The White House’s pick to field new technologies across the military faster says most U.S. companies want to sell to the Pentagon, but they don’t understand what the military needs.

“One of the things I've observed over the last few years is that the vast majority of American [tech] companies want to serve our nation, they want to develop and deliver capabilities to our warfighters. Sometimes they don't always understand, from a threat-informed perspective, what our key operational problems are,” said James Caggy, the nominee for assistant defense secretary for mission capabilities, one of three roles designed to replace the Pentagon’s chief technology officer position.

That misunderstanding can result in a mismatch when a new technology works in a lab or a narrow scenario but can’t

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