How financial planning came to rule the Pentagon
Here is the estimable Frederick Mosher in his 1954 classic discussing the rise of the program budget. A programmed budget, of course, is when money […]
Month: December 2020
Why the Army ditched its organic design for OMFV
The Army’s decision to not submit its own design bid for the restarted Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) prototype competition was to remove concerns over […]
Great Power Competition with Richard Danzig
Richard Danzig joined me on a joint episode of the Acquisition Talk and China Talk podcasts to discuss US-China relations and military innovation. Richard is […]
The story behind the first microprocessor and the F-14
Here’s part of a fascinating story from Ray Holt, who designed one of the first microprocessors in 1970 for the F-14 Tomcat. … my first […]
Acquisition headlines (12/20 – 12/26/2020)
Dr Ryan Starkley: Developing supersonic drones. (sUAS News) “Currently, there is no cost-effective way to test things that are traveling at high-subsonic and low-supersonic speeds. […]
Moving from opinion-based to evidence-based requirements
Business models for developing technologies for a profit are end-to-end solutions that cannot be adopted by the Army acquisition enterprise for several reasons, not the […]
Two definitions of weapon systems “concurrency”
Because of the uncertainties and perceived criticality of ICBMs, the WDD and Ramo-Wooldridge believed it unwise to rely on only one approach. If it did […]
Congressional view of oversight and transparency needs an overhaul
I think this provides some color as to why the Air Force’s top priority programs are being cut by congressional appropriators from $302 to $158 […]
When should systems decentralize?
very powerful economic forces drive centralization of a successful decentralized system… the fundamental problem is that decentralized systems inherently provide users a worse experience than […]
How Robert McNamara forced a policy of “program birth control” on the DoD
McNamara confirmed that each major weapon system development program and all basic and applied research programs would be examined at their inception as well as […]
Aircraft sustainment woes — And is the Air Force paying for Navy F-35 costs?
We found that of the 46 individual fixed- and rotary-wing types of aircraft we examined, only three met the service-established mission capable goal [80 percent] […]
Acquisition headlines (12-13 – 12/19/2020)
DARPA’s DyNAMO connects incompatible datalinks under electronic attack. (Janes) The radio-frequency (RF) technologies embedded into the DyNAMO system enable “automated, real-time dynamic configuration of tactical […]
DoD tech transition funding was *much* bigger in the 1950s
Prior to fiscal year 1951 there was no provision at the Secretary of Defense level for funding departmental emergency research and development needs. In other […]
DHS PIL finds oral presentations not working as expected in GovCon
One of the two main innovation ideas is to use “advisory downselects” to give offerors information prior to a full-blown proposal about whether they are […]
How did the US Air Force become the smallest, oldest it’s ever been?
John Baum: Why do we now have the smallest, oldest Air Force in our nation’s history? What does this mean for the future? Mark […]