Podcast: USD R&E priorities for defense tech with Heidi Shyu
At the 2022 GMU-DAU annual conference, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD R&E) Heidi Shyu joined us to discuss her priorities, approaches, […]
Search Results for program budget
China’s weapons acquisition cycle 5-6x faster than the United States — “We are going to lose” if we don’t change
I would tell you anecdotally that China is still, after gains we’ve made in the last five years or so, about five to six times […]
Top researchers spend 50% of their time writing grants, how to fix it, and what it means for DoD
Nearly all academic researchers in the sciences rely on outside grants in order to pay salaries, buy their equipment, and run their experiments. Those grants […]
JADC2, PPBE, and the mission integration challenge
Here’s a bit from Gen. Hawk Carlisle (ret.) at a Hudson Institute event discussing JADC2/mission integration with Brian Clark and Dan Patt: How you design, […]
Getting out of an acquisition system based on predictability and compliance
Jared Serbu: You already have the problem of DoD having the build a budget that they are not going to execute on for another two […]
GAO investigates why agency funds get cancelled
About 1.6 percent of the total available budget authority government-wide was cancelled from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2019, averaging $23.9 billion per year… […]
How formal relational contracts can improve defense outcomes
When Dell originally selected FedEx, in 2005, to handle all aspects of its hardware return-and-repair process, the companies drew up a traditional supplier contract. The 100-page-plus […]
What’s left to be done after the Adaptive Acquisition Framework?
We need reform in our requirements processes and our budgets to allow for the same speed and agility the #AAF gives us. We have a framework for […]
Is DoD’s acquisition culture a threat to national security?
I also worry whether DoD’s culture is a threat to national security. Culture is the system of values and norms that govern behavior. How we […]
Should government be more mission-driven?
Only when it’s too late, only when we have a pandemic of the scale we have now, do we realize, uh oh, we have to […]
Podcast: PPBE Reform Panel 1 — Key Recommendations
For the first time in more than 50 years, a serious discussion is emerging on the foundations of defense budgeting and oversight. The “valley of […]
Why are there defense authorizations and appropriations?
The budgeting that Wildavsky, Caiden, and other scholars defined as “traditional” was designed to finance bureaus that provide a service to the public or, more […]
Reading List
Here is a shell of a defense acquisition history reading list. A lot more to add and organize. Of course, the first place to start […]
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 […]
How financial planning came to rule the Pentagon
Here is the estimable Frederick Mosher in his 1954 classic discussing the rise of the program budget. A programmed budget, of course, is when money […]