Mastery: Cogitating Defense Product Support for an Age of Intelligent Systems
Defense Sustainment | 3-minute Read
Eric Washington, CEO CLEARWING LLC | April 2026
Is the United States defense enterprise underfunded in sustainment, or is our spending already there, outpacing the mastery of product support?
Over the last twenty years, no fewer than fifteen National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) have included provisions directly addressing integrated product support, lifecycle sustainment, or weapon system readiness, to include some of the most significant ones in the last ten years. Yet, integrated product support and budget challenges faced by the B-1B Lancer fleet, Littoral Combat Ship, M1 Abrams program and F-35 program are tales of a repeating story: the gap between lawful intent and readiness results remains a consequential challenges in national defense. The United States is not failing to fund sustainment. It is failing to master it.
We already have cutting edge computing platforms that just happen to fly supersonic or autonomously. Their decisive sustainment thresholds extend beyond the mechanical to include their nature as intensely information-driven systems connected to complex, interdependent joint kill chains. New challenges await as weapon systems become exponentially more intelligent. What if the most critical constraint on solving our toughest problems and meeting new challenges isn’t money, or technology, but people? Mastery constitutes an investment in our workforce’s deep and empowered system knowledge, lifecycle data discipline and aligned accountability for outcomes rather than transactions. What would happen if we stop counting what it cost to repair a system when it fails and instead started investing in the mastery it takes for it not to fail?
A few things deserve to be said plainly. First, defense has had countless triumphs overcoming challenges and producing extraordinary readiness. The selfless men and women supporting, ensure success. Second, we have to also consider that defense systems operate at the edge of our (human) knowledge of everything. That is precisely where you face the unknown and unpredictable, the most often. Third, a good number of successful integrated product support solutions can be found all over, including in the commercial sector and in other industries. Therefore, can we rapidly apply new ideas, knowledge and thinking successfully? Could we control runaway budgets? Could we improve readiness? To move further into mastery and to answer to these precursory questions our dialogue must be deliberate.
Deliberate Conversations:
(1) If mastery starts with an investment in people, how do we strategically align and prioritize our workforce development to lead increasingly intelligent systems?
(2) Does the information age demand a reconceptualized integrated product support framework? The current sustainment approach may not be keeping up with the systems we are building.
(3) Coordinated versus Consolidated industry advocacy for integrated product support; is one sufficient, or do we need both?
What this moment requires does not happen in conference rooms alone. It happens in every forum where the product support community gathers, debates, and builds shared purpose. This space is one of those forums, and it exists precisely to exercise the kind of unified engagement the enterprise now demands. The conversations above are just a few of countless others that will follow, and they belong to every professional in and outside the enterprise. We welcome your input.
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