GAO investigates why agency funds get cancelled
About 1.6 percent of the total available budget authority government-wide was cancelled from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2019, averaging $23.9 billion per year… […]
PPBE
What’s holding back the BattleLab idea?
The Air Force Battle Lab wasn’t actually a lab, it was a group of seven mission-specific labs. The battle lab existed [from 1997-2007] to pair adapted […]
Bold recommendations for Space Force acquisition
A viable path from start-up to a program of record has yet to be charted, and this remains a significant obstacle to entry… Creating a […]
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 […]
Podcast: PPBE Reform Panel 1 — Key Recommendations
For the first time in more than 50 years, a serious discussion is emerging on the foundations of defense budgeting and oversight. The “valley of […]
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 […]
Podcast: Affecting the strategic calculus with Michele Flournoy
Michele Flournoy joined Jordan Schneider and I on a crossover episode of the China Talk and Acquisition Talk podcasts. She is a former Undersecretary of […]
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 […]
STITCHES is getting stymied by the acquisition process
One government-owned program already exists that can enable previously incompatible networks and systems to exchange data without the need for common standards or open mission […]
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 […]
Eric Schmidt: This is how DoD ends up with a camel rather than a horse
Chairman Jack Reed: We were chatting before and reminiscing about days gone by. One of the relics of those days gone by is the defense […]
To compete with China, DoD requires a new paradigm for budgeting
The U.S. military’s lack of adaptability also puts DoD at a disadvantage against its primary competitor, China’s People’s Liberation Army. Unlike the Pentagon’s attempt to […]
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 […]
How financial planning came to rule the Pentagon
Here is the estimable Frederick Mosher in his 1954 classic discussing the rise of the program budget. A programmed budget, of course, is when money […]