Dan Ward

Articles from Contributor

Battleland

Afdanistan: After Action Report #1

“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 …

Battleland

Real Lessons From an Unreal Helicopter

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 …

Battleland

Why To Cancel A Pentagon Procurement Program

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:

Battleland

Concurrency: From the Inside

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 …

Battleland

Building Weapons: Where 70% Trumps 100%

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 …