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 […]
ppbs
Was Eisenhower’s military-industrial speech a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Eisenhower was going to call this new animal the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” which most would agree today is a pretty accurate description of the system since […]
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 […]
How Robert McNamara forced a policy of “program birth control” on the DoD
McNamara confirmed that each major weapon system development program and all basic and applied research programs would be examined at their inception as well as […]
How DoD policy-making became over-simplified
So the program budget may become, not an information system, but an approved five-year plan that serves as an instrument of control. This arrangement can […]
It’s not just my imagination — why funding is so important to tech progress
Here’s my last excerpt — I promise — from Jason Crawford’s excellent interview on the Venture Stories podcast, “Progress Studies in 2020.” Jason: I want […]
US policymakers must avoid the same mistakes with China that they did with the Soviets
US policy makers tend to have this view of Chinese technology policy as being long-range, strategic, and top-down. We know that the most successful parts […]
How McNamara’s top-down structure was flipped, but equally insidious forces prevailed
Taking the place of the Draft Presidential Memorandum was a new document called the Program Objective Memorandum (POM), through which the services could outline their […]
Financial managers: the “garrison in the conquered city” of the Pentagon?
The principal antagonist of the Joint Chiefs within the central defense organization was the Comptroller. Like the JCS, however, his office afforded an excellent illustration […]
Defense is too big, complex, dispersed to be managed from a single point
It has been suggested in some quarters that I am unwilling to decentralize decision-making authority. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I strongly believe […]
One of the last vestiges of central planning left on Earth
Here’s a humorous story shared by SecDef Donald Rumsfeld back in 2001: A man and a boy were walking down the street with a donkey […]
How should budget appropriations be reorganized?
Congress should reorganize appropriations titles (the “color of money”) to reflect the kind of life cycle a thing has, not what part of the life […]
Eisenhower’s appeal for increased efficiency and economy — the Single Manager Plan
Today, most of our defense funds are appropriated not to the Secretary of Defense but rather to the military departments. The Secretary of Defense and […]
Information is not transformation
Here are excerpts from Allen Schick’s excellent study on the performance budget (PB), also known as the program budget or the Planning-Programming-Budgeting (PPB) system. Remember, […]
Is the PPBE process the root cause of test & eval failures?
Again and again in briefings and conferences I am asked: “What are the major problems in T&E [Test & Evaluation]?” I think there is really […]