Acquisition Tailored to Program Managers
Scott Sanders, Chief Growth Officer at Forterra, on autonomy for every vehicle
This reveals that defense startup sales are usually won by fitting into a program office's budgeting and contracting habits, not by picking the theoretically fastest vehicle. In practice, a PM has to get legal, contracting, finance, and leadership comfortable enough to obligate money this year and justify follow on dollars later. That makes pathway choice less about cleverness, and more about reducing organizational friction inside a specific office.
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OTAs are useful because they can fund research, prototypes, and in some cases follow on production, but they only work when the office meets specific statutory conditions and knows how to use them. That is why educating a customer can help, while trying to force an OTA usually backfires.
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Small O&M pilots can be valuable as fast reality checks. They put a product in front of users, surface whether the form factor and workflow actually work, and help map which PM structure and budget line could own the capability later. They are a test bed, not a durable revenue base.
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The broader pattern across defense software and autonomy is that repeatable growth comes from landing inside a reusable vehicle or long term program, not from one off wins. Govini's SCRIPTS vehicle lowers friction across DoD, while newer companies like HavocAI still need to convert early buys into recurring procurement.
The companies that compound from here will be the ones that treat acquisition as a product design problem. They will run pilots to prove utility, then translate that proof into the contract structure a PM can actually carry through budgeting, approvals, and production. As autonomy programs mature, the winners will be the vendors that make procurement feel easy for the office already on the hook to deliver.