Data: How DoD reprogramming has changed (1961 – 2019)
I talk a lot about budget portfolios and PPBE reform on this blog. Today’s excessive detail in the defense budget requires long planning timelines. By […]
PPBE reform
PPBE’s negative impact on innovation also extends to contracting
Here’s a slice from my new article in the May 2022 edition of NCMA’s Contract Management Magazine, How Defense Budgeting Stymies Innovation (gated). Iteration and […]
Upcoming acquisition events to join!
A couple upcoming events to be aware of, hope to see you there! Acquisition Next: Artificial Intelligence Symposium May 5, 8:30pm – 2:30pm ET In […]
Congress needs introspection for PPBE Reform to work, for DoD to innovate at scale
There are several ways in which Congress is a major impediment to an improved defense investment process. First, congressional committees are loath to shed their ability […]
Should organization follow programs, or the other way around? Issues in PPBE reform
The main points which will be stressed in the succeeding paragraphs are: first, that PPBS has been and is being oversold and, in some ways, […]
When acquisition theory runs into funding realities
In unmanned maritime systems, the Navy’s learning curve and operational experience is rapidly accelerating… For example, Task Force 59 is challenging the process in which […]
How weapons become overoptimized to the point they become brittle
Here is Roland McKean, one of the founders of the DoD’s Planning-Programming-Budgeting system, who later in the 1960s saw the errors of what he helped […]
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 […]
Three steps to help defense innovation break free from its shackles
Jerry McGinn and I provide three recommendations for the congressional commission on PPBE reform in a Defense News article: Be bold in vision. The DoD’s industrial-age […]
The state of defense acquisition as 2021 draws to a close
Previously, I discussed the messaging from the Reagan National Defense Forum that “Time is running out with Silicon Valley.” It was intimated that major acquisition […]
All that acquisition reform, and scaling programs still looks like the old system
When we think of alternative acquisition, that tends to be other-transaction authority and middle-tier acquisition. For [Jonathan] Etherton, these prototyping mechanisms amount to a […]
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 […]
Is software showing the cracks in DoD’s industrial age system?
Here are some excerpts from a good long-form article from from Lauren Williams at FCW, Why DOD is so bad at buying software: It can […]
We’re never going to beat China with that kind of oversight!
Here is a Air Force head of contracting authority Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt discussing an interesting new proposal: [Line of Effort] 3 is called “owning […]
Special economic zones and PPBE reform for the Department of Defense
It is one of history’s great ironies that a major factor in defeating Soviet communism was one of the largest centrally planned economies in the […]