The Dual-Front Campaign: Orchestrating the Ground and Air Wars of Defense Acquisition
- Jordan Clayton
- Sep 12
- 4 min read
In the commercial technology sector, superior product performance is the primary determinant of market share. If a platform is 10x faster or 50% cheaper than the incumbent, the market corrects, and the superior solution wins.
In the federal defense market, this logic is a hallucination.
Entrants who arrive in Washington D.C. expecting a meritocratic "bake-off" followed by a nine-figure contract are marching toward a strategic failure mode. The Department of Defense (DoD) does not buy the "best" technology; it buys the most programmatically viable technology. It buys the solution that has successfully navigated a labyrinth of statutory requirements, budget cycles, and stakeholder alignments .
Selling to the DoD is not a sales motion; it is a Capture Campaign.
This campaign is not fought in a single domain. It is a dual-front war waged simultaneously against two distinct adversaries with opposing incentives. There is the "Ground War" (fought with the end-user) and the "Air War" (fought within the bureaucracy). Neglecting either front guarantees defeat.
This is the operational doctrine for the dual-front acquisition strategy.
Front 1: The Ground War (The Mission)
The Ground War is fought at the tactical edge. The stakeholders here are the operators—the pilots, intelligence analysts, and special operators—whose lives and mission success depend on capability. Their incentives are urgent, practical, and existential.
The Strategic Objective: The Internal Insurgent The goal of the Ground War is not to find a "customer" or a "fan." It is to recruit an Internal Insurgent (often referred to as a "Champion").
The Profile: An Insurgent is an end-user with enough rank to be heard and enough pain to be motivated. They understand that the status quo (the legacy system) is a threat to their mission.
The Metric: Do not measure success by enthusiasm. Measure it by political capital. Is this individual willing to write a Letter of Support? Are they willing to brief their Program Manager? Are they willing to put their career reputation on the line to advocate for your solution?.
The Tactic: Asymmetric Overmatch To recruit an Insurgent, incrementalism is fatal. A 10% improvement is a "nice to have" that will be cut during the first budget drill. To motivate an operator to fight the bureaucracy for you, the solution must offer Order of Magnitude (10x) Lethality. It must render the current way of fighting obsolete. You are not selling a product; you are arming them with an unfair advantage.
Front 2: The Air War (The Bureaucracy)
While the Ground War provides the justification, the Air War provides the authorization. This front is fought in the Pentagon corridors, the Program Executive Offices (PEOs), and the Contracting Commands. The incentives here are risk aversion, regulatory compliance, and budget execution.
The Strategic Objective: Programmatic Alignment The most critical error entrants make is misunderstanding the role of the Program Executive Officer (PEO). PEOs are not "deciders" in the commercial sense; they are "execution agents." They are given a shopping list (Requirements) and a wallet (Budget). If your solution is not on their list, they legally cannot buy it, regardless of its brilliance.
The Tactic: Ghostwriting the Requirement You cannot wait for a Request for Proposal (RFP) to drop. By the time an RFP is public, the legacy Prime contractor has likely spent 18 months shaping it to fit their proprietary specifications.
The Maneuver: You must engage the Program Manager (PM) during the Request for Information (RFI) phase or earlier.
The Artifacts: Armed with the validation from your Ground War Insurgent, you provide the PM with the technical data, cost estimates, and threat analysis required to define the requirement. You are essentially ghostwriting the Capabilities Development Document (CDD). You are not responding to the requirement; you are providing the lexicon for it.
The Mechanism: The Contract Vehicle
Only after the Ground War is won (demand signal) and the Air War is engaged (programmatic alignment) does the discussion shift to the transaction mechanism. This is the "Weapon System" of the campaign.
1. The Breaching Charge: Innovation Arms For new entrants, the front gate of the PEO is often locked. Innovation hubs like AFWERX (Air Force) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) act as breaching charges.
DIU: The "Special Forces" of acquisition. They utilize Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) to move from problem statement to prototype contract in 6-12 months. This is high-velocity, high-selectivity access.
AFWERX: Deploys over $1B annually via SBIR/STTR. A Phase I SBIR is not just funding; it is a credential that allows you to walk onto a base and engage the user legally.
2. The Force Multiplier: Prime Partnerships Often, the fastest path to revenue is not to be the Prime, but to be the "sub." Partnering with a legacy Prime or a specialized reseller who holds a massive Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract can bypass years of administrative friction. They handle the compliance; you provide the capability.
3. The License to Hunt: The IDIQ Winning your own IDIQ is graduating to the big leagues. It sets a spending ceiling (e.g., $500M) but guarantees zero revenue. It is merely a "license to hunt"—a pre-negotiated terms sheet that allows a PEO to route money to you quickly if you have won the Air and Ground wars.
Execution Discipline: The Campaign Plan
The defense market is not a lottery; it is a logic puzzle. It requires a synchronized campaign where the tactical success of the user trial (Ground War) is immediately leveraged to shape the strategic documents of the Program Office (Air War).
The Pro-Tip: Do not search for an SBIR topic that fits your tech. Create the topic. Go to your Insurgent. If they are convinced of the capability, they can propose a specific topic to AFWERX or DIU. The result is a solicitation effectively written for you.
You would not navigate a minefield without a map. Do not navigate the Defense Acquisition System without a campaign plan. At DualSight, we are the architects of this coordination. We provide the Stakeholder Influence Mapping to identify your Insurgent, the Strategic Narrative Engineering to shape the requirement, and the Acquisition Vector Strategy to select the optimal contract vehicle.
