How open is the government to creative destruction?
Arthur Diamond had a great conversation with Russ Roberts about his new book, Openness to Creative Destruction. In the episode, Diamond tells us a story […]
Month: August 2019
No more one-horse races for weapon systems
Programs like MBT-70, C-5A, and the F-111 get defended before Congress and the American public-whatever their problems in performance, cost, and schedule slippages-simply because the […]
Is the DOD trusted capital marketplace about China or emerging tech?
To help bolster the industrial base against potential adversaries, the Defense Department is planning to kick-start its “Trusted Capital Marketplace” project this fall, said the […]
DOD pays a 3,233% overhead rate, but was it a bad deal?
The U.S. Air Force, faced with an aging aircraft fleet, is turning to 3D printing to dramatically cut down the time and cost of manufacturing […]
Will Space Corps/Force will have its own acquisition executive?
The Senate NDAA would break up the office of the top Air Force acquisition executive and create a new position of principal assistant to the […]
Information is not transformation
Here are excerpts from Allen Schick’s excellent study on the performance budget (PB), also known as the program budget or the Planning-Programming-Budgeting (PPB) system. Remember, […]
Acquisition headlines
Boeing gets $999M contract to continue producing wings for the A-10 Warthog. Where are the single points of failure in US defense supply chain? Is […]
The inflation slushfund
In analyzing DOD’s inflation budgeting system, we found that between fiscal years 1982 and 1986 the administration budgeted more than was needed to cover inflation, […]
Monopsony, bailouts, and regulations — 3 problems of defense acquisition
In weapons systems acquisitions, however, there are three important differences in buyer-seller relationships: One, the buyer represents the only market, for the product and […]
How the DOD failed to follow up on hypersonics decades ago
The key technology for hypersonic air-breathing propulsion at higher flight Mach numbers is the supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet). In this device, injection of hydrogen fuel […]
Edward Keating on weapons sustainment and CBO analyses
Edward Keating joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about a wide range of issues. He is the Deputy Assistant Director for National […]
More on how gov’t can best support AI research
Here is an excerpt from my recent War on the Rocks article, responding the call for ideas from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence […]
The rapid prototyping fund is dead before it even got started
Do you remember Section 828 of the FY 2016 NDAA? It’s OK, most people don’t. Here’s a refresher: For each fiscal year beginning with fiscal […]
Acquisition headlines
… aerospace company Blue Origin filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), arguing that the Air Force is running a “flawed” competition to […]
Is the PPBE process the root cause of test & eval failures?
Again and again in briefings and conferences I am asked: “What are the major problems in T&E [Test & Evaluation]?” I think there is really […]