Cost growth and profitability are hard to pin down
The analysis on the correlation between the lead branch of military service responsible for MDAPs and cost growth patterns reveals that programs led by the […]
Blog Posts
Acquisition Headlines
Andy Marshall, the Pentagon’s ‘Yoda,’ dies at age 97. A controversial character for sure. Here’s a good article on Marshall from 2014. A slice: “It […]
Is data analysis almost always subjective?
Motivating the military’s move to analytics is the argument that they will make assessments more sound and less subjective . . . because numbers are […]
The need to demonstrate technical feasibility
Finally, it is clear that in the German case, as in the British, an early demonstration of the technical feasibility of the turbojet engine made […]
Loonshots, moonshots, and management
Sufi Bahcall has a new book out called Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. He was […]
Rickover and the symmetry of intellectual property
The President’s memorandum attempted to strike a middle ground between a “title” policy and a “license” policy. The “title” policy is based on the precept […]
DOD needs effective exploratory development
The DoD does not have an effective process for doing a thorough exploration of alternative technologies and concepts. Exploration is usually done only as a […]
William Hartung on Lockheed Martin and the military-industrial complex
William Hartung joins me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss his book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. […]
Acquisition Headlines
Good article from Breaking Defense on Shanahan, Boeing, the F-15X, and the role of OSD Cost Asssessment and Program Evaluation. Scandal watch: Navy captain charged […]
Lessons from side-looking radar development
During WWII, US developers decided not to use 0.86 centimeter frequency for their “side-looking” aircraft radar because their experimental test models predicted it would have […]
Could some F-35s be only 1/64th as cost-effective as planned?
For as much as the 2018 report from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) reveals about the F-35’s lack of progress in nearly […]
Prophecy for the defense industrial base
The way that the defense industrial base has been progressing since World War II, one future that appears to have a reasonable likelihood is that […]
High performance computing to solve acquisition?
Enter HPCMP, the High Performance Computing Modernization Program. HPCMP provides the DoD with massive supercomputing capabilities and all classes of networks to transport data, as […]
Why document requirements?
There were two basic problems. First, the documentation was not timely; it was generally written during or after the development cycle. In these times of […]
“Safe” proposals are the riskiest possible
“You bet on the Patriots in 2007 and, by gosh, in 2037 you’re still going to bet on the Patriots. And eventually you just go […]