DIU update: the 2020 annual report
Key statistics from DIU’s 2020 annual report that I compiled: Subject 2020 2019 2016-2020 Projects 23 95 Commercial Proposals 944 466 2,381 Proposals per Solicitation […]
Blog Posts
Does DoD turn out good product managers?
You mentioned intuition and I think that can be developed too believe it or not. I’ve helped many product managers develop their product sense. How […]
China iterates twice as fast through military development and fielding cycles
In 2018, Mike Griffin, the first Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, disclosed an innovation time comparison that it takes the US on average sixteen […]
Acquisition headlines (2/21 – 2/27/2021)
Kelly worries F-35 flying costs won’t hit target, and that China may get NGAD first. (Air Force Magazine) ““I’m not brimming with confidence” that the […]
Why are there defense authorizations and appropriations?
The budgeting that Wildavsky, Caiden, and other scholars defined as “traditional” was designed to finance bureaus that provide a service to the public or, more […]
Is the cost of change astronomical before a piece of metal is bent?
The reason that far too little… flexibility is purchased—aside from a development philosophy which results in large technical as well as financial commitments very early […]
Permissionless innovation and the graveyard of things never created
There is another reason for decentralization. That reason is what’s called permissionless innovation. If censorship is the thing you saw that now goes away, permissionless […]
Eric Schmidt: This is how DoD ends up with a camel rather than a horse
Chairman Jack Reed: We were chatting before and reminiscing about days gone by. One of the relics of those days gone by is the defense […]
New DoD cost estimating guide fails to address the problems facing the cost community
“No one can predict the future” is an often-used cliché, and yet this is what the DoD asks its cost estimating community to do every […]
To compete with China, DoD requires a new paradigm for budgeting
The U.S. military’s lack of adaptability also puts DoD at a disadvantage against its primary competitor, China’s People’s Liberation Army. Unlike the Pentagon’s attempt to […]
Acquisition headlines (2/14 – 2/20/2021)
US Air Force entertains new design to replace F-16. (Aviation Week) “Any decision about the future of the Air Force’s tactical aircraft fleet will require […]
You can’t place a price on an unknown
Cost estimating for development programs has apparently been too widely credited in the Defense Department, in industry, in the Congress, and by the public with […]
What does DoD find to be the “biggest challenge” to experimentation?
Possibly the biggest challenge to experimentation is securing funding for the experiment or to apply the recommendations resulting from the experiment. When the initiation of […]
Systems engineering isn’t a substitute for talent and capability
I believe that the fundamental difficulty is that we have all gotten so entranced with the technique that we think entirely in terms of procedures, […]
Sustainment planning gets an overhaul in FY21 NDAA
Section 802 of the FY 2021 NDAA is called “Improving planning, execution, and oversight of life cycle sustainment activities,” but really it has dramatic effect […]