Defense
What’s Up with DoD’s Faux Contracting Competitions?
I like the word faux. It means imitation, artificial, even fake. It is rare to be able to use a word like faux in a blog focused on national security. So when the opportunity arises, I have to take it. The Department of Defense (DoD) appears to be enga ...
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Is Cooking Up A Revolution In Drone Technology (From Forbes)
Drones have become the signature combat system in America's fight against terrorism. On a typical day, the Air Force's fleet of Predators and Reapers fly a thousand hours over places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they can't fly when the w ...
Air Force’s Plan To Open Up Major Platform Upgrade Market Carries Risks
The Department of Defense sits uncomfortably on the horns of an acquisition dilemma. It wants to reduce costs and time lines associated with acquisition of weapons systems, both new acquisitions and upgrades, while simultaneously preserving the unparal ...
A Nuclear Triad Is Far Superior To A Dyad Or Monad
Last month, Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, noted that the nuclear force modernization budget is unaffordable based on current forecasted defense funds. In response to dwindling resources, some sugge ...
Five Key Facts Ex-Im Bank Critics Don’t Seem To Know (From Forbes)
There's nothing wrong with American exceptionalism, as long as it doesn't become an excuse for ignorance. In the case of the ideological crusade to destroy the Export-Import Bank, though, it has. Virtually everything critics say about the bank on clo ...
Is The Air Force Heading For An FCS-Class Debacle On EELV?
Some of you must remember the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS), the massive program that was going to develop and deploy new combat brigades built around a system of some 18 brand new manned and unmanned air and ground platforms with state-of-the-art ...
The Plan: Raytheon’s Tom Kennedy Is Growing A Global Technology Leader (From Forbes)
Raytheon Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Dr. Thomas A. Kennedy is just like the company where he has spent much of his adult life: focused. And what he's focused on right now is how to make the nation's third-biggest defense contractor the glob ...
How the Pentagon’s Acquisition System Disincentivizes Business
Private companies are in business to make money. That is their basic incentive. If they make money they can pay their workers, buy materials, continue to manufacture and sell products, invest in R&D on new or improved processes and products, pay ba ...
Churchill Ascends To Prime Minister: 75th Anniversary
Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of Winston Churchill taking power as Prime Minister of Britain (May 10, 1940) and, perhaps, saving Western Civilization from sliding into darkness. 20-20 hindsight is often the norm when we read history, and it is onl ...
Five Signs Afghanistan Is Becoming An American Success Story (From Forbes)
Fourteen years into a frustrating counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its 40-odd coalition partners seem to have made major progress in stabilizing the war-torn country. Afghan security forces, who now have the lead in protecting t ...