Some data on how fast costs are rising for the US Air Force
Last year I discussed whether defense acquisition was a cost disease sector, just like healthcare, education, and some areas of construction. I evaluated three methods […]
Economics
Cost escalation for defense labor and material — can it continue to grow so fast?
When we talk about procurement or support costs in the 2040 decade, obviously that’s a long way from now. Any sort of projection of a […]
Mission-funded charity shows the Pentagon a way forward
Funders of [Jeff] Bezos’s stature typically cast an open call for proposals, spending months poring over applications from nonprofits and sometimes insisting on site visits, […]
The defense acquisition system isn’t an engineering problem
A couple days ago I discussed how difficult in practice it is to collect data merely on where dollar outlays go. That seemingly simple case of […]
How open is the government to creative destruction?
Arthur Diamond had a great conversation with Russ Roberts about his new book, Openness to Creative Destruction. In the episode, Diamond tells us a story […]
DOD pays a 3,233% overhead rate, but was it a bad deal?
The U.S. Air Force, faced with an aging aircraft fleet, is turning to 3D printing to dramatically cut down the time and cost of manufacturing […]
Monopsony, bailouts, and regulations — 3 problems of defense acquisition
In weapons systems acquisitions, however, there are three important differences in buyer-seller relationships: One, the buyer represents the only market, for the product and […]
Government and the institutional memory of failure
I think that large, established organizations operate according to different incentives than start-ups. Large organizations focus on the downside of new initiatives. In the start-up […]
High sustainment costs are not a technological fact of life
Bryan Clark: One big challenge they [the DOD] have is sustainment costs. Sustainment costs of our force — partly because it’s aging, partly because it’s […]
Pace of innovation in the world of bits and atoms
Are people’s living standards improving? Silicon Valley says yes, but their story is at odds with what people are experiencing on the ground. There’s been […]
How the CBO estimates the cost of submarines
To estimate the cost of those future submarines, CBO used data for the ships’ closest analogue—the Virginia class submarines that had already been built. From […]
Value based pricing and how the DOD misunderstands cost
TransDigm uses a value based pricing technique. What I mean by that is that the price of the product or service is based on the […]
What is the Trusted Capital Marketplace really about?
This post will speculate on the intent behind the DOD’s new Trusted Capital Marketplace, and what will be expected of its managers. Background. The Statement […]
Moving beyond Newtonian and industrial era thinking
This post highlights excerpts from two episodes of POGO’s Pentagon Labyrinth podcast. Both relate to the mindset embodied in the US Department of Defense — […]
B-1B bomber readiness nears 16 percent
The U.S. Air Force is slacking when it comes to the B-1 Lancer fleet, with less than ten operational units out of a total number […]