Competitive prototyping and pushing the state of the art
Only when the contractor is taking risks to develop the state-of-the-art and do something better than has ever been done before can there be much […]
History
Should you apply “should cost” to research and development?
Mr. Chairman, before I discuss “should cost,” which is a complicated subject, I might, point out that as far as I know the Navy has […]
Who should make multi-billion dollar decisions?
Part of the reason for “programming” the budget was to give decision-makers at the top the ability not only to decide on how much money […]
Trends in technical performance, effort, and cost of being wrong
During the 30 years that our company has been in existence… we have seen air vehicles advance front the 100- to 200-mile-per-hour speeds characteristic of […]
Pushing immature technology to meet requirements
Let me being by offering three propositions. First, that successful new military weapons routinely derive from proven technology and virtually never emerge from efforts to […]
Army acquisition and the Goldwater-Nichols Act
In 1986, the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management (Packard Commission) published A Quest for Excellence, Final Report to the President. Subsequently, National Security […]
The history of acquisition since 1950
In an essay published in 1978, the highly regarded historian John Lukacs argues for history that is “microcosmic and sociographic, not sociological and generalizing.” By […]
Rise of centralization post-WWII
To one extent or another, each of the technical services carried out research and development (including test and evaluation), procurement, production, supply, and even maintenance […]
Effects of performance management systems
The unfortunate results of imposing management control systems on contractors was that they then felt obligated to operate two systems in parallel. The contractors used […]
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 […]
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 […]
2,072 retired top brass officers employed at defense firms, circa 1969
Last month, Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., said that as of February 1969 the top 100 defense contractors employed 2,072 retired military officers of the rank of colonel […]
The rise of the administrator in government
We enter a scene at a hearing on the powers of the Secretary of Defense in 1949. Senator Saltonstall asks Secretary of the Air Force […]
Rickover on human considerations for technology
Vice Adm. Hyman G. Rickover said tonight that both governmental and private organizations were disregarding human considerations in making technological decisions. He traced this […]
50 years of state-planned technology
Mr. Chairman, I believe we are in a de facto situation of nationalized high technology industry. All that is left is to formalize the arrangement. […]