Wes Brown
I spent more than a decade watching great technology die in the gap between a great idea and an obligated dollar — rarely because the tech was wrong, almost always because no one shaped the path before the solicitation existed. Defense in Depth is me standing on the founder's side of that gap.
I've sat in every seat that decides if the technology lives or dies.
The person who funds it. The operator who needs it. The engineer who builds it. The company that has to turn it into revenue.
I've been every one of those people. Which is why I can shape the path your technology takes to market, instead of just describing it to you from the outside.
I was the buyer.
For years I was the government decision-maker your proposals are written to. I managed the Army's $655M robotics portfolio for maneuver warfare — deciding which technologies got funded, which crossed into programs of record, and which didn't. I was the deputy of an ACAT IC weapons program (the M153 CROWS) with a $754M budget through development, test, and fielding. At the Pentagon, I managed the Army's process for its most urgent capability needs.
What that means for you: I don't guess how the funding decision gets made — I’ve been that decision maker. I know what moves a program office, what quietly kills a good technology in committee, and where one well-placed move changes the outcome, because I was the one being moved.
I've crossed the valley — in industry, not theory.
I've also sat in your chair. As a robotics technical product manager, I took DoD work from exploratory R&D to stable, long-term, profitable programs — and turned an expiring contract into a three-year, $10M+ extension by aiming the technology at the customer's most critical need.
What that means for you: the move from "winning awards" to "durable revenue" isn't a slide I'll sell you. It's something I've actually done — for a company with a payroll, not a government office with an unlimited horizon.
Technical and operational fluency.
I'm a West Point-trained mechanical engineer with published research to my name, so I can read your technology and not just your pitch. And before any of the acquisition work, I was an infantry officer and Army Ranger who led soldiers across more than 400 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What that means for you: I understand the mission your technology serves from the end of the rifle, and the engineering behind it. When I make your case to a sponsor, I'm fluent in both the capability and the warfighter who needs it.
I connect your income statement to an acquisition plan.
The acquisition insiders who can't read a P&L hand you strategy you can't afford. The MBAs who've never seen the inside of a program office hand you a plan the government will never buy. I'm a Carnegie Mellon MBA who spent a career inside Defense Acquisition — so the strategy I give you survives contact with both your bank account and the Pentagon's budget cycle.
What that means for you: you won't get a brilliant plan you can't fund, or a fundable plan that ignores how you actually make money.