Important decisions are not made the way economic textbooks teach us
Here’s a nice exchange between Agnes Callard and Russ Roberts on EconTalk. Remember — the defense resource allocation process, the PPBE, was explicitly created on […]
william roper
A new trajectory for the digital century series aircraft program?
The original Century Series was intended to master the critical emerging technologies of its time: revolutionary improvements in hardware for jet propulsion and supersonic flight, which were central […]
Will the MQ-9 follow the digital century-series pattern?
The Air Force is looking for a replacement to the stalwart MQ-9 Reaper and intends to explore options ranging from commercial drones built by emerging tech […]
Space Force may have significant autonomy, except in the budget process
The program acquisition strategies developed under a dedicated Space Force SAE [service acquisition executive] will then get fed into the planning, programming, budgeting and execution […]
How shared equipment dramatically lowers barriers to deep tech R&D
In the same way that AWS dramatically lowered the bar to start a software company, you’re seeing the same thing of multiple labs-as-a-service companies that […]
Podcast: Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) on mosaic warfare, strategy, and the digital century series
I was please to speak with Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) on the Acquisition Talk podcast. He is currently Dean at the Mitchell Institute for […]
Podcast: Andrew Hunter on software-defined, hardware-based adaptable systems
Andrew Hunter, director of the defense-industrial group at CSIS, joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss a set of papers on adaptable systems, […]
Is the funding process the last unresolved piece of acquisition reform?
Bernie Skoch: As anyone whose spent time in the five sided house of pleasure can tell you, there’s a programming process and there’s a budgeting […]
William Roper is saying all the right things on defense innovation
What we really have to do in acquisition is shift the culture that is solely focused on the balance sheet — on cost — and […]
DOD pays a 3,233% overhead rate, but was it a bad deal?
The U.S. Air Force, faced with an aging aircraft fleet, is turning to 3D printing to dramatically cut down the time and cost of manufacturing […]
Air Force pitch day, what’s next?
On March 6-7, we held our inaugural Air Force Pitch Day in New York. We invited small businesses from across the country to pitch their […]