Podcast: Getting more for our defense dollars with Fred Bartels and Philip Candreva
I was pleased to be invited for a discussion with Philip Candreva and Frederico Bartels hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Philip is a senior lecturer […]
PPBE reform
The “valley of death” is but one symptom of the broader governance problems found in PPBE
The PPBE was really a revolutionary and radical idea. One of the things it was trying to do was reduce duplication and overlap. You might […]
Podcast: The political-economy of defense with Russell Rumbaugh
I was pleased to have Russell Rumbaugh join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss some of the most fundamental issues facing defense management. […]
Mission-based budgets, getting real oversight, and DoD transformation
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA): I’m honestly a little bit more on the side of we need to blow up the whole system here because the […]
Mac Thornberry backs NSCAI recommendations on budget reform
Mac Thornberry is on point in his article, How Congress must reform its budget process to compete against China in AI: The Biden administration’s 2022 budget proposal includes […]
JADC2 requires budget flexibility, LTG Dennis Crall says
We live with a set of acquisition rules as far as pace goes that probably fit the Cold War era very well. When you look […]
Two views of defense budget reform
The combination of congressional limitations and DOD inflexibility undermine any effort to transfer funds rapidly, from a hi-tech program that appears to be going nowhere […]
Make 2021 the year of defense budget reform!
Three excellent reports addressing defense budget reform were released between February 25 and March 8, 2021: Competing in Time: Ensuring Capability Advantage and Mission Success […]
Bob Work on the role of the JAIC and PPBE reform to success of AI/ML
The department, we think, must ensure it has in place the resources processes and organizations to enable AI innovation. The department needs to establish a […]
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 can the Pentagon escape its Soviet-style acquisition system?
DoD’s FY21 President’s Budget Request organizes major weapon systems via nine Mission Area Categories (MACs), which can also be viewed as Strategic Capabilities (Figure 4). These provide […]
China iterates twice as fast through military development and fielding cycles
In 2018, Mike Griffin, the first Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, disclosed an innovation time comparison that it takes the US on average sixteen […]
Why are there defense authorizations and appropriations?
The budgeting that Wildavsky, Caiden, and other scholars defined as “traditional” was designed to finance bureaus that provide a service to the public or, more […]