Small Businesses Seen to Gain Easier Access to DOD Supply Chain

Ensuring that Department of Defense business opportunities are more accessible to small businesses is one of the steps that the DOD is looking into toward implementing its National Defense Industrial Strategy launched in January, a Pentagon official said. 

Speaking at a Washington Technology event on Friday, Danielle Miller, the defense secretary’s acting deputy assistant for industrial base resilience, cited the Defense Industrial Base Consortium as one of the strategy’s ways to make the DOD “more approachable” to small businesses, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

The consortium, which the nonprofit Advanced Technology International is under contract to form and administer, will enable small businesses to tap the Pentagon’s defense supply chain and research projects.

Through the consortium, small enterprises can access the DOD system without being overwhelmed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation process, Miller pointed out. The department’s goal is to ensure a rapid flow of new concepts that would drive innovation in the defense industrial base, she added.  

The DOD is already leveraging its industrial base consortium in the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Investment Program announced in early February to boost domestic supply chains through biotechnology.