France finds value in acquisition expertise
Here are some findings from a 1989 Congressional study on French and British acquisition policies: Armament Engineers complete their seven year educational program at about […]
Management
Why the zero-based budget is not effective
Following in the steps of the Army, which did a “night court” deep-dive look at its budget to identify about $25 billion in savings to apply towards […]
Program managers subjected to luck, not accountability
Program managers are sometimes said to have the most important job in the Department of Defense, but there is also another faction that views the […]
What worked in Germany’s WWII Air Force?
Here is Admiral Rickover providing insight into innovative organizations: Admiral RICKOVER. This group is responsible for the design, the development, and the construction and operation […]
What do we mean by big “A” and little “a” in Acquisition?
Every weapon system in the U.S. arsenal is intended to satisfy a specific military need (often referred to as a requirement), must be paid for […]
Ship maintenance required some legal creativity under CRs
Here’s the Navy getting “legally creative” with contracts to keep ship maintenance on track back in 2017: The Navy has gotten creative in dealing with […]
Rumbles on the Columbia-class submarine
Current Navy plans call for construction on the first of 12 Columbia-class nuclear-armed submarines to begin in 2021, with an overall price tag of $128 billion. But […]
David Packard’s impact on defense acquisition
This paper contends that the study of David Packard, the co-founder of electronics firm giant Hewlett-Packard and one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, […]
Cost growth and profitability are hard to pin down
The analysis on the correlation between the lead branch of military service responsible for MDAPs and cost growth patterns reveals that programs led by the […]
Loonshots, moonshots, and management
Sufi Bahcall has a new book out called Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. He was […]
Why document requirements?
There were two basic problems. First, the documentation was not timely; it was generally written during or after the development cycle. In these times of […]
Implications of the Space Development Agency
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday [March 12, 2019] officially established the Space Development Agency as a separate organization within the Department of Defense […]
The pitfalls of Army culture on talent management
Probably the first cultural line of defense against talent reform — or for that matter, any transformational change — is the perspective that dictates: if it’s […]
Can Israeli defense management help guide the U.S.?
For the Pentagon, developing and deploying a major new system like this can take more than a decade. By contrast, the Israel Defense Ministry gave […]
Is requirements stability the problem?
Question: We all know that what drives our cost estimates is not better CERs, or better data bases, or better mathematics, or better communications. In my […]