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 […]
readiness
Aircraft availability and flying hours have been plummeting since 2000
The CBO has a nice, short paper on aircraft availability rates in the Air Force and Navy. Check out the charts. There’s been a general […]
Podcast: Air Force fighters now and into the future with Mike Benitez
Mike Benitez joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about the current state and future of the Air Force fighter inventory. He discusses the […]
Redefining military readiness for Great Power Competition
Under the current readiness paradigm, our answer to “what needs to be ready?” is “the stuff we have today.” However, as we observed earlier, the […]
Ratio of sustainment to acquisition costs — is modernization being crowded out?
The graph shows the four phases of a program’s cost over its lifetime: research and development (R&D), procurement, O&S, and disposal, with O&S considered the […]
What Adm. Moran said about bystanders and trust before he withdrew from CNO
Admiral William Moran will not be the next Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) because he maintained a friendship with a Navy Commander who sexually harassed […]
B-1B bomber readiness nears 16 percent
The U.S. Air Force is slacking when it comes to the B-1 Lancer fleet, with less than ten operational units out of a total number […]