, and that's where I focus my attention.
Q: What time do you wake up? What does the morning routine look like?
A: Most of the time it's 6-6:30 am.
My wife and I have a small little farm outside Seattle. So I wake up, I try very hard not to look at my phone, and take care of the animals. Then grab coffee and some time to chat about the day with my wife, and then, normally, start to get into meetings any time between 8 and 9 am. That kind of starts the day.