How were projects selected for the APFIT fund to field innovative tech?
The Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) fund was one of the bright spots from FY 2022. It provided $100 million to […]
comptroller
Podcast: Managing Portfolios to Bridge DoD’s Valley of Death
I hosted a panel event with the the newly named Baroni Center for Government Contracting to discuss our recent report on how funding flexibility can […]
Podcast: Strategic planning and digital transformation with John Whitley
I was pleased to have the John Whitley join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss digital transformation, the potential for “as a service” […]
How will inflation impact military budgets, capabilities? It’s not straight-forward…
Personnel costs accounted for 38% of the Army’s fiscal year 2022 budget request, compared with 27% for the Navy and 21% for the Air Force, […]
Here are the first picks on the PPBE Reform Commission
There seems to be broad agreement among most stakeholders the US needs “better, faster, affordable” development and acquisition of emerging technologies that will drive competitive […]
You can’t make decisions based on 40,000 pages of paper, McNamara was wrong
MCNEIL: … the budget system got pretty complicated under [Robert] McNamara. It took them years to wake up to the fact that he was not […]
What are the prerequisites to defense budget reform?
Here’s a snippet from Christopher O’Donnell, acting ASD(Acquisition) at the 2021 GMU/DAU conference: What the MTA has shown is that the JCIDS process and the […]
PPBE reform event: an imperative for winning the great power competition
… in my mind, I equate planning and budgeting and consider the terms almost synonymous, the budget being simply a quantitative expression of operating plans. […]
How Robert McNamara forced a policy of “program birth control” on the DoD
McNamara confirmed that each major weapon system development program and all basic and applied research programs would be examined at their inception as well as […]
Financial managers: the “garrison in the conquered city” of the Pentagon?
The principal antagonist of the Joint Chiefs within the central defense organization was the Comptroller. Like the JCS, however, his office afforded an excellent illustration […]
DOD spent $413 million on the FY2018 audit
The DoD’s discretionary spending is almost half of the total U.S. Government’s discretionary funding. In addition, the DoD owns the majority of the U.S Government’s […]