First DoD Comptroller slams naive reformers who invented PPBS
Here’s DoD’s third Comptroller Charles Hitch testifying to Congress about the need for the new management system he was implementing in DoD: the Planning, Programming, […]
Search Results for ppbs
The “Valley of Death” and the PPBS in defense technology transition
DARPA and the service research labs achieve amazing results. Have you heard about electronics that will physically vanish on command to prevent adversaries from copying our […]
How today’s DoD tech is either incremental change to legacy or adopted irregularly
After a flurry of major technological advancements in the 1940-1960s period, there was talk of a “technological plateau.” Proponents of this idea believed that most […]
The indispensable man of the Pentagon
Here’s an excerpt from Samuel Huntington’s classic 1959 book, The Soldier and the State: The principal antagonist of the Joint Chiefs within the central defense […]
The mismatch between acquisition and resourcing, 5000.1 and PPBE
Here’s a slice from “The DSARC and PPBS decision making process within DOD” by Goral, Frank Ivan. Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, Dec 1979. Remember, […]
The defense industry and the road to nationalization
Here is a good segment from NPS Professor Judson after introducing all the process and people challenges of defense acquisition. It comes from a 1975 […]
Origins of the Milestone acquisition process
One of the foundations of the defense acquisition system is the DoD Directive 5000.1, which defines how military systems progress from an idea to production. […]
Anduril releases mission document: Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy
Here is an interesting slice from Anduril’s mission document: Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy. In the early 1960s, under the direction of then Secretary of […]
Trends in acquisition reform
I was playing around on Google NGram to see the relative importance of acquisition reform efforts over time. Interestingly enough, the term “Acquisition Reform” doesn’t […]
Congress needs introspection for PPBE Reform to work, for DoD to innovate at scale
There are several ways in which Congress is a major impediment to an improved defense investment process. First, congressional committees are loath to shed their ability […]
DoD exported PPBE to Eastern Europe after the Cold War. Here’s how it went.
he budgeting method that has come to be known as the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) – or Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) […]
Should organization follow programs, or the other way around? Issues in PPBE reform
The main points which will be stressed in the succeeding paragraphs are: first, that PPBS has been and is being oversold and, in some ways, […]
GAO: To keep up with surging Congressional reporting, DoD should modernize
The Department of Defense is required to report to Congress on an array of national security topics each year. The number of new reporting requirements […]
Cutting contract documentation by 90+ percent
Here is Air Force general Chapman at a 1971 appropriations supplemental hearing with DepSecDef David Packard, asking for additional funds to do prototyping including funds […]
You can’t make decisions based on 40,000 pages of paper, McNamara was wrong
MCNEIL: … the budget system got pretty complicated under [Robert] McNamara. It took them years to wake up to the fact that he was not […]