A memo recently went out to the military’s technology and contracting community, encouraging them to “request requirements relief” in situations where the cost of satisfying a requirement exceeds the benefit. This guidance …
Afghanistan
“Watch this,” said my Irish Army friend “Seamus” as a stream of Afghan government officials left the International Security Assistance Force Headquarters building and walked through the Kabul night towards their armored Toyota Land Cruisers. They had just concluded a dinner meeting with International Security Assistance Force …
Procurement
The Army’s RAH-66 Comanche helicopter was going to be totally awesome, dude. This super-stealthy light attack helicopter, bristling with advanced sensors and communication gear, was going to perform loads of armed …
Procurement
There are basically three reasons to cancel an acquisition program. In no particular order, the reasons are:
We can’t afford it.
We don’t need it.
It doesn’t work.
This means Defense Department leaders have to continually ask three important questions throughout the development of a new military system:
Procurement
There’s a lot of criticism these days of a practice called concurrency, an engineering approach the DoD implemented a reform or two ago. Concurrency was supposed to help move things to the field faster. Unfortunately, like many …
Procurement
Problems within the defense acquisition business are widely known and thoroughly documented, so the last thing I want to write is yet another article highlighting yet another failure. Been there, done that. Fortunately, there is …
Procurement
There’s a lot of talk these days about reducing the cost of military technology projects. The most intelligent conversations on this topic inevitably converge on the idea of building the proverbial “70% solution.” These …
