How does SpaceX do what it does? Extreme Ownership.
Here is Paul Cipparone discussing the company culture at SpaceX which revolves around an idea of extreme ownership: … if you own something (like a […]
Industry
AFWERX and innovation in the Air Force
Here’s a short bit from my feature on Government Matters: In 2019, they [AFWERX] brought in about $1 billion of matching funds. That’s something going […]
Are SBIR funds just too difficult to win for their worth?
To clarify the math, if it takes two man-months (~320 hours) to prepare a SBIR proposal, and you have a 20 percent chance of getting […]
David Packard argues against progress payments
At the present time the Department has about $10 billion tied up in progress Payments. This has increased from a level of about $4 billion […]
AI/ML business models
If you’re building just the infrastructure, just the tooling and the nuts and bolts, you look like a software company and somebody else deals with […]
What Palantir and Lockheed’s financials say about the GovCon business
Here’s a good piece from Simply Statistics on Palantir: At first glance it seems their doing pretty well. Their gross profit (Revenue – Cost of […]
Is SpaceX 50x more productive than usual government programs?
Here’s an example: five years ago, Elon Musk was working on his reusable rocket, the one that can take off and then land on the […]
Government should prepare domestic industry for black swan events
Covid-19 proved the United States was industrially unprepared for an emergency. Pre-pandemic N95 mask production stood at just 4 percent the peak requirement of 100 […]
Will the military aviation industry get nationalized? A battle for the industry’s future
“If our industrial base collapses any more, we’ll have to nationalize advanced aviation and maybe other parts of the Air Force that currently are competitive,” […]
More wish list items for space systems acquisition
In contrast to tanks, ships, and planes, a disproportionate share of the life-cycle cost in space acquisition is in the research and development phase. Indeed, […]
How often do incumbent contractors win the recompete?
Companies business projections — their pipeline for future business — is based on 100% certainty that we’re going to win the same work again and […]
The DoD must start contracting for excellence
To encourage modern technology development, contracts should account for development that begins with a vision and proceeds with sprints. These contracts should have quantifiable outcomes […]
The importance of sales & marketing in commercial go-to-market
Let’s say you’re at $50 million ARR [annual recurring revenue] and your peer group on average grows at 80 percent. That means your peer group […]
Without rivalrous competition, we are gullible as to what weapon systems work
Just as our distant ancestors were too gullible (factually, if not strategically) about their sources of knowledge on the physical world around them, we today […]
OTAs twice as big as SBIRs, but how are they being used?
In 2018 and 2019, $11.4 billion was spent through [Other Transactions Authority] OTAs, over twice as much as was spent on [Small Business Innovation Research] […]