EP 112 — Persistent Systems' Jon Patrick On Winning $120M in Tactical Networking Without A Program Of Record

Persistent Systems won a $120 million tactical networking award without a program of record. Their Wave Relay MANET served as the network backbone during Project Convergence Capstone 5, a combined arms breach exercise that became the precursor to the Army's Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture.

Jon Patrick, VP of Business Development for Army and SOCOM at Persistent Systems, spent 26 years in DoD acquisition before crossing to industry. He tells Dave how two-year tranche buys reshape risk for bootstrapped companies, what it takes to scale from 150 to 750 network nodes, and where AI fits at the tactical edge.

Topics discussed:

• How government language shifts reshape small business IR&D decisions
• Two-year tranche buys replacing base-plus-four contract structures
• MANET versus mesh networking at the tactical edge
• Scaling NGC2 from 150 nodes to 750 at brigade level
• Building a defense networking company for 18 years without VC
• AI addressing terminal data fatigue on tactical networks
• Going directly to SOCOM operators to find real requirements
• Financial-industry security as an alternative to Type 1 encryption

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