Eric Schmidt: This is how DoD ends up with a camel rather than a horse
Chairman Jack Reed: We were chatting before and reminiscing about days gone by. One of the relics of those days gone by is the defense […]
Management
To compete with China, DoD requires a new paradigm for budgeting
The U.S. military’s lack of adaptability also puts DoD at a disadvantage against its primary competitor, China’s People’s Liberation Army. Unlike the Pentagon’s attempt to […]
Sustainment planning gets an overhaul in FY21 NDAA
Section 802 of the FY 2021 NDAA is called “Improving planning, execution, and oversight of life cycle sustainment activities,” but really it has dramatic effect […]
Management by CDRLs leads to desk engineering
What is a CDRL? It stands for Contract Data Requirements List (CDRL), but in “government-speak” a CDRL is shorthand for any contractually mandated documentation (reports, […]
The reason bureaucratic planning doesn’t resolve weapons risk
Navy leaders have known for a very long time about what chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi called “tacit knowledge,” or knowledge that is difficult to […]
How Jeff Bezos created a business culture of mission command by replacing PowerPoint with narratives
I’d start by going back in time and place you where Jeff Bezos was when all entrepreneurs started out. At the beginning, Jeff worked out […]
DHS, DoD, and revisiting the valley of death
The Army has spent millions of dollars with goTenna, but the service cannot give the company one of the most important things for a small […]
Defense industrial strategy for the Biden administration
The fundamental challenge I see for the Biden administration is balancing reshoring versus Buy America. The Buy America approach is problematic when it comes to […]
Some insight into the Chinese defense industry
China’s defense industry itself has also undergone extraordinary changes since the mid-1990s. Originally established as industrial ministries in 1950, over the course of four decades […]
On the question of planning in agile development
There are many misconceptions organizations fall prey to as they move from traditional predictive project management practices to agile product delivery practices. Some of these […]
Cost-per-desired-effect and the F-35 vs F-15EX debate
Let me give you one specific example. The leverage provided by stealth aircraft in the First Gulf War is fully illustrated by this particular attack. […]
DoD oversight is intimately linked with appropriations structure
… it is time to modernize the way the DoD is resourced with simpler, responsive and flexible appropriations that meet congressional oversight requirements. The DoD […]
Should the Marines treat equipment like the banks treat your money?
We have too much equipment, and sustaining it consumes enormous volumes of resources. We don’t have enough mechanics in the Fleet to maintain the equipment, […]
Moving from opinion-based to evidence-based requirements
Business models for developing technologies for a profit are end-to-end solutions that cannot be adopted by the Army acquisition enterprise for several reasons, not the […]
DHS PIL finds oral presentations not working as expected in GovCon
One of the two main innovation ideas is to use “advisory downselects” to give offerors information prior to a full-blown proposal about whether they are […]