Ellen Lord
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
Ellen M. Lord received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Connecticut College and a Master of Science in chemistry from the University of New Hampshire.
She has more than 30 years’ experience in the defense industry, serving in a variety of capacities, including Senior Vice President and General Manager of Textron Defense Systems, and with other defense contractors.
She is a former Vice Chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association, as well as a former Director of the U.S.-India Business Council. She served on the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Naval Institute Foundation.
Nominated by President Donald Trump, the Senate confirmed the Honorable Ellen M. Lord as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment in 2017.
In the News…
America’s military satellites and missiles continue to rely on customized hardware and niche components that are no longer manufactured domestically, a report prepared for Congress by the Pentagon said.
“The DoD space industrial base remains a niche market with very specialized and capital-intensive requirements that are not efficiently managed through individual program investments,” the report said.
The 181-page report, which covers every sector of the defense industry, was written by the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord with the help of other agencies—a group created in 2017 after President Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to probe vulnerabilities in the nation’s manufacturing and supply sources.
The report said that many current and planned systems rely on dated technology and practices, as well as fragile or foreign sources. “Reliance on foreign sources for critical technologies, competition from subsidized lower-cost imports, and erratic demand from the national security space enterprise will erode essential space capabilities and critical skills, and threaten future access to space qualified domestic industrial sources,” the report warned.
