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 […]
navy
FY 2023 shipbuilding plans-reality mismatch, analysis from CBO
Eric Labs at the Congressional Budget Office provided an interesting presentation at the 2023 Surface Navy Association’s national symposium. He finds that in every year […]
Impressive applications of additive manufacturing in defense
I’ve been pretty impressed with the number of application of additive manufacturing in defense. Here are 20 cool things going on from a mostly organic […]
The incredible decline of DoD execution flexibility has created the so-called “valley of death”
Here are some excerpts from our recent report at Mason GovCon, Execution Flexibility and Bridging the Valley of Death. Caution: Just how much the purse […]
Why it’s so hard to accelerate change as a junior officer
Here’s an insightful episode of the Defense Unicorns podcast with Artem Sherbinin, a Lieutenant in the US Navy who was integral to the first applying […]
Podcast: Risk taking, commercial tech, and the ARCI program with Bill Johnson
I was pleased to have Bill Johnson on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about how he helped bring commercial technology, open architecture, and continuous […]
Takeaways from the Navy’s revised (again) 30-year shipbuilding plan
The new Navy 30-year shipbuilding plan released April 18. Here’s an overview from Navy Times. Interestingly enough, the 30 year shipbuilding plan not only gets […]
FFG-62, DDG(X), and the future of surface combatants
Here’s RADM Mark Montgomery (ret.) talking with Vago Muradian about the new Constellation-class frigate: Historically, the Navy either changed the HME — the hull, mechanical, […]
Highlights from DoD’s 2021 report on China’s military power
The link is here, officially titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a […]
Resolving the cognitive dissonance in naval planning
The U.S. Navy now faces contradictory demands. On the one hand, Congress and others are telling it to heed the lessons of recent catastrophes and […]
CBO analysis of FY22 shipbuilding plan — fewer VLS cells distributed across more ships
Most cruisers and destroyers in today’s fleet carry between 90 and 122 VLS [vertical launch system] cells. Although the LCS does not carry the VLS, […]
Will the Navy’s battleforce have to shrink before it grows?
I’m a big believer right now that the United States Navy is probably gonna have to get smaller before it gets bigger. Right now the […]
There’s no free lunch in DoD organizational design
When Burke became chief of naval operations, the conflict between the Bureau of Ordnance and the Bureau of Aeronautics in the guided missile field, under […]
Great Power Competition with Richard Danzig
Richard Danzig joined me on a joint episode of the Acquisition Talk and China Talk podcasts to discuss US-China relations and military innovation. Richard is […]
Aircraft sustainment woes — And is the Air Force paying for Navy F-35 costs?
We found that of the 46 individual fixed- and rotary-wing types of aircraft we examined, only three met the service-established mission capable goal [80 percent] […]