U.S. Space Force organizational plan delivered to Congress. And here’s more on that: “Eventually, the Space Development Agency will report to the U.S. Space Force… My thought on consolidating the disruptive element into a larger activity would be sort of like giving SpaceX to Lockheed.” Spot on.
How Leidos got into the shipbuilding business. For autonomous ships.
How Army acquisition works. Nice graphic. Army acquisition has 40,000 gov’t employees. “The PEO for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, we learned, has 399 federally employed workers, of whom 75 are military (a comparatively high number). But in total, it has about 1,900 employees when you add in the contractors who help do the work.”
… the U.S. Navy has given blockchain software startup Simba Chain nearly $10 million to put a secure messaging platform in play.
Related: “US Air Force has awarded a contract to Fluree to develop a blockchain-based communication platform. This move is part of the Air Force’s AFWERX technology innovation program.” So many more blockchain applications possible in the military. It’s a perfect fit.
The industrial revolution in services. “We argue that these facts are consistent with the availability of a new set of fixed-cost technologies that enable adopters to produce at lower marginal costs in all markets.” I think these economists are behind the times. The tech fronts have already started to move into more vertically integrated firms, carving out niches where the Amazons, LinkedIns, and other horizontals cannot offer customized-enough services. See more on that thesis here.
Animated Chart: World’s top ten manufacturing nations, 1970 to 2018. China 3-4% of manufacturing between 1970 and 1995, then explodes to 29%. That’s where the US was 50 years ago.
Boeing’s passenger spacecraft actually suffered a second unknown software glitch during debut flight. It would have been “catastrophic” if not corrected. “Software defects, particularly in complex spacecraft code, are not unexpected,” NASA wrote. Hmm, I thought the traditional contractors were more expensive because they had such high quality assurance… This part is scary: “It’s possible NASA may not require Boeing to do another test flight and will instead let the company proceed with putting astronauts on board.”
To the rescue! US Special Operations plans to buy 75 light attack aircraft for Armed Overwatch. Perhaps the close air support mission should not be owned by the Air Force…
“The U.S. Navy announced that it converted EA-18G Growler electronic attack jets into unmanned vehicles. In a test, a manned Growler controlled two unmanned Growlers.” ComNavOps has a negative response: Unmanned Growlers – More Idiocy.
Lots of interest in ARPA orgs, this from the UK: Visions of ARPA: Embracing Risk, Transforming Technology. A slice: “Wherever it is situated the government must tear up the rule book of research funding bureaucracy, allowing empowered and highly expert project mangers to drive forward projects and allocate funding to the best people and projects wherever it can be found.” UK’s ARPA budget is about $1 billion a year. US’s DARPA is more than 3x that size, but the US’s total defense budget is nearly 15x larger.
US Army developing process for using 3D printing at depots and in the field.
Check out the damage done to an A-10 Warthog’s nose by a refueling tanker’s ‘flying boom’. Was from a KC-10. KC-46 needs to be modified to refuel the relatively light A-10.
Getting Critical Technologies Into U.S. Defense Applications. True that: “The United States isn’t China—and it shouldn’t be. A top-down, government-managed effort to wring out every last drop of innovation in Silicon Valley is anathema to American values and to the rugged, do-it-yourself spirit of free enterprise.”
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