Has program budgeting failed the world over?
Program budgeting does not work anywhere in the world it has been tried. The reason for this failure can be deduced backward. What would it […]
History
Do we still have faith that any conceivable weapon can be built?
Like most of their countrymen and contemporaries, American military leaders of the later 1940s concluded that almost any conceivable weapon could be built if one […]
What do systems engineers wrongly assume?
On of the key mis-assumptions in modern Systems Engineering and Systems Analysis is that the total problem can, and frequently is, decomposed into subproblems, the […]
Is it a paradox for leadership to protect the innovators?
… the leader has always to be doing two apparently incompatible things. He has to encourage his administrators to promote order, to maintain established routines. […]
How the F-15 avoided a disastrous design
Here is a part of Jack Neufeld’s history of the F-15 development, “The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development 1964 – 1972.” Indeed, the emphasis on […]
The disease of restricting competition isn’t limited to Europe
I have been repeatedly impressed in putting this paper together by how often unexpected and great discoveries and progress came about during or as the […]
Are program managers “little more than an errand boy”? Views from David Packard
Packard said he had seen cases “where the project manager is often little more than an errand boy for all the service officers, both above […]
The backlash to Packard’s rapid acquisition and reform: a warning
David Packard left office as DepSecDef in December 1971, and a few years later with the passage of OMB Circular A-109 and updates to the […]
Centralization was wrong for atomic power, the case of Britain and the US
The development of atomic power for the generation of electricity provides a useful illustration. In the mid-fifties major technical decisions had to be made with […]
Why managers pad budgets and build empires: the law of anticipated reactions
To some extent, the strength and security of an organization is associated with its size, the rank of its personnel, and the amount of funds […]
The never ending challenge of proposing, collecting, and reporting costs consistently
A recurring problem in Government Contracting is that contractors may select from alternative accounting methods without specified criteria governing such selection. Contractors sometimes present cost […]
Differing opinions of requirements: how fixed should they be ahead of prototyping?
Here is the opinion of the Requirements & Concepts Panel for the Army Materiel Acquisition Review Committee (AMARC) of 1974: In the opinion of our […]
Air Force struggles to develop a fighter for over a dozen years, circa 1971
Here is Senator Stuart Symington lambasting the Air Force in December 1971 about their inability to develop new fighter aircraft: I have pictures which prove […]
Eisenhower’s appeal for increased efficiency and economy — the Single Manager Plan
Today, most of our defense funds are appropriated not to the Secretary of Defense but rather to the military departments. The Secretary of Defense and […]
Time to award a defense contract and the growth of regulation
In 1947, the “Bible” of the nation’s military contractors—Armed Forces Procurement Regulation—was a slim volume of about 100 to 125 pages long. Today, the A.F.P.R., […]