The need to rebalance DoD spending toward Procurement to deter China
The excellent Pete Modigliani had an interesting post recently on the proportion of RDT&E and Procurement in defense budgets. In the 1980s, Procurement was nearly […]
RDT&E
How metrics led to the deprioritization of delivering capability: DoD obligation rates
Here’s a slice of a paper from Col. Jesse Marsalis at National Defense University: The Negative Impacts of the Benchmarks. The benchmarks in question of […]
Here’s how much in-house R&D the military services did in the 1960s
That was from a congressional hearing in July 1961.* I’m actually somewhat surprised that the Air Force performed upwards of 20 percent of their RDT&E […]
Is DoD starting to bridge the valley of death?
… funding for Advanced Components Development and Prototypes (6.4 funding) has increased from 20.4% of total RDT&E funding in 2012 to 30.2% in the enacted […]
Should R&D and Procurement be separated or paired together?
Basically research and procurement are incompatible. New developments are upsetting to procurement standards and procurement schedules. A procurement group is under the constant urge to […]
There is no spoon: A look into Will Roper’s new digital acquisition reality
As background, we’re all aware U.S. military aviation has been collapsing for nearly 40 years. In the 1950s, over a dozen companies built spiraling supersonic […]
Throw out the linear model of innovation for tinkering at the frontiers
One of the posts I wrote was a case study of the transistor. The transistor was invested at Bell Labs in the semiconductor research group. […]
JAIC director Shanahan on how to build trust with Congress
I have struggled with this at the JAIC going up to the Hill and saying, ‘You know, you’re asking for a level of detail in […]