Elon Musk says NASA is ripping off SpaceX. (Bloomberg video.) Point is that NASA wants to pay SpaceX $55 million for same thing that it will pay Boeing $90 million because SpaceX’s costs are so much lower. In my opinion, NASA should be willing to pay SpaceX $85 million until someone else can do it cheaper. That’s how you induce entrepreneurial innovation and competition.
Related. Pentagon races to end China’s ‘dream’ of military domination in space. (Washington Times.)
Air Force Academy among world’s 10 best college hacker teams. (Gazette, gated.)
The US Defense Department lost $875 million to scams involving shell companies. (QZ.) Read the whole thing, but short version: foreign companies set up shell companies in US to win DOD contracts and supply defective parts. One person went to jail.
Former 4-Star Fleet Commanders: Don’t give up on carriers. (Defense News.)
Report on Navy Laser, Railgun and Gun-Launched Guided Projectiles. (USNI.)
FOR SALE: The Navy’s First Operational Hydrofoil. (USNI.) “The 115-foot High Point comes with a 450 horsepower Detroit Diesel.”
Electronic Warfare Magic Beans. (ComNavOps.) A slice: “… however, in true US military tradition we’re attempting to leap a generation or two ahead and field a magic-level EW instead of investing in good, solid, functional EW that can be used today.” Recommended.
Why we suck at “solving wicked problems” and 6 ways to become better. (Medium.) “When dealing with complex problems, however, consensus is often impossible as we are dealing with competing values, paradoxes and multiple inter-related causal influences.” HT: Bruce.
TransDigm says DOD pricing memo hasn’t made ‘noticeable impact’. (Inside Defense.)
Justice Department Plan to Weed Out “Frivolous” Whistleblower Cases May Do More Harm than Good. (POGO.) “In fiscal year 2017, the government recovered a total of $3.7 billion in False Claims Act cases. More than 90 percent of the total was recovered through qui tam actions.”
Turkey Tests F-16s And F-4s Against S-400 Radars In Defiance Of U.S. Sanctions Threats. (The Drive.) The real fear is the F-35, of course. Surely, the US should be trying to test the F-35 against “acquired” S-400s, and if not, what does that say?
Future commanders will need to know how to use artificial intelligence to make decisions—including when not to trust it. But how do you decide? (Breaking Defense.)
The problem with Pentagon cloud and AI projects isn’t acquisition regulations, which you can get around. The problem is people not knowing what the hell they want. (Breaking Defense.)
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