“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, from probably the best spring day this year so far in Washington, D.C. I’m Riki Ellison. I’m the founder and chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. We’ve been involved with it for 40 years, as we talked about it yesterday.
This is our 95th Congressional Roundtable. We’re back to back from our Israel discussion yesterday to this discussion today on missile and drone defense innovation in combat. And we are watching combat happen today in two places in the world, and we’re seeing innovation being forced to happen.
I think there is a reality that’s hitting our country now. As we saw this morning, the Department of War put out the Brigadier General Matt Ross, the JIATF-401, on zero policy on drones flying over any restricted area in this country. That’s a fundamental step in understanding what our gaps are and what we talked about yesterday on passive defense. We’re heading in that direction to deal with these types of threats, as we’ve watched Israel and its population do a hell of a job on passive defense. Being able to protect themselves before the stuff happens, because they don’t have enough capability to defend against everything that’s coming at them. That is part of what we need to do as we go forward, as the threat goes forward.
In our country, especially the United States of America, we’ve won wars, world wars, cold wars, on our innovation, on our ability to innovate, our ability to take tremendous risk, and our ability to accept failure after failure after failure after failure to get that capability. And we can just go right at it. World War II was won because of innovation of Oppenheimer, Groves, and our ability to do something nobody’s ever done in the world before, to stop the World War. And I would say the same thing with the Cold War. After Sputnik flew, Schriever and the US Air Force was able to innovate on solid rocket fuel, Minuteman, that stabilized and was able to eventually beat down the Russians in that war.
So we’re here today, a little frustrated, because we’ve watched innovation happen. Three years of innovation that has been not made here, but innovation to come under the cost curve and the attrition of warfare, which is all going to come down to at some point, to be able to do cheap capabilities that was given, not only to the United States, but given to NATO, given to all the nations to learn from. And yet here we are, three years later, in a war in Iran, and didn’t take those lessons at all, to be able to defend ourselves and ultimately our borders in the United States.
So there’s something wrong with our system. Maybe it’s the way we go into wars and lose quickly with legacy systems. We have to understand why that’s still happening. And I think that’s culture. And our President right now and our administration are creating a revolution to bring and take risk on innovation. We haven’t seen it yet in battle. And we understand that you have to increase your capacity of your magazines. So you start signing, and they’re doing it, multi-year contracts with legacy systems. But the problem with that, great you have numbers, two or three years from now, some of those legacy systems are going to be outdated. Innovation will go right underneath them. And here you’re stuck with these long contracts and you can’t get out of it. You’ve got to take risk on innovation, and you’re going to lose some. You’re not going to win 100%. You don’t need to. But we’re at that point right now that I think we’ve got to learn these lessons the hard way. We’re learning the hard way. We’re scrambling right now to get that.
So I just think it’s important also to look at what are some of the great innovations that are happening from the Ukraine conflict, and even from the last 18 days, because there are innovations happening as we speak. Because our warfighters are so damn good, they make things happen in situations that they’re in.
So that’s the intent of this discussion. And we’re unafraid. It’s important to have accountability because your culture, a winning culture, does not win if it ignores its failures and calls its weaknesses out so it can get better. We’ve got to shift out of this being fat and happy and the world champion for the last 30 years. We’re in a new fight right now, and we’re going to have to use our best players. And some of our best players are out in that civilian world. We’ve got to bring them in, bring innovation in. Some of our best players are allies. Some of our best players are independent partners. But we’ve got to bring them in to win.”
—Riki Ellison, 95th MDAA Virtual CRT
Executive Summary
I. Introduction
The Virtual Congressional Roundtable “Missile and Drone Defense Innovation in Combat” examined the urgent lessons emerging from ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and what they reveal about the future of missile defense, counter-UAS, and military innovation. Hosted by MDAA Chairman Riki Ellison, the discussion brought together Tom Goffus, General (Ret.) Charles Flynn, and Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery to assess why the United States and its allies have been too slow to absorb battlefield lessons on cheap drones, counter-drone defense, rapid software iteration, and low-cost layered defense. The central conclusion was blunt: innovation is happening in combat, but the U.S. system remains too slow, too risk-averse, and too tied to legacy acquisition culture to keep pace.
II. Strategic Context: Combat Is Forcing a New Defense Reality
Riki Ellison framed the discussion around a hard lesson now visible in real time: modern war is being reshaped by cheap, scalable, rapidly iterated systems, especially drones and lower-cost strike capabilities. He argued that the United States has watched three years of innovation in Ukraine and more recent combat in the Middle East without translating those lessons quickly enough into defenses for its own bases, forces, and homeland. In his view, the problem is not a lack of technology but a failure of culture, urgency, and risk tolerance.
III. The Core Diagnosis: The System Is Built Against Innovation
A central theme across the discussion was that the existing U.S. acquisition system is structurally hostile to the kind of rapid adaptation modern warfare now demands. Tom Goffus argued that American defense procurement still relies on highly detailed requirements, rigid processes, and long timelines that do not fit software-defined, battlefield-driven capability development. Instead of defining operational challenges and letting engineers solve them, the system demands near-perfect compliance with narrow requirements. The result is a process that penalizes fast iteration and discourages practical experimentation.
IV. Ukraine as the Leading Model of Wartime Adaptation
Speakers repeatedly pointed to Ukraine as the clearest example of how innovation now works in combat. Goffus described a system in which operators are in direct daily contact with innovators, where battlefield feedback drives constant redesign, and where useful capability is fielded quickly even if it is imperfect. He cited Ukraine’s acoustic sensing network as a particularly striking example: a low-cost, distributed system built to solve a real operational challenge rather than satisfy a prewritten requirement. The broader lesson was that Ukraine has created a culture in which speed, iteration, and responsiveness matter more than bureaucratic perfection.
V. Operators, Engineers, and Industry Must Be Connected Forward
General Flynn reinforced that innovation cannot remain separated from the battlefield. He argued that commanders must have money, engineers, and public-private partners forward with them rather than relying on distant acquisition systems and slow institutional channels. In his view, commanders should not have to wait years for solutions to immediate operational problems. Instead, experimentation, procurement, adaptation, and operational use should happen together in near-real time. He emphasized that this cannot be confined to active war zones alone; it has to happen continuously across theaters, including the homeland.
VI. Cheap Attritable Systems and AI-Enabled Autonomy Are Changing the Fight
Flynn stressed that low-cost, attritable drones are going to dominate quantity battles because expensive interceptors will continue to lose the cost-exchange competition if used indiscriminately. He argued that the future belongs to systems that combine scale, rapid software updates, AI-enabled autonomy, and forward manufacturing or adaptation. The implication was clear: the side that can mass affordable autonomous systems and update them quickly will have a major battlefield advantage over forces that depend on slower, more expensive hardware cycles.
VII. The Next Target Set: Homeland and Critical Infrastructure
A major warning in the discussion was that the next phase of the problem will not be confined to foreign battlefields. Flynn argued that the United States and allied nations should expect future drone and missile threats against critical infrastructure such as data centers, nuclear facilities, rail, ports, telecom nodes, and logistics hubs. The panel suggested that America is still poorly prepared for this challenge, especially given the policy, legal, and regulatory barriers to training, experimentation, and defensive operations around domestic infrastructure.
VIII. Counter-UAS Requires a Full Architecture, Not a Single Fix
Mark Montgomery emphasized that counter-drone defense must be understood as a full system rather than a single piece of equipment. He argued that effective defense requires integrated sensors, networks, air and ground components, and layered responses. Ukraine’s approach, in his telling, succeeds because it combines multiple sensor types, aviation-based thinning of inbound drone salvos, and ground-based terminal defense. He contrasted that with the fragmented way the United States has approached the problem, often without integrating lower-end and higher-end sensing into one usable picture for commanders.
IX. Aviation and Ground Defense Must Work Together
One of Montgomery’s key operational points was that broad-area drone defense cannot be handled by ground systems alone. Aviation has to be part of the solution, especially to thin large inbound drone groups before they overwhelm defended sites. At the same time, ground-based systems remain essential for terminal defense. This layered air-ground approach was presented as one of the clearest practical lessons from Ukraine and recent Middle East combat. The implication for the United States is that counter-UAS doctrine, procurement, and training must be built around a layered combined architecture rather than isolated solutions.
X. Passive Defense and Protection of the Base Matter More Than Ever
The discussion also tied missile and drone defense to passive defense and resilience. Riki Ellison returned several times to the need to protect people and critical sites even when not every incoming threat can be intercepted. The speakers argued that national defense must include not only active interception but also dispersal, civil preparedness, survivability measures, and the ability to absorb an attack and continue operating. This was presented as a lesson already visible in Israel and increasingly relevant to U.S. bases and homeland infrastructure.
XI. The Problem Is Cultural as Much as Technical
All four speakers returned repeatedly to culture as the real obstacle. Congress, the services, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the defense industrial base were all criticized in different ways for reinforcing slowness, excessive regulation, protection of legacy programs, and aversion to failure. Montgomery argued that the United States tolerates chronic underperformance so long as programs remain alive, while punishing visible failure instead of rewarding smart risk-taking. Goffus and Flynn similarly argued that the system is optimized for control and compliance, not for wartime adaptation.
XII. What Must Change
The discussion pointed toward several practical reforms. Commanders need flexible funding and faster access to innovators. Small companies need a real path into defense problems without being buried by requirements and contracting delays. More programs need competition, faster iteration, and acceptance that some will fail. Operational challenges should drive development more than rigid technical specifications. Most importantly, the United States must create a culture in which battlefield learning is captured quickly and translated into procurement, training, and deployment before the next crisis arrives.
XIII. Conclusion
The roundtable’s core conclusion was that missile and drone defense innovation is no longer theoretical. It is happening now in combat, and nations that fail to learn from it will pay the price. The panel argued that the United States still has the industrial base, the talent, and the technology to lead, but only if it changes the culture that governs how defense capabilities are developed, tested, bought, and fielded. The future fight will reward speed, iteration, affordability, and adaptability. The challenge now is whether the U.S. defense system can evolve fast enough to match the battlefield reality already in front of it.
Speakers:
Mr. Tom Goffus
Former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Operations
GEN (Ret.) Charlie Flynn
Former Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific
RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
Former Director of Operations, U.S. Pacific Command
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Chairman and Founder
Winners Associate with Winners to Win!