If Congress doesn’t make multi-billion dollar weapon decisions, who should?
Senator Karl Mundt expressed it in hearings on PPBS conducted in 1967: We used to face the question: “How much should we spend for a […]
congress
Navy’s plan for managing it’s family of autonomous maritime systems
The Rapid Autonomy Integration Lab (RAIL) is an effort out of the service’s unmanned maritime systems program office… “The vision for the RAIL is that […]
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 […]
Podcast: PPBE Reform Panel 2 — From Ideas to Implementation
In this second discussion on the future of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting-Execution (PPBE) process, Center for Government Contracting executive director Jerry McGinn hosts a distinguished panel including: […]
Appropriations, reprogramming, and the origins of Congressional control
Congress controls the movement of funds between program elements, such as between two space development programs (say, GPS Space Segment and GPS Follow on). For […]
Redefining military readiness for Great Power Competition
Under the current readiness paradigm, our answer to “what needs to be ready?” is “the stuff we have today.” However, as we observed earlier, the […]
General Hinote: We ought to reimagine budgeting and oversight
That sector is going so fast that I don’t know what the specific solution set might look like in 2027 when we’re going to be […]
Is Congress ready to rethink DoD oversight?
Dan Patt: Yeah. Speaking of a fresh look, we found it fascinating that in your report, you recommend changes to the budget and appropriations process to […]
Jacques Gansler’s take on congressional micromanagement
Congress has not in recent years demonstrated a willingness to delegate fiscal authority to operating managers in the DOD. On the contrary, Congress has tended […]
Can the DoD and Congress embrace new ways of buying software?
Software collapses the division between design and manufacture. Once a software program is designed through coding, it can be almost instantaneously manufactured through compiling. Freed […]
Are Appropriators blocking defense transformation?
I recommend reading a nice Breaking Defense article, Senate Appropriators Cut R&D To Buy More Weapons. The SAC-D recommended that the Air Force and Navy […]
Some problems with the Future of Defense Task Force report
I. Using the Manhattan Project as a model, the United States must undertake and win the artificial intelligence race by leading in the invention and […]
Air Force contracting chief talks budget reform, Covid-19, and great power competition
This applies to Covid, it applies to emergencies and to great power competition: We have got to figure out a way to let Congress oversee […]
The extreme pain of DoD reprogramming
The length of time between the start of budget planning and execution strains any organization’s predictive capabilities. The process effectively asks the individuals and organization […]
Can the military’s operating system for war succeed at scale?
Anduril is best known for supplying surveillance towers and software used to watch over the US-Mexico border and some US bases. Now, it is retooling the software […]