During the Fall 2025 Supply Chain Forum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business, moderators Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby led an engaging discussion with retired Rear Admiral Kevin Sweeney in the session “Beyond Supply Chain.” Together, they examined how lessons from military leadership can help business leaders steer through today’s unpredictable supply chain challenges.
Sweeney, who retired from the Navy in 2014 after last serving as commander of Carrier Strike Group TEN, later became chief of staff to Defense Secretary James Mattis during the first Trump administration. In the private sector, he has held multiple executive leadership roles and currently serves on several corporate boards, including Airbus U.S. Space and Defense.
Note: The following highlights from the discussion have been reorganized, edited and condensed for clarity and continuity.
Learning Through Adversity
Before the Q&A, the admiral recounted the most fateful occurrence of his military career. Sweeney was stateside awaiting transfer overseas to take command of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole when it was struck by an Al-Qaeda suicide bombing in Yemen’s Aden harbor on October 12, 2000; 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and 37 were injured in the attack.
Sweeney became captain of a ship that had to be towed to the U.S. and which then spent the next 22 months being rebuilt in Pascagoula, Mississippi. He recognized he was not trained how to rebuild a ship while helping his crew cope with the aftermath of the most horrific, traumatic event of their lives.
“There was no playbook,” he recalled. “It was demanding, rewarding and a profound learning experience. The highest honor in my career was being the skipper to Cole after the attack and rebuilding and bringing the ship back.”
Q&A: Geopolitics and Supply Chain
Stank, Harry J. & Vivienne R. Bruce Chair of Excellence: What is your take on the geopolitical landscape today, particularly how it impacts supply chains?
Sweeney: It is a time of change. This administration, whether it’s tariffs, trade policies, national security, the borders or South America, we’re focusing on the homeland, and the challenges are unique. The government shutdown impacts so much every day, not just on the military, but it’s on everybody in the federal government. Strategically, we see a pause.
But competition doesn’t stop overseas. At Airbus, we’re building satellites. We’re competing for limited assets in the supply chain. We’re also focusing on what we call the assured supply chain because we can’t have anything fail in space or elsewhere. Concurrently, there’s stress on the EU and NATO. We have two wars going on, Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Hamas. That is impacting the defense industry. Munitions demand is surging. There’s a focus on shipbuilding. Where is that going to take us long term?
Goldsby, Dee & Jimmy Haslam Chair of Supply Chain and David P. Perrot Supply Chain Management Faculty Fellow: What do you see happening there over the next couple of years?
Sweeney: All the military modeling we had on weapons consumption has changed. In the Red Sea, the Navy is shooting down drones with multimillion-dollar missiles because that’s what we have. The cost equation is out of whack. So, there will be a continuous focus on building up munitions and new technology and taking it beyond drones at sea and underwater. What we call collaborative combat air will start coordinating the larger drones with crewed jets. The demand will persist because the threat is not going away.
Stank: What do you see geopolitically for supply chain? Is there going to be any stabilization in Europe?
Sweeney: Europe is waking up to the fact that they are going to be much more responsible for their own national security. NATO has been a blanket for which the U.S. has paid the bill for many years. The Trump administrations’ focus on NATO isn’t new. We’ve been talking about it for many years, but there had been little action to catalyze investment out of the NATO countries. They realize they have to step up financially, and it means a big shift in their budgets.
In Asia Pacific, the Chinese are growing regionally every day, and the goal is to ultimately be a global power and have the global system underneath their control. What we’re doing in South America is tied to that. The question is, are we committed? How are we positioned for the supply chain and for things like rare earth minerals? There is also a focus on manufacturing capacity in the U.S. I’m involved in microelectronics, and we don’t have the ability to turn around quickly and build that out if something goes wrong in Asia Pacific or elsewhere.
Industry, Security and Military Readiness
Goldsby: Do we need to be able to build vital pieces of military equipment here?
Sweeney: The military side needs to expand capacity, which you can’t do overnight. The thrust is to encourage outside investing. We have commitments from shipbuilding companies around the world, but building at that capacity takes years and a lot of capital expenditure. The administration is looking for third-party private equity investment into our needs in the U.S.
Goldsby: From the audience: How much money do we spend on defense, and can we shift that to manufacturing? What’s the potential for a national industrial policy?
Sweeney: There’s a huge focus, and it started back in 2017, in a good way, on the industrial base. It has withered away, whether it’s building ships, aircraft or new technology. The percentage of GDP that the military controls is 3-4 percent, down from a peak of 10, 11 or 12 percent. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, the broader military was the co-investor with industry, and a lot of technology spun out of that. Today, it’s the exact opposite, and we’re trying to rectify that.
Goldsby: Another audience question: What are our biggest threats, and how do we prepare to address those?
Sweeney: Space and cyber are the two areas where we probably no longer have the competitive advantage, particularly versus China. Those are so important, and China is so persistent. They are manpower-intensive and technology-intensive. China’s advantage is they take what we call a whole-government approach to everything. Every Chinese company has a responsibility to support the military in some way. In the cyber domain, it’s not just protecting your IT systems, it’s protecting your intellectual property, and not being brought to your knees when something goes wrong.
I’ve been involved in a company that went through a ransomware attack, and we were brought down for about 10 days. We lost proprietary information. We couldn’t send out purchase orders or billing. If you could do that to an aerospace and defense company, think more broadly what can be done to critical infrastructure.
Applied Leadership
Stank: What do corporate leaders on the boards you serve on look to you to provide?
Sweeney: People like me bring broad experience to a board. I was an end-user of many of the military products being built. That’s one piece. Two, you understand how the government works, you understand how the federal government acquisition process works, you understand what we call the inter-agency, and we all have great relationships inside and outside the government. We also bring leadership. We bring a different background than folks who come up on the commercial side.
Goldsby: What leadership principles have influenced your success and growth in the Navy and the business world?
Sweeney: The most important aspect of leadership is teamwork. It’s building teams that trust each other and work together at any level, from a squad of marines to the Department of Defense. You can have the smartest supply chain folks, the best engineers, but if you can’t build a team that works together for a common goal, you’re going to fail. You’re dealing with people, and you must have good relationships with all your key stakeholders. That’s the only way an organization can succeed.
Another aspect of leadership is the power of mentorship, both to the mentee and the mentor. For students here preparing to enter the professional world, seek out folks for guidance and perspective that’s nonjudgmental. I still interact with my mentors who are long retired but full of wisdom. One of the most enjoyable things I do is mentoring.
Stank: What would be your parting thought to this group?
Sweeney: You have to listen to people. Whether it’s a junior individual or the old guy in the corner who’s been here 40 years, you have to listen and engage people. Listening, not just hearing, but really listening is probably the most impactful tool that we have.
Goldsby: Admiral, thank you so much for your service.
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CONTACT:
Scott McNutt, senior business writer/publicist, rmcnutt4@utk.edu
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