Retired BG Ed Barker on Underwriting Risk So Acquisition Teams Will Move

Defense Disrupted · Mar 18, 2026 · 43m

Ed Barker, Brigadier General (ret.), spent 34 years inside the Army acquisition system, including special operations units where mission failure wasn't an option and "no" was the beginning of the conversation, not the end. That environment forced him to know the rulebook well enough to seek waivers and reclamas through proper channels, and it shaped a career-long instinct for pushing acquisition teams past self-protection and toward what the warfighter actually needs, even when that meant telling senior leaders to stop active programs.

Barker breaks down why OTA-enabled iteration (soldier…