Sunday Links
Arnold Kling on DARPA, Emergent Ventures, and project choice. Here’s a slice: “I think where DARPA succeeded was when it had two other elements. One […]
Blog Posts
Cesar Hidalgo on tacit knowledge and social networks
Coase, in the 1930s goes to a presentation from a professor in the department of commerce in LSE (London School of Economics) and this professor […]
How voluntary is contracting in the DOD?
When economists think about contracting, usually they think about voluntary agreements made between two or more parties. But in the DOD, neither the customer nor […]
Haunted by the spectre of over-study in weapon needs
At OSD level, they really don’t do much systems analysis. What they do mostly, endlessly and in almost excruciating detail is weapon requirements analysis. Summed […]
Galambos on Innovation, Systems of Systems, and Logistics
Here is Jim Galambos on Voices from DARPA, talking about platform design and cost disease: What do we mean by system of systems? It’s really this […]
Fighter Mafia emphasizes simplicity of design
Pierre Sprey testifying to Congress in December 1971: … it is possible to increase complexities of a weapons system to a point where it is […]
Broad Considerations for Entering the Defense Market
A few days ago I discussed the saga of the JEDI cloud computing contract, which engaged tech firms like Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and Google. […]
How should we react to China’s rapidly improving fighter aircraft?
However, Bronk added, most Western air forces have concluded that the usage of thrust vectoring for an edge in a dogfight is generally not worth […]
US has something to learn from Europeans in austere development
It may well startle one of the 439 Lockheed engineers, say, who worked on the P3A Orion modification of the Electra, to learn that in […]
Russian Dry Dock sinks while repairing Russian Aircraft Carrier
PD-50, a huge floating dry dock at the 82nd Repair Shipyard in Roslyakovo, Russia, accidentally sank on Oct. 29, 2018 while Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft […]
What can we learn from Eric Schmidt and apply to defense acquisition?
Xerox PARC came out of a similar structure [as Bell Labs]. Xerox at the time was a structural monopoly and not a legal one because […]
DOD says grow the budget, or else!
Joe Gould and Aaron Mehta write: Last year, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis testified that the Pentagon needed 3 to 5 percent annual growth above inflation through 2023 to […]
B-52 Development and Defense Lessons from Armen Alchian
Mandeles argues convincingly that recognizing the inevitability of error may be the single most important factor in the design of effective organizations and procedures to […]
Sylvain Lenfle answers questions on Innovation Management
Here’s a correspondence with Sylvain Lenfle, professor of innovation management: Eric: Though I don’t want to take too much of your time, I would like to […]
Technical prestige as an end in itself for successful firms
This commercial competition [of aviation fuels] was a result of the profit motive, but was far from profitable, as is often the case in aviation, […]