The damage to R&D caused by bureaucrats planning the creative process
Here’s a letter from Bill McClean, chief at Navy’s China Lake and led the Sidewinder development, to the deputy chief of Naval Operations: We find […]
requirements-pull
DoD processes increase complexity, cost at the expense of reliability
The prospect of technological advances still persuades planners and decisionmakers to seek increased performance, greater precision, added function capability, and thus more complexity, all of […]
Lessons for Today: Opposition to ballistic missiles in the 1940s/50s
There was, without question, deep and sincere opposition to the accelerated development of ballistic missiles. It was chiefly effective in the years between 1950 and […]
Explaining the valley of death in defense technology
I’m going to walk though some an excellent set of slides on the “valley of death” problem from Gary Hagan over at DAU. Let’s start […]
Differing opinions of requirements: how fixed should they be ahead of prototyping?
Here is the opinion of the Requirements & Concepts Panel for the Army Materiel Acquisition Review Committee (AMARC) of 1974: In the opinion of our […]
Out with the heel-to-toe acquisition process, in with DevOps
We realized it was time to stop the heel-to-toe acquisition process of developing a concept and then going to Combats Development to develop a requirement, […]
Defense programs start with the build process, not exploratory developments
The DoD does not have an effective process for doing a thorough exploration of alternative technologies and concepts. Exploration is usually done only as a […]
How the DOD failed to follow up on hypersonics decades ago
The key technology for hypersonic air-breathing propulsion at higher flight Mach numbers is the supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet). In this device, injection of hydrogen fuel […]
I beseech you, Norm Augustine, to think it possible you be mistaken
Defense acquisition in the United States is quite unique. It is a monopsony that has monopolies embedded within it. People’s lives — even our nation’s […]
Why the zero-based budget is not effective
Following in the steps of the Army, which did a “night court” deep-dive look at its budget to identify about $25 billion in savings to apply towards […]
Software generates requirements that pulls hardware into the future
Software is very different. It’s not, “I’m going to do a new mode of production that’s going to do more with less.” It’s, “I’m going […]
Battista on the ill-conceived OMB Circular A-109
We join an interesting conversation between Mr. Battista, a Pentagon watchdog and test advocate, and Representative Sheley. They are discussing the recent roll-out of OMB […]