The Man Who Publishes His Plan
This week Matt Clark told his LinkedIn network he had accepted the job of Assistant Director for Research, Development, and Acquisition at the Defense Health Agency, and with it the title of Component Acquisition Executive, effective at the end of the month. In March 2019 he published, in Army acquisition media, the fiscal year in which a naloxone auto-injector still in prototype would clear the FDA. It cleared in that fiscal year. As of this week dha.mil still lists the seat as acting, and the buying machinery around it was rebuilt this spring.
Friends,
The post went up under a profile headline that still read "In Transition," and by the time I got to it the thread underneath ran to 129 comments. [1] Most were the two-word kind. A few were something else, and the something else is where this issue starts.
Mark Herzog of Kaléo, the company that built the naloxone auto-injector Clark's team took through the FDA in 2022, wrote "Sign me up!" and got back "Mark, consider it done." Robert Kristovich, who directs the Joint Science and Technology Office at DTRA, said he was excited to see where Clark would drive. Gretta Blatner from ARPA-H mentioned they had caught up the week before, and Richard Hatchett, who runs CEPI, sent his congratulations. Deydre Teyhen, the retired brigadier general who co-wrote an award-winning acquisition paper with him in 2019, left four exclamation points. Sanghamitra Mukhopadhyay, who runs clinical genomics and precision medicine inside DHA, wrote "Welcome back," and Jaymie Brooks Dumproff, a program analyst in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Health Affairs, wrote that she would see him soon at headquarters. Nelson Michael, a senior medical advisor, wrote two words: Fix bayonets. [1]
That thread is a map, and it is also a conversation. To a former teammate who wished him a good year he wrote that when we come together and row as one, we will achieve good things for all who serve. To a founder who told him to keep making an impact he answered that to serve is to live, and that the purpose creates the opportunity. To a retired colleague he wrote that delivering is the key, that the mission is the objective, and that character-led action with a team is the only way there. [1] The map runs from a chemical defense consortium to a pandemic vaccine company to a NATO clinic in Belgium, and every stop on it is a place where Clark did something specific, wrote it down, and published it. That is the part of this appointment worth more than the name. The person who will sign DHA's acquisition decisions at the end of the month has already told the community, in print, how he decides, and in the same breath why.
The record, read in order
The shorthand going around is Army colonel, CBRN guy. It is accurate, and it undersells him. The people who read past the shorthand this month will be the ones who are ready in October.
He came into the Army through ROTC at Coe College, took a PhD in behavioral and neural sciences at Rutgers in 2000, and started in acquisition as a research psychologist doing bench work at an Army medical lab. He told Army acquisition media in 2018 that nobody could give him a satisfactory explanation of what acquisition was when he started, so he took the training himself and found it a natural fit for a scientist who wanted to field things. [2] He carries Level III certification in both program management and science and technology management, and a master's in strategic studies from the Army War College. [2][3]
The assignments underneath the credentials are the interesting part. In 2006 he deployed to Iraq on a Field Assistance in Science and Technology team, gathered casualty evacuation data that was scattered across theater, and wrote the urgent requirement for an armored ambulance. Back home he worked the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell for funding, sat in on the vehicle design, and by 2008 nearly 700 armored ambulances had been fielded through the MRAP program. [2] The Army then sent a research psychologist to write rapid acquisition policy in the Asymmetric Warfare Office, and after that to Rep. Elijah Cummings's office as a military legislative assistant, where he learned, in his words, how the sausage gets made. [2]
Then West Point, where he directed the Eisenhower Leader Development Program. Then Joint Product Manager for Chemical Defense Pharmaceuticals at Fort Detrick, where his team delivered a new atropine auto-injector and the anticonvulsant midazolam, the first new medical chemical defense countermeasures approved in fifteen years. [5] In 2018 he was named Army Product Manager of the Year, the first medical officer to hold it. [3] Then Operation Warp Speed as lead program manager on the vaccine team, then the White House COVID-19 Response Team, where he directed international response operations that moved more than 1.2 billion doses to 115 countries, and where the public-private team he led delivered more than 534 million of them. [3] Then Joint Project Manager for CBRN Medical, the entire medical portfolio for the Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defense, through May 2025. [9][23] Then command of the SHAPE Healthcare Facility and the Brussels Army Health Clinic, the U.S. Army's clinic inside NATO's operational headquarters at Mons, where he took over a staff that had been losing physicians and by September had a program running to catch people caring in real time. [12][21]
Read that list again and notice what is missing. There is no health IT chapter, no enterprise software sustainment chapter, no CIO chapter. His immediate predecessors in the seat, Kathleen Berst in an acting capacity from 2024 and Rear Adm. Ivonne Arena acting after her, came up through business operations and the deputy CIO's office. [16][19] The person who now signs acquisition decisions for DHA thinks in products, protocols, and fielded capability, and has spent most of a decade running programs where the customer of record is the Food and Drug Administration.
He wrote down the fiscal year in 2019
In March 2019 the Army Acquisition Support Center published an essay by Clark and a colleague named Hannah Feldman on using middle-tier acquisition authority, with overlapping and incremental development, to build a naloxone auto-injector for weaponized opioids. Near the end it made a prediction. With this approach, the authors wrote, the 10 mg naloxone auto-injector "should receive FDA approval in FY2022, and be rapidly fielded in FY2023." [4]
The FDA approved the 10 mg naloxone auto-injector on February 28, 2022. [6][7] On September 21, 2022, Kaléo announced the first Department of Defense supply contract for the Rapid Opioid Countermeasure System, for up to 788,000 units, and the company's executive said the product had come in under budget and five months ahead of schedule. [6] The prototype had run through the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium, and the production agreement was executed as the follow-on to that prototype effort. [8]
Clark wrote about the method himself in 2022. His team published the strategy for ROCS in 2018 and the plans and lessons again in 2019, and the lesson he drew on LinkedIn was to publish your plan, be transparent while executing it, and trust your network to hold you accountable. [24] Program managers say things like that all the time. What separates his version is the fiscal year he attached to a product that did not yet exist, in print, under his name, three years before he hit it.
He audits his own shop and prints the score
The announcement this week contains the line "We will share failures, the outcomes require it." [1] The line is a decade-old operating norm for him, and the proof is in the September-October 2024 issue of Defense Acquisition magazine.
Clark and two of his JPM CBRN Medical leaders published an account there of what they found when they looked hard at their own integrated product teams after the pandemic. Life cycle cost estimates were coming in without the chartered teams behind them, assistant program managers and functional leads had drifted into working separately and sometimes against each other, and an influx of pandemic-era hires had never learned the processes. "We decided to audit ourselves," the authors wrote. [9]
Then they printed what the audit found. Charter completion and risk management scored 100 percent. Minutes, decision logs, functional representation, and training did not. They called the year that followed the Year of the IPT, ran monthly training by the process owners, had every assistant program manager sign a personal charter in front of the organization, and published the schedule and the score in a journal any competitor could read. [9]
A federal program office that writes up its own deficiencies and puts them in a public magazine is a rare thing, and the habit predates 2024. The 2019 essay on ROCS says out loud that the hard part was teammates trained on the acquisition waterfall, and lists what the office did about it. [4] When he says DHA's research, development, and acquisition enterprise will share failures, the record says it will be in writing.
He clears the runway
The citation for the 2018 Product Manager of the Year award credits him for delivering capabilities when others could not and for discontinuing ineffective product developments. His own profile puts a number on the second half: two unsuccessful efforts killed because they were not moving forward in a way that would meet the Army's needs. [22]
I read that as good news for anybody with a product that works, and as the more hopeful half of the citation. A portfolio where nothing gets stopped is a portfolio where the winners share money with the losers. An executive who has been willing to end a program is one who will have money to move toward the medic's aid bag, the blood program, and the diagnostic that finally clears, and he will have it sooner. In front of that evaluator, a capability brief that names what would cause the government to stop the effort reads as credibility, and the honest ones will find the door open.
Seven letters, read against the file
His post gave the community an acronym. The objective, verbatim, is "Decisive effects through Excellence, Lethality, Integration, Velocity, and Enterprise partnerships" that generate readiness and resilience, and he added that speed is essential to the mission. [1] Acronym frameworks are a documented habit of his, and each one has stuck to real work, so expect DELIVER in strategy documents and industry day decks by winter. The SHAPE priorities were built around a phrase called Preserving P.E.A.C.E., and the Caught You Caring program the garrison wrote up three months later came straight out of that frame. [12][21]
Decisive effects is an acceptance criterion. In 2018 he told Army acquisition media that "to be effective, you need to develop a resource-linked schedule and stick to it," and that teams have to act tactically while thinking strategically. [2] Effects language, for him, means the fielded thing changed an outcome on a date somebody committed to.
Lethality lines up with the DHA Director without adjustment. Vice Adm. Darin Via told industry in New Orleans on August 11 that "the specific IT solutions are secondary to the outcomes" and that the agency is soliciting commercial solutions through a faster process. [13] Via's four lines of effort in the DHA strategy each begin with the word Deliver. [27] Clark's organizing phrase is DELIVER Care. My read is that the fit was visible before the selection and was one reason for it.
Integration is a NATO clinic. When he took the SHAPE command he described a job that included allies from 31 other nations and put resilience and military-civilian integration at the top of the priority list. [21] On his way out of JPM CBRN Medical he thanked BARDA and DTRA by name and wrote that biodefense only works as one team. [23]
Velocity is the letter most likely to be misquoted back to him in a capture brief. One of his award-winning papers, written with Teyhen and three others, is titled "Accelerating Science to Solutions at the Velocity of Relevance," and its argument is that direction and speed together advance a capability, while speed on its own is just motion. [22] He is asking for fast toward a defined effect.
Enterprise partnerships has a paper too. In the Countering WMD Journal this year, he and four co-authors argued that industry needs predictability to invest in capacity and that commercial viability is the engine for biodefense, global health security, and collective defense. [11] The Kaléo exchange in the comment thread is that sentence in practice.
Readiness and resilience is where all of it lands, and for him resilience is a supply chain word.
Medicine as ammunition
In July 2025 Military Review published "Treating Medicine as Ammunition: Enhancing Medical Logistics for Large-Scale Combat Operations," by Maj. Gen. Paula Lodi, Brig. Gen. Clinton Murray, Col. Matthew Clark, and Col. Kenneth Reed. [10] It is co-authored, so these are the article's positions and Clark is a signatory. That caveat aside, it is the closest thing in existence to a written statement of what the incoming acquisition executive believes about the medical industrial base, and the other names on it matter. Lodi commanded Army Medical Research and Development Command and served as DHA's Director of Research and Development until she passed command to Brig. Gen. Constance Jenkins on July 10. Murray is now the Joint Staff Surgeon. [10][13][20]
The thesis sits in the second paragraph: the Department must treat medicine as ammunition while adopting proven commercial healthcare practices to fix its medical logistics. [10] The evidence underneath it is specific. A 2024 Department assessment found 54 percent of the pharmaceutical supply chain rated high or very high risk for dependence on suppliers outside the Trade Agreements Act, with 28 percent of active ingredients sourced from North America. The sole FDA-approved Japanese encephalitis vaccine comes from one facility in Germany, and vaccinating a million service members during an outbreak would take a 518 percent production surge from it. The article puts the 155 mm artillery shell and the 2023 ketamine shortages side by side and calls them the same problem. [10]
The recommendations each carry a contracting consequence. The article wants the Department off just-in-time logistics and onto predictive, tiered, dispersed stockpiles, run through commercial sales and operations planning, with working stocks of the joint deployment formulary held above 80 percent at the unit level. It wants vendor-managed inventory against a predictable government demand signal, because fluctuating orders from different parts of the government are making industry charge more while supply gets less secure, and it wants DLA's contingency requirements written on something other than past orders. It wants active ingredient and starting material production brought back onshore through voluntary agreements under Title VII of the Defense Production Act and cost-sharing under Title III, blockchain-enabled visibility on the supply chain, a 30 percent domestic sourcing requirement for Department-procured antibiotics by 2030, and military stockpiles aligned with the Strategic National Stockpile. [10]
If you sell products into the Military Health System, that list is your next capability brief. If you sell services, it tells you which services get funded: demand forecasting, industrial base analysis, provenance and traceability, and logistics data a planner can trust when the supply line is contested. Every item on it is a thing a contract can ask for, and the person who co-wrote it will be approving what DHA's contracts ask for.
The machine he walks into
The timing is what makes this appointment matter beyond the person. Section 1802 of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act put Portfolio Acquisition Executives into statute at 10 U.S.C. 1732 and directed every Department of War component to convert its program executive offices by the end of 2027. [25] DHA moved this spring. As I laid out in April, the agency organized acquisition into three portfolios under the Component Acquisition Executive, Medical Products, Medical Services, and Medical Digital Solutions, with a research and development directorate alongside them, itself a recent arrival of more than 1,500 scientists, program managers, and acquisition staff transferred in from Army Medical Research and Development Command in 2024. [17]
The seat itself, when it was advertised this spring with a March 23 closing date, was described as overseeing all medical acquisition and medical research and development for the Department, with an annual acquisition and procurement spend of $2.3 billion. [15] Underneath it today sit program offices already doing regulated product work, including the one that took this year's Military Health System Research Symposium program management award for the first FDA clearance of a canine freeze-dried plasma product. [18]
Then there is the vehicle. In August DHA posted an enterprise-wide Commercial Solutions Opening, HT003826SC005, that any portfolio acquisition executive or program office in the agency can use. It runs a phased process that begins with a brief white paper or pitch, may include a demonstration, and ends with an invitation to submit a full proposal, and it preserves the agency's ability to award sole-source follow-on production agreements for prototypes that succeed. The first area of interest under it, for end-user services in the Medical Digital Solutions portfolio, has already gone out. [14]
Now put ROCS next to that. A prototype agreement through a consortium, a product that hit its published date, and a production agreement executed as the follow-on to the prototype. [8] DHA has built the machinery for the way he already buys, and he has been buying that way since before it was policy. The buying organization changed before the buyer arrived, and the buyer turns out to be the person the change was built for.
What to change in the white paper
Everything in this section is my inference from the record above, stated once so I do not have to say it six times.
The effect goes first. His first word is Decisive effects and Via's line to industry is that solutions are secondary to outcomes, which is one message delivered twice. [1][13] The opening paragraph of a white paper should name the operational effect and the measure, with the solution appearing second, and the schedule underneath it should have resources attached, because he has said in print that effectiveness requires a resource-linked schedule the team then keeps. [2] A delivery date without resourcing logic reads, to this evaluator, as motion without direction.
The decision gates should be yours. His documented method is overlapping, iterative development with named knowledge points that inform decisions to accelerate or to terminate an effort sooner, and he has contrasted the method explicitly with the acquisition waterfall. [4] A white paper that volunteers its own off-ramps is speaking his language, and one that includes a single honest lesson learned will stand out in a stack where every other submission is undefeated.
The supply chain question should be answered before it is asked. Tier two and tier three sourcing, surge capacity, domestic content, provenance. If you sell products, that goes in the first three pages, because the Military Review article is the evaluator's rubric and it is public. [10] The same goes for the business case that survives after the government order ends: co-investment, allied demand, dual-use markets, or BARDA and DTRA adjacency, as a section of its own. [11]
One caution. I could not find a public statement by him on artificial intelligence, in policy or in acquisition, anywhere in eight years of publishing. Pitching to an assumed AI doctrine is a guess. Pitching ambient documentation or clinical decision support on its documented DHA-side justification, clinician burden and human-in-the-loop governance, is grounded.
A note for the firms that are not primes
I hear the worry already, because I hear it every time an acquisition executive arrives talking about speed and enterprise partnerships, and the record cuts the other way. The ROCS prototype came through a consortium, and the 2019 essay describes a product office that gathered its information through requests for information and a consortium before it arrayed the work, and told every stakeholder it could find what it planned to do, international partners included. [4] A requirement written that way rewards a firm with a real technical idea over a firm with a large proposal shop, and consortium and other transaction lanes are the ones he has spent his career in. The practical move for a small or mid-size firm this month is to decide which lane you are in and pre-form the team, because a white paper window measured in days leaves no time to assemble one.
What the first year could look like
My read of the first year, if the record holds, is an industry day inside the first quarter with a plan attached to it, a self-assessment published whether or not it flatters, a portfolio review that ends with at least one program stopped on purpose and its money moved, and supply chain language migrating out of a journal and into a requirements document. Every one of those things has happened before under his name, which is the best predictor a capture team ever gets.
Named hires. The post ended with "When positions and needs open, be ready to deliver." [1] He recruits from his network, and that network answered him in the thread within a day. People out of JPEO-CBRND and Army medical research landing in DHA's acquisition organization will tell you which portfolios get his attention first.
The first industry day after he is seated. His JPM CBRN Medical industry day on October 29, 2024, held at the Patent and Trademark Office, drew 115 participants for a single therapeutics program. [26]
A published self-assessment, announced in advance. If you hold a DHA program that has been coasting, plan on it.
Whether the language of medicine as ammunition shows up in a DHA requirements document. That is the tell that the July 2025 article was a preview.
The auto-injector in the pocket
Somewhere in an aid bag there is a 10 mg naloxone auto-injector with a lot number on it. It exists because a product manager wrote a fiscal year into an essay in March 2019, published it under his name, and kept the schedule. The medic carrying it will never read the essay and does not need to, which is the whole point of the work.
I wrote in that thread that if anyone can pull the two camps together it is him, and I meant the people who develop medical capability and the people who buy it, because his seat now holds both. The mantra he has carried from Fort Detrick to Mons is that to serve is to live. [21][23] At the end of the month the seat over DHA's acquisition belongs to a person who has told the community, repeatedly and in writing, how he will decide, and who asked it in the same post to be ready. He published his plan and then spent eight years keeping it. The least the rest of us can do is read it, and show up ready to deliver.
Let's roll.
— Mary
Mission Meets Tech
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Sources
[1] Matt Clark, PhD, PMP, LinkedIn announcement, September 2026, and the public comment thread beneath it, captured September 4, 2026. Source for: the verbatim objective, the "share failures" and "be ready to deliver" lines, the 129-comment count at capture, and the comments by Mark Herzog, Robert Kristovich, Gretta Blatner, Richard Hatchett, Deydre Teyhen, Sanghamitra Mukhopadhyay, Jaymie Brooks Dumproff, and Nelson Michael, with Clark's replies, including those to Ernest Swauger, Mia Negru, and Chris Taylor quoted in the opening. Commenters are identified by the titles shown on their own profiles. The announcement text is republished at OrangeSlices AI, "Matt Clark named DHA Assistant Director for Research, Development, and Acquisition and the Component Acquisition Executive," September 3, 2026. https://orangeslices.ai/matt-clark-named-dha-assistant-director-for-research-development-and-acquisition-and-the-component-acquisition-executive/
[2] U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, Susan L. Follett, "Acquisition a 'perfect fit' for Army scientist," April 10, 2018, published in Army AL&T magazine. Source for: the research psychologist start, the 2006 Iraq FAST deployment and casualty evacuation data, the urgent requirement and Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell funding, nearly 700 armored ambulances fielded by 2008 through the MRAP program, the Asymmetric Warfare Office assignment, the Cummings office assignment and portfolio, the "resource-linked schedule" and "act tactically and think strategically" quotations, the DAWIA Level III certifications, and the 2018 award list. https://www.army.mil/article/203584/acquisition_a_perfect_fit_for_army_scientist
[3] Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense, "COL Matthew G. Clark, Joint Project Manager for CBRN Medical," official biography, July 25, 2022. Source for: the Operation Warp Speed and White House COVID-19 Response Team roles, more than 1.2 billion doses to 115 countries, more than 534 million doses delivered by the team he led, the Gold-level Edison Award, the MG Harry Greene Awards, first medical officer named Army Product Manager of the Year in 2018, the Army War College master's degree, and the 2021 honorary doctorate from Coe College. https://www.jpeocbrnd.osd.mil/Portals/90/JPEO-CBRND_JPM%20CBRN%20Medical_Biography_Clark_Matthew_25JUL22.pdf
[4] U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, Col. Matthew G. Clark and Hannah Feldman, "Middle Tier Acquisition Using Overlapping, Iterative, and Incremental Development: A Faster Way to Combat Opioid Exposure," March 14, 2019, a winner in the 2018 MG Harold J. "Harry" Greene Awards for Acquisition Writing. Source for: the published prediction that the 10 mg naloxone auto-injector "should receive FDA approval in FY2022, and be rapidly fielded in FY2023," the statement that the acquisition waterfall is insufficient for rapid acquisition and that the hard part was adapting teammates trained on it, the use of knowledge points to inform acceleration or termination decisions sooner, information gathering through requests for information and an Other Transaction Authority consortium before arraying activities, and continual communication of plans to stakeholders including international partners. https://asc.army.mil/web/news-middle-tier-acquisition-using-overlapping-iterative-and-incremental-development-a-faster-way-to-combat-opioid-exposure/
[5] U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, Col. Matthew G. Clark, Dr. Renae Malek, and Maj. Andrea Mountney, "The 'LLC' of Acquisition Streamlining: Lessons for Accelerating Product Development," March 25, 2019. Source for: the new atropine auto-injector and the anticonvulsant midazolam as the first new medical chemical defense countermeasures approved in fifteen years. https://asc.army.mil/web/news-the-llc-of-acquisition-streamlining-lessons-for-accelerating-product-development/
[6] Kaléo, "Kaléo Announces First U.S. Department of Defense Supply Contract for the Rapid Opioid Countermeasure System (ROCS) Antidote for Ultra-Potent Weaponized Opioids," GlobeNewswire, September 21, 2022. Source for: the first supply contract for up to 788,000 units, FDA approval on February 28, 2022, delivery under budget and five months ahead of schedule per the company, Clark's quotation as JPM CBRN Medical, and Mark A. Herzog's role at Kaléo. https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/09/21/2520123/0/en/Kal%C3%A9o-Announces-First-U-S-Department-of-Defense-Supply-Contract-for-the-Rapid-Opioid-Countermeasure-System-ROCS-Antidote-for-Ultra-Potent-Weaponized-Opioids.html
[7] JPEO-CBRND via HDIAC, "Rapid Opioid Countermeasure System Product Team Wins 2022 Military Health System Research Symposium Award for Outstanding Program Management Team," September 2022. Source for: the February 28, 2022 FDA approval date and the MHSRS program management award to the ROCS team. https://hdiac.dtic.mil/articles/rapid-opioid-countermeasure-system-product-team-wins/
[8] Kaléo, "Kaléo Receives Inaugural Medical CBRN Defense Consortium Innovation Award for Prototype Development of its Rapid Opioid Countermeasure System," August 2025. Source for: the prototype running through the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium and the production agreement for up to 788,000 auto-injectors executed as the follow-on to the successful prototype project. https://kaleo.com/kaleo-receives-inaugural-medical-cbrn-defense-consortium-innovation-award-for-prototype-development-of-its-rapid-opioid-countermeasure-system-naloxone-hcl-injection-usp-antidote/
[9] Defense Acquisition magazine (Warfighting Acquisition University, formerly DAU), Andrea M. Atkinson, Jeffrey Zerhusen, and Col. Matthew G. Clark, "Re-energizing Integrated Product Team Excellence in a Post-Pandemic Environment," September-October 2024. Source for: the leadership concerns about life cycle cost estimates and team function, the pandemic-era hiring influx, the "We decided to audit ourselves" quotation, the 100 percent scores on charter completion and risk management, the deficiencies in minutes, decision logs, functional representation, and training, the Year of the IPT structure, the charter signing ceremony, and Clark's tenure as JPM CBRN Medical at publication. https://www.waru.edu/library/damag/sept-oct2024/re-energizing-integrated
[10] Military Review, Army University Press, Maj. Gen. Paula C. Lodi, Brig. Gen. Clinton K. Murray, Col. Matthew G. Clark, and Col. Kenneth M. Reed Jr., "Treating Medicine as Ammunition: Enhancing Medical Logistics for Large-Scale Combat Operations," July 2025 online exclusive. Source for: the thesis, the April 2024 pharmaceutical supply chain risk assessment figures of 54 percent high or very high risk and 28 percent of active ingredients from North America, the Japanese encephalitis vaccine single facility and 518 percent surge figure, the 155 mm shell and ketamine comparison, the recommendations on predictive stockpiling, sales and operations planning, working stocks above 80 percent, vendor-managed inventory, DLA contingency requirements, onshoring with Title VII voluntary agreements and Title III cost-sharing, blockchain-enabled visibility, 30 percent domestic antibiotic sourcing by 2030, and Strategic National Stockpile alignment, plus the author biographies for Lodi's and Clark's roles at publication. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/journals/military-review/online-exclusive/2025-ole/medicine-as-ammunition/
[11] Countering WMD Journal, Issue 29 (Spring/Summer 2025), Col. Matthew G. Clark, Dr. Clay Holloway, Lt. Col. Race Dulin, Erik Heine, and Laurynn Miller, "Collaboration with Industry: The Solution for a Sustainable Posture for Biodefense and Global Health Security," pp. 84-91, cited as note 54 in the Military Review article above. Source for: the argument that industry needs predictability to invest and that commercial viability is the engine for biodefense, global health security, and collective defense. https://www.usanca.army.mil/Portals/114/CWMD_Journal/Issue%2029%20Web%20Edition.pdf
[12] DVIDS, U.S. Army Garrison Benelux, "Notes from the USAG Benelux in Brussels Town Hall and Newcomers Brief, Sept. 18, 2025," September 19, 2025. Source for: Col. Matthew Clark as SHAPE Healthcare Facility commander and the Caught You Caring initiative. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/548711/notes-usag-benelux-brussels-town-hall-and-newcomers-brief-sept-18-2025
[13] DVIDS, Defense Health Agency, "Data, technology, people vital for warfighter health advantage, says Defense Health Agency director," August 2026. Source for: Vice Adm. Darin K. Via's August 11 remarks at the Defense Health Information Technology Symposium in New Orleans, including the "secondary to the outcomes" quotation and the faster commercial solicitation process, and for the identification of Army Maj. Gen. Clinton Murray as Joint Staff Surgeon in the event photo caption. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/572343/data-technology-people-vital-warfighter-health-advantage-says-defense-health-agency-director
[14] OrangeSlices AI, "DHA Opens Enterprise-Wide Commercial Solutions Opportunity," August 2026, describing solicitation HT003826SC005. Source for: the standing enterprise-wide vehicle available to any Portfolio Acquisition Executive or program office, the white paper or pitch, optional demonstration, and full proposal phases, and the preserved authority for sole-source follow-on production agreements for successful prototypes. The first area of interest, HT003826SC005-AOI0001 for PAE Medical Digital Solutions end-user services, is visible in aggregator listings of the solicitation. https://orangeslices.ai/dha-opens-enterprise-wide-commercial-solutions-opportunity/
[15] USAJOBS, Defense Health Agency, "Assistant Director, Support/Component Acquisition Executive," announcement closed March 23, 2026, as mirrored in the Glassdoor listing. Source for: the description of the position as overseeing all medical acquisition and medical research and development for the Department, with an annual acquisition and procurement spend of $2.3 billion. The original USAJOBS announcement has closed; the mirrored text was used for verification. https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/assistant-director-support-component-acquisition-executive-usa-jobs-JV_IC1130361_KO0,58_KE59,67.htm?jl=1010040944823
[16] Defense Health Agency, biography of Rear Adm. Ivonne Arena, Acting Assistant Director for Research, Development and Acquisition/Component Acquisition Executive, and the DHA Organizational Structure page listing the seat as acting. Source for: Arena's acting status, her prior service as DHA Deputy Chief Information Officer, and the seat's acting designation as of the week of September 4, 2026. https://dha.mil/About-DHA/Organizational-Structure/Bios/RDML-Ivonne-Arena and https://dha.mil/About-DHA/Organizational-Structure
[17] DVIDS, Defense Health Agency, "Defense Health Agency Welcomes New Research and Development Workforce," June 6, 2024. Source for: the transfer of more than 1,500 scientists, program managers, acquisition experts, and support personnel from Army Medical Research and Development Command into DHA Research and Development, placed under the office of the Assistant Director of Support/Component Acquisition Executive, then led in an acting capacity by Kathleen Berst. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/473246/defense-health-agency-welcomes-new-research-and-development-workforce
[18] DVIDS, Operational Medical Systems unit page, Defense Health Agency, 2026. Source for: the Canine Freeze-Dried Plasma integrated product team's MHSRS Program Management Award for the first FDA clearance of a canine freeze-dried plasma product, operating under the Warfighter Protection and Acute Care program management office within the Assistant Director for Research, Development and Acquisition/Component Acquisition Executive office. https://www.dvidshub.net/unit/OPMED
[19] DVIDS, Defense Health Agency, "Acquisition workforce gains career-long access to expertise through academy," May 19, 2026. Source for: Kathleen Berst identified as DHA's acting assistant director in 2026 coverage. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/printable/565706
[20] DHA Research and Development, "Lodi Passes Command to Jenkins at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command," July 14, 2026. Source for: the July 10, 2026 change of command, Brig. Gen. Constance Jenkins assuming command of DHA R&D-MRDC and the role of DHA Director of Research and Development, and the close of Maj. Gen. Paula Lodi's 36-year career. https://mrdc.health.mil/index.cfm/media/articles/2026/lodi_passes_command_to_jenkins_at_US_army_medical_research_and_development_command
[21] Matt Clark, LinkedIn post on assuming command of the SHAPE Healthcare Facility and Brussels Army Health Clinic, June 2025. Source for: the description of allies from 31 other nations and partners from additional countries, the Preserving P.E.A.C.E. priority frame including Caught You Caring, the focus on resilience and military-civilian integration, and the reference to the 2016 and 2023 NATO summits. Context on the clinic's physician staffing before his arrival is from Army coverage of the February 21, 2025 USAG Benelux town hall. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mgclarkphd_publicprivatepartnerships-toserveistolive-activity-7339881854428192769-XMIf and https://www.army.mil/article/283382/notes_from_usag_benelux_town_hall_feb_21_2025
[22] Matt Clark, LinkedIn profile, honors and publications section. Source for: the Product Manager of the Year citation language on delivering capabilities when others could not and discontinuing ineffective product developments, the count of two unsuccessful efforts killed, and the co-authorship of "Accelerating Science to Solutions at the Velocity of Relevance" with Col. Deydre S. Teyhen, Col. Robert O'Connell, Lt. Col. Vincent Capaldi, and Dr. Deborah Shear, winner in the Acquisition Reform category of the 2019 Army Acquisition Writing Awards, with its abstract on combining direction and speed. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgclarkphd/
[23] Matt Clark, LinkedIn post on departing JPM CBRN Medical, May 2025. Source for: the thanks to BARDA and DTRA JSTO by name, the statement that biodefense can only be affected as one team, and his own count of a seventh FDA approval in three years and ten in eight years. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mgclarkphd_i-am-so-very-grateful-to-have-been-a-part-activity-7328727375758659585-x5Rv
[24] Matt Clark, LinkedIn post on ROCS, September 2022. Source for: the account of publishing the ROCS strategy in 2018 and the plans and lessons in 2019 through the Army Acquisition Support Center, the 2022 FDA approval, and the "publish your plan" lesson. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mgclarkphd_publicprivatepartnerships-deliveringexcellence-activity-6975279584787210240-YL6I
[25] National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, Public Law 119-60, signed December 18, 2025, Section 1802, codified at 10 U.S.C. 1732. Source for: the statutory creation of Portfolio Acquisition Executives and the direction to convert program executive offices by December 2027. https://www.congress.gov/119/plaws/publ60/PLAW-119publ60.pdf
[26] U.S. Army, "Fresh ideas help us see tomorrow, yesterday: Interagency partnership paves the way to innovation," December 5, 2024. Source for: the JPM CBRN Medical Host-Directed Therapeutics industry day on October 29, 2024, held in partnership with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with 115 participants. https://www.army.mil/article/281781/fresh_ideas_help_us_see_tomorrow_yesterday_interagency_partnership_paves_the_way_to_innovation
[27] Defense Health Agency, "DHA Strategy" and the Director's Intent issued February 2026. Source for: the four lines of effort, each beginning with Deliver: Deliver Warfighter Medical Readiness, Deliver Medical Warrior Currency, Deliver Joint Warfighting Capabilities, and Deliver the Health Care Enterprise Beneficiaries Deserve. https://dha.mil/About-DHA/DHA-Strategy
Sources verified as of September 4, 2026.
