Should DoD spend half as much money twice as fast?
Here are a couple slices from a short interview with Palantir’s COO Shyam Sankar on Building the Base podcast with Hondo Geurts and Lauren Bedula. […]
Industry
The fundamental problem with 20th century supply chains
Here’s a slice from an a16z podcast with co-CEO and founder Ryan Petersen of Flexport: The fundamental problem in supply chain is that we’re a […]
Stockpiling critical minerals must happen early and at scale
Here’s an excerpt from the War Production Board’s history of industrial mobilization for World War II, Industrial Mobilization For War: Volume 1 Program and Administration. […]
CSIS report on inadequate surge capacity for munitions
This table on surge capacity from Mark Cancian at CSIS has been making the rounds but I’ll repost it here because it is so important. […]
How to manage creative talent and lessons for DoD
Here’s an interesting conversation with Disney CEO Robert Iger on the a16z podcast: Alan Horn was the kind of studio executive that knew how to […]
The downfall of Southwest Airlines and management lessons for defense
Here’s a viral Facebook post from 35-year Southwest Airlines pilot Larry Lonero: Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a […]
Why is there a reluctance to invest in shipbuilding despite record budgets?
There was an interesting exchange at the 2022 Reagan National Defense Forum where Senator Wicker was discussing adding funding for defense and shipbuilding in particular […]
How the factory of the future can drop defense costs and schedules by 50 percent
Here’s some excepts from an excellent a16z podcast with Chris Power, founder of Hadrian which is building the software-enabled factory of the future: Chris Power: […]
USD R&E unveils a new Office of Strategic Capital
USD R&E has created a new Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which will be led by former Acquisition Talk podcast guest Jason Rathje. Jason was […]
What are the profit expectations in defense R&D?
Here are some of the findings from an STTR study performed by Geoff Orazem at Federal Foundry and Gene Keselman and Kathryn Person at MIT […]
A brief history of the munitions industrial base, and the importance of GOGOs
During the first few years of World War I, European nations modernized weapons with machine guns, tanks, airplanes and larger artillery, leaving the American CMIB […]
Are United States shipyards in trouble?
Here are some points from an interesting article, US Shipyards – Record Revenue At Firesale Valuations. Yesterday Bollinger Shipyards, the largest privately-owned and operated shipbuilder […]
Does EVMS serve any other purpose than to justify cost overruns?
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a complicated system for measuring baseline plans, actual costs, and technical progress on large, complex defense contracts. It evolved from […]
Tech bros vs. munitions at scale — what is helping Ukraine?
Here’s some good tweeting from Politico’s Lee Hudson on USD A&S Bill LaPlante’s keynote speech at the GMU-DAU Conference. A couple of the controversial points: […]
Data on tech transition success to SBIR Phase III in the Air Force
Here’s an article in the Defense Acquisition Review Journal, Innovation Transition Success: Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect. A SBIR project is considered successful when the product […]