What Palantir and Lockheed’s financials say about the GovCon business
Here’s a good piece from Simply Statistics on Palantir: At first glance it seems their doing pretty well. Their gross profit (Revenue – Cost of […]
requirements
Agile development isn’t new to defense, it was just cast out by the “whiz kids”
It seems clear that the reciprocity of innovation and requirement is unusually important during the period when demonstrations of feasibility are being attempted. The character […]
Podcast: Revamping the way we think about defense with Steve Blank
Steve Blank joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the urgency of defense innovation in a world of authoritarian peer competitors. Steve is […]
Will bureaucracy descend on the Air Force ABMS program?
The Air Force’s ABMS is a family of systems intended to replace the command and control capabilities of aging legacy programs and develop a network […]
Podcast: All about Other Transactions Authority with Richard Dunn
In this episode of the Acquisition Talk podcast, I speak with Richard Dunn about commercial contracting, and in particular, Other Transactions Authority (OTAs). He is […]
Who’s in charge of US military strategy?
What’s the role of the services these days compared to World War II? In World War II, George Marshall and Hap Arnold on the Army […]
Time to award a defense contract and the growth of regulation
In 1947, the “Bible” of the nation’s military contractors—Armed Forces Procurement Regulation—was a slim volume of about 100 to 125 pages long. Today, the A.F.P.R., […]
Are better requirements the answer to acquisition?
Here are some excellent insights from the Army Materiel Acquisition Review Committee’s 1974 report. Might sound like a lot of the arguments going on today […]