The Vulnerable Layer of Aerospace & Defense | The Factory Doctor w/ Alex Krutz

Podcast Spotlights​

​​

Aerospace and defense has a blindspot. The assumption that if America has superior hardware, we will be superior on the battlefield. What if that assumption was no longer valid?

 

Kathleen Boyle, Chair and CEO of Verify Global, joins me to share some unsettling trends that are coming together. If they continue unchecked, America’s lead in A&D hardware may not be a sustainable advantage.

 

Kathleen brings 25 years of experience in a variety of industry roles.

 

• Chair & CEO of Verify Global

• Founding President of Women In Defense – Greater Los Angeles Chapter

• FBI’s Defense Industry Sector Chief – West Coast InfraGard 

 

Superior Hardware Depends on a Superior Software Supply Chain

 

The industry is focused on missiles, hypersonic satellite swarms, AI drone fleets, and so forth. But embedded in the maintenance of these platforms is more and more of this type of technology, and there's just a lot of vulnerabilities. There's tiny teams, there's shadow backdoor potential access, and non-compliant CMMC type environments. 

 

This issue goes beyond software companies to include even prime manufacturers, especially given the Pentagon’s recent 90-day suspension of CMMC Phase II requirements.

 

 There's also what I would say is an agility trap. So if the Pentagon is really pushing the primes to develop software or even their partners or sub-tiers at commercial tech speed, there may be more and more of these gaps that are not necessarily filled and create the vulnerabilities.

 

Cost-Cutting Pressure is Eroding Our Software Supply Chain Performance

 

OEMs are continuing to push for what are deemed to be unrealistic affordability, to the detriment of the supply chain performance and quality…OEMs are accepting first article inspection delinquencies, and there's a lot of them right now. …One of the approaches for catch-up is utilizing low cost and what some might say non-compliant environments.

 

AI Has Great Potential, But AI Adoption Is Slow 

 

We have this unique lens where we're going into thousands of companies…When you get to the medium to smaller companies within our industry, there is a bit of a fear.

 

Those who are working on the defense side of things are saying, "Well, I don't want to put something into Claude, and all of a sudden my agent is taking my IP or my ideas...” So there's folks that are a little bit paralyzed right now that could be doing more but just don't know where to start.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if 10 years from now, 50% of Kathleen’s business was AI implementation. I think AI is going to be a transformative force in aerospace and defense, and we should see some very interesting use cases in the next few years.

 

Want to go deeper? Click to watch on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

You’ll also discover: 

• The late-stage process that can wipe out supplier margins

• The current state of CMMC

• Kathleen’s rise to chair and CEO of a 50-year old service company

• How Verify’s ‘small but mighty’ team of 100 employees and 1,000 technicians visit 7000-8,000 suppliers in 45 countries a year