Precision guided munitions pruduction is totally inadequate
The Pentagon is rebalancing its portfolio of PGMs away from short-range weapons used for counterterrorism operations toward long-range weapons that can be fired from standoff […]
industrial base
Defense industry consolidation geared up well before the “Last Supper”
The end of the Cold War and the “Last Supper,” where defense officials actively encouraged mergers between contracts, are often credited with the major consolidation […]
What’s missing from analysis of competition in the defense industry?
Since the 1990s, the defense sector has consolidated substantially, transitioning from 51 to 5 aerospace and defense prime contractors. As a result, DoD is increasingly […]
Senate leaders call for more predictability in shipbuilding, but is that the wrong lever?
Since the 1960s, 14 U.S. shipyards that construct ships for the Navy have closed, and three have left the defense industry. Only one new shipyard has […]
Markets rewarded defense industry consolidation and exit well before the “last supper”
Of course defense companies start consolidating after World War II, and then again in the 1970s after the Vietnam War. Many observers see industrial consolidation […]
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 […]
Government should prepare domestic industry for black swan events
Covid-19 proved the United States was industrially unprepared for an emergency. Pre-pandemic N95 mask production stood at just 4 percent the peak requirement of 100 […]
Gen. Goldfein on interacting with Congress and the Industrial Base
You can’t skip the step of getting the data right because data is the currency of future operations. This is a tough conversation to have, […]
Why have America’s best technologists and investors turned away from defense?
When the Cold War ended, there were 107 major defense firms. By the end of the 1990s, there were five. And since then, the middle […]
Podcast: Andrew Hunter on software-defined, hardware-based adaptable systems
Andrew Hunter, director of the defense-industrial group at CSIS, joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss a set of papers on adaptable systems, […]
Should companies doing large and complex R&D not perform production on their designs?
A fairly common pattern in the past and the present has been the carrying out of development even of a fairly exploratory nature by the […]
Is the DOD trusted capital marketplace about China or emerging tech?
To help bolster the industrial base against potential adversaries, the Defense Department is planning to kick-start its “Trusted Capital Marketplace” project this fall, said the […]
Why Raytheon and UTC don’t want to build weapons platforms
Neither company [Raytheon nor UTC] works as a platform producer, eschewing the production of aircraft or ground vehicles and instead focusing on the technology that […]
FFG(X) update — and then there were four
The FFG(X) program is a Navy program to build a class of 20 guided-missile frigates (FFGs). The Navy wants to procure the first FFG(X) in […]
Aerospace work isn’t too big and complex for new entrants
A significant gap has developed between DoD’s view of industry as an always-ready supplier of military capabilities and how industry actually makes decisions on what […]