The co-chair of the Wisconsin Defense Industry Council is calling for a unified approach to growing the state’s defense sector, arguing “we’ve got to prove ourselves” to improve Wisconsin’s standing.
Maj. Gen. Ernie Litynski, who’s also president of RBP Chemical Technology, spoke yesterday during a WisPolitics-State Affairs-UW-Milwaukee event in Milwaukee focused on boosting the state’s defense-related jobs base.
While he noted the state will likely “never” land a prime defense contractor like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman, he said the council is looking to grow the ecosystem while working to better understand the evolving federal contracting rules.
“We don’t have a military base here, right, Ohio hardly has anything but they’ve got Wright Patterson … Air Force Base,” he said. “And they’re doing R&D, they’re doing a lot of good stuff there, right, with aeronautics as well … Fort McCoy’s not going to do it.”
Derrick Van Zuidam, vice president and site lead for Virginia-based defense contractor Leonardo DRS, highlighted the U.S. Department of War’s new acquisition approach that’s intended to “accelerate” and expand the domestic supply base.
“We have a clear demand signal from the Navy and the shipyards, as far as products we’re concerned with, but they want to accelerate,” he said yesterday. “They want to take things that used to take three years, and they want to do it in one year or less.”
He’s hopeful the new approach will be successful, but noted questions remain about how this will work.
“That intent hasn’t been fully rolled out through the rules and regulations that businesses need to follow, so it’s still somewhat of a TBD what will actually happen,” Van Zuidam said.
Litynski noted the state is ranked No. 1 in the country for manufacturing on a per-capita basis, but added it’s only No. 30 for defense, calling it a “huge” gap that should be addressed. Still, he pointed to “pockets of excellence,” noting Wisconsin’s history of shipbuilding as well as other businesses that could play a larger role.
“There’s a lot of great tool and die shops in the state as well that aren’t doing a lick of stuff, alright, and they could do a lot of good stuff,” he said. “So we’ve got to … take a step back and figure out what the government requirements are, what we have, what the gaps are and go forward as a unified organization.”
Meanwhile, UW-Milwaukee Prof. Rob Cuzner yesterday discussed efforts to bridge the “valley of death” between academic research and commercial application. He said the university has gotten support from Leonardo DRS, Eaton Corporation and others for its R&D, emphasizing the benefit for students as well.
“My last two PhD graduates worked for Leonardo DRS, so to me, that’s a huge success,” he said.
Van Zuidam also noted the Trump administration is recommending a “significant increase” in the defense budget amid the conflict in Iran.
“So hopefully we wouldn’t see a downturn in the research side, the research funding that comes with it,” he said, adding “if the focus maintains, industry will invest to increase research and development.”
Some of Cuzner’s own applied research has focused on energy systems and fortifying electric grids within constrained environments such as a military vessel, as well as integrating energy storage into these systems.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for industry to contribute, okay, to developing this technology and deploying it,” he said, pointing to shifting priorities at the federal level. “I’ve lost all federal support for anything that has to do with land-based resilience.”
See more from the discussion in the video.
