Written by Steve Tengler. Originally published on Forbes.com.

In a shifting economy, resources and businesses seek parallel verticals for either career opportunities or alternative sales markets. The auto industry might very well stand on the cliff of such a step-function change given geo-political events in the past two months. Per the AP News article entitled “US Auto Industry Could Be Collateral Damage In Trump’s Trade Wars” that quoted David Gantz, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, “The tariffs pose ‘an existential threat’ to North American auto production. They will push up the cost of everything that’s imported from Mexico or Canada that goes into a car assembled in the U.S.’’

Therein, those creating connected systems, software, and services for the past decade of relative prosperity are likely wondering if a shift from the automotive industry to the defense industry is both possible and wise as a recession-proof, parallel employer (for the individual) or customer (for the business). “Let’s start off with my time in commercial automotive,” says Jeff Massimilla, now Vice President of Global Engineering, Design and Technology for General Dynamics Land Systems and previously the Vice President of OnStar for General Motors. “At GM, our primary objective was to drive shareholder value. You did that by creating compelling products, demanding higher prices and selling more vehicles and services. But here in the defense industry, we have another motivation – especially for our former military employees, which at General Dynamics Land Systems is approximately 1 out of every 5: ‘How do we provide products that bring home safely the armies of the United States and its allies?’ There’s no relationship like that in automotive. It’s unique.”

And so that began a conversation to understand what is interestingly similar and what’s vastly different between the two connected vehicles.

What Is Interestingly Similar

• SOFTWARE EXPLOSION: In 2011, Andreessen Horowitz, the co-founder of Netscape, wrote a now famous essay entitled, “Why Software is Eating the World.” This generic prediction was absolutely accurate for both industries. Just the term “Software Defined Vehicle” has gone from non-existent in 2020 to nearly 4000 Google searches in 2024. “The [defense] customer is making a vast shift to software-centricity. Think of the auto industry 10-15 years ago when everything changed from metal bending and then became very software-centric. That’s exactly where this industry is today. The armor of a defense platform used to be the primary consideration, with the other subsystems being more of an afterthought. Now, the systems are truly software-centric, and the overall focus is the objective of the platform in totality.” In fact, General Dynamics Land Systems just announced yesterday several new software partners to help accelerate that shift: Applied Intuition, Palantir Technologies, General Dynamics Mission Systems, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) and Strategic Technology Consulting (STC). “You cannot do everything yourself,” states Massimilla. “You must work with world-class partners to provide the best possible solutions to the customer.”

• ASSOCIATED ARCHITECTURE: Both old-school, modular architectures with dozens of separate systems are being revamped into a cohesive system, but with even greater scale in defense. “In the automotive environment, each of the nearly one hundred modules is purpose-built with only enough compute, memory, [inputs/outputs], power, etc. to perform its exact function, and traditionally could not be upgraded to perform more functions,” explained Massimilla. “In defense platforms, it has already moved to a central-compute platform, including a high-level of compute capability, power-generation, memory, i/o’s, etc. that are all networked in a way that provides the maximum amount of flexibility, capability and upgradeability, as well as the lowest amount of latency. Furthermore, the ‘guts’ can be upgraded as well by pulling and replacing boards, upgrading its capabilities even further without replacing the whole vehicle.”

• CYBERSECURITY: Both industries have a significant focus on preventing hacks based upon requirements and industry standards with architectures that cordon off important areas. “Cybersecurity is a super high priority, and I would argue much higher in defense than automotive,” explains Massimilla. “The threat actors are very motived in this environment. Mission-specific functions must have the highest level of scrutiny and integrity.”

What Is Vastly Different

• SURVIVABILITY: There are plenty of “ilities” in automotive that create non-functional requirements (e.g., usability, manufacturability) with survivability certainly amongst them (as derived from functional safety standards), but it takes on a new context within Defense. “Survivability is a completely different discussion and so multifaceted. It’s a mix of making the vehicle truly easy to operate, keeping the squad safe or getting them out of an unsafe environment, helping with threat identification, keeping the cognitive burden low to avoid fatigue after long hours of operation, and just overall avoiding the vehicle detection. I used to think automotive was a super-high-tech environment … [but] the technology in this world is second-to-none. It is the most cutting-edge technology being applied to the mission, and it’s all about fightability and survivability.”  

• BEING SENSED: Once again, in defense a top priority is not being seen or heard, whereas automakers are adding noise to Electric Vehicles (EVs) to avoid pedestrian deaths, increasing the throatiness of muscle cars, and adding elements to improve the ability to be sensed by backup cameras or safety systems.

• ONGOING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS: Many times, automotive suppliers are inundated with 10,000-15,000 requirements from an automaker attempting to either create comparable quotes or, more likely compatible subsystems (i.e., plug’n’play in the network) via a transactional relationship with few, if any, long-term, ongoing contractual obligations. Defense is moving towards the opposite. “The long-term relationship with the customer is quite different,” explained Massimilla. “Going back to the motivation of helping the missions be successful, we get feedback from the field and look at the products from the lens of ‘What are the challenges of our customers, and how can we help solve those challenges for them?’ It may be a software solution that we can load onto the existing platform, or it could be a modular solution. We don’t wait for the customer to give us all of the requirements, but rather work to solve their problems based upon the art of the possible.”

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