Acquisition Headlines
“We had one underlying element of comfort and reassurance during the war,” Lockheed’s president wrote. “We knew we’d get paid for anything we built.” The […]
Search Results for program budget
What causes of corporate welfare in the defense industry?
In a previous post, I discussed how it is critical to separate the idea of corporate welfare from efficient organizational design. In this post, I […]
Paul Romer on culture and technology: lessons for acquisition
Do you think that the distinction between growth at the frontier and catch up growth is always so well defined? So if you think about China, they seem to have innovations: how quickly they can build things; they have an autocratic government, but they’ve managed to keep reasonable stability and the public on board. Isn’t that kind of innovation like a technological innovation and their growth in a way is at some other frontier rather than being just catch up?
How to save $1 trillion on defense spending
I was recently in an interesting round-table discussion where one gentleman was talking about a plan to cut $1 trillion of defense spending over ten years. He said there was interest on this subject from both the progressive left and the deficit hawk right. But how would you do it?
Sylvain Lenfle answers questions on Innovation Management
Here’s a correspondence with Sylvain Lenfle, professor of innovation management: Eric: Though I don’t want to take too much of your time, I would like to […]
The “Valley of Death” and the PPBS in defense technology transition
DARPA and the service research labs achieve amazing results. Have you heard about electronics that will physically vanish on command to prevent adversaries from copying our […]
Remember the days when Congress didn’t earmark defense projects?
His business provided jobs in Dorsey’s district, and jobs were scarce. Pitcairn was delighted when Dorsey introduced a bill to provide $2 million to the […]
Defense Acquisition as a Cost Disease Sector: What’s the Evidence?
At any given time, you will have sectors where demand is growing faster than productivity (think of health care and education) and other sectors where […]
Critiques of the DOD requirements process
A major part of the military’s struggle to keep up with, much less stay ahead of, global and technological change lies in its requirements process […]
Counterarguments to Acquisition Reform
I’m happy to announce that I’m an Emergent Ventures fellow! I start with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University on October 22. My venture […]
Eric Lofgren
Hi! I’m Eric Lofgren, and I created the Acquisition Talk blog and podcast in October 2018 to advocate for management principles in the Department of […]
Acquisition Talk signing off… for now. Thank you!
It’s been a wonderful experience writing on this blog and podcasting about defense acquisition since October 2018. I’ve published over 1,400 blog posts and 160 […]
Are munitions really “bill payers” for the rest of defense?
One of the lines often heard is that munitions accounts are “bill payers” for other lines, particularly weapons platforms like vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Former […]
Acquisition headlines (2/6 – 2/12/2023)
DoD procurement of space tech is evolving, but pace of change is slow. (Space News) “There is a major push at high levels of the […]