The problem of metric selection for operational testing
I would be perfectly willing operationally to test anything anybody can name without having measures of effectiveness or criteria for the test. I am also […]
Month: January 2020
Is it an embarrassment how the US Air Force treated SpaceX?
I’ll tell you, what SpaceX had to do to effectively do business with the United States Air Force embarrassed us in public. No service secretary […]
Thiel on how scientific progress became bureaucratized
Thiel argued for enabling riskier research grant-making via institutions such as the NIH, as well as abandoning the scientific staple of the double-blind trial and […]
Have we reached peak “Chief …… Officer” in the DOD?
DoD leadership should focus on establishing business-reform objectives for each major DoD organization, and then holding leaders of these respective organizations accountable to the achievement […]
General Hyten gives a metric for measuring acquisition success
There’s actually a pretty easy metric if you want to evaluate whether you’ve been successful for not. All you have to do is go out […]
Acquisition headlines
BAE Systems rallies after snapping up U.S. defense companies. “… it announced it was buying Collins Aerospace’s military global positioning system business for $1.925 billion […]
French to U.S. on weapons development: How do you work with so many people?!?
Mr. Shapero: They [the French] make good aircraft, and they have also had disasters. But they do it much more cheaply than we do. Spending […]
Does category management push against small business?
The government’s going to move in the direction it wants regardless of industry feedback… The objective of category management is to get better pricing. By […]
Can open data improve procurement outcomes?
We examine how the increased accessibility of public purchasing data affects competition, prices, contract allocations, and contract performance in government procurement. The European Union recently […]
Has program budgeting failed the world over?
Program budgeting does not work anywhere in the world it has been tried. The reason for this failure can be deduced backward. What would it […]
How do cost and mgmt. systems create biases against innovators in DOD?
Many causes could be cited for the institutional bias against innovators – or what could be termed more broadly as entrepreneurs – in the Department […]
Do we still have faith that any conceivable weapon can be built?
Like most of their countrymen and contemporaries, American military leaders of the later 1940s concluded that almost any conceivable weapon could be built if one […]
Acquisition headlines
US Army cancels current effort to replace Bradley vehicle. Is Congess purposefully underfunding Section 804 MTA programs? “Last month, Congress hacked funding for the OMFV prototyping […]
How to maintain innovation in a large-scale enterprise
An organization like the cavalry in 1935 is an interesting example. You had a bureaucracy that used the horse to do the job. That was […]
What will military aviation look like in 2050? A lot like 2020?
On average, the Army’s aircraft are 14 years old, and the Department of the Navy’s are 16 years old; the Air Force’s aircraft, on average, […]