Bill LaPlante

Senior Advisor

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment

William (Bill) LaPlante is a Senior Advisor at WestExec and a seasoned national security and technology executive with nearly four decades of experience in the defense and national security fields. Bill’s career has spanned government, research and development, and industry.

Senate-confirmed in April 2022, Bill served through January of 2025 as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD(A&S)). In this role, he was responsible to the Secretary of Defense for all matters pertaining to acquisition; contract administration; logistics and materiel readiness; installations and environment; operational energy; nuclear, chemical, and biological defense; the acquisition workforce; and the defense industrial base.

At the Department of Defense, Bill played a critical role in providing security assistance to allies and partners around the world, especially for Ukraine. He established and led the Ukraine Defense Contact Group National Armaments Directors forum, which brought together more than 40 nations to synchronize procurement, production, and sustainment efforts, while guiding nearly $5 billion in direct investments into the U.S. defense industrial base and helping obligate nearly $50 billion to procure capabilities for Ukraine or replace equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks. .

Prior to this appointment, Bill served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Draper Laboratory, a research and development company specializing in advanced technology solutions in national security, space exploration, health care, and energy. Previously, he was senior vice president and general manager at MITRE National Security,

Bill served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics from 2014 to 2017. Previously, he spent 26 years at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).  Bill has served on more than twenty Defense Science Board Studies.  In 2017, he joined other national experts as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated Section 809 Panel, which performed a comprehensive review of Department of Defense acquisition policies and provided improvement recommendations, many of which became law

Bill holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Catholic University of America, a master’s degree in applied physics from The Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from the University of Illinois.