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 in cash and Raytheon’s airborne tactical radios business for $275 million in cash.”
Air Force using agile approach to connect systems for battle. “ABMS is a collection of 28 programs that follow a progression of picking up information through sensors, turning that into data, processing the data, translating it so it can be understood by multiple systems, feeding it to apps that can be used by troops and finally integrating it into warfighting capabilities.”
This is what I’ve been saying! “By defining new organizations by missions—not technology—policymakers can avoid creating institutional barriers to technology development and fielding.” Logical conclusion: organizational budget, not program budget. For example, fund PEOs or SYSCOMs or Labs at a certain level, they represent certain missions already, and provide project choice flexibility within that fiscal constraint. Genius!
Clayton Christensen, guru of disruptive innovation and Latter-day Saint leader, dies at 67. Didn’t know that second part. He had many great insights.
Small business size calculation rule now in effect. (gated.)
Thiel calls for improving research grant, regulatory processes to enhance scientific innovation. Read the whole thing.
SpaceX presses on with legal fight against U.S. Air Force over rocket contracts. Basically, SpaceX denied a Phase I contract because it’s tech was too far ahead of the competitors, but is expected to bid on the larger Phase II launch procurement contract. In the mean time SpaceX will lose out on govt design priorities and requirements — not to mention it will fork over its own funding for preparation. It looked like $500 million was going to compensate SpaceX in the 2020 NDAA, but that got nixed.
Trump says Elon Musk is like Thomas Edison: ‘He’s one of our great geniuses’. Trump: “We have to protect our genius.”
What’s So Great About MTA’s? A slice: “I am 100% certain that the frozen middle (aka the stalwart defenders of the status quo) will do their chilly best to make sure the implementation of MTA is as glacial as previous acquisition methods.”
UK News: Dominic Cummings may have met his match in trying to reform the Ministry of Defence. I don’t know if we know what real acquisition reform would look like, and it must be especially hard for some political outsider to conceive of.
How the Navy SEALs wound up buying 450 counterfeit radio antennas.
DIU: A new artificial intelligence contract to keep planes flying. Predictive maintenance contract between DIU and C3.ai, worth up to $95 million over 5 years. More on that here.
JAIC Director: Future of Defense AI Relies on Global Collaboration.
Uh huh. Pentagon’s number-two officer vows to fix software acquisition ‘nightmare’. “… has promised to create a software-specific acquisition pathway for DoD systems.” That interim policy ain’t looking so revolutionary.
Suppose There Was a War and the Merchant Marine Didn’t Come? Second prize of CNO Naval History Essay Contest.
Leave a Reply