Innovations & technologies

Ex-DoD official offers path to boost defense-industrial cooperation with US allies

A former Pentagon acquisitions official has recommended to Congress a series of legal and regulatory changes to ease defense-industrial cooperation between America and its closest allies, including a stronger waiver for U.S. defense-export controls.

Bill Greenwalt, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staffer, deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy and federal acquisition policy director at Lockheed Martin, made the recommendations in a new study on America’s technology-industrial base, while stressing that the country could fall behind China without fast action.

The Atlantic Council is due to release the 64-page study on April 23, with hopes it will make waves on Capitol Hill. With Greenwalt’s involvement, annual iterations of the National Defense Authorization Act have addressed the issue of defense-industrial cooperation with allies, and his study offers sample legislative language to advance that process through a future NDAA.