Acquisition Talk

In this final episode of Programmed to Fail, we explore the true importance of reforming the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution process in the Department of Defense. Some may say that it is only a poor craftsman who blames his tools, that it is deficiencies in the workforce rather than problems of the acquisition and budgeting systems that are holding weapons innovation back. But certainly, it is not the lack of quality and drive in the people that has held North Korea back relative to their neighbors in South Korea, or that has stymied the growth of nations in the former Soviet Union. It was the ideologies of the political economy thrust upon the people that so devastated their culture. The PPBE is a similarly radical break from American values and traditions that has left good people burdened by a bad process. No longer can the defense acquisition workforce take joy in their hefty responsibility. No longer can the workforce see themselves in their work. They are tossed about in a system too large for them to affect, and the workforce is expected to be like a caretaker driving a train down pre-set tracks, rather than an explorer, a creator, and a builder with intrinsic value. Fulfilling individual desires to contribute to national security will more rapidly accelerate our common security than any top-down optimization and 30-year lifecycle plan. The problem is how large groups of people can be coordinated to achieve an end that is beyond the comprehension of any small group or plan. That is what we will explore in this final chapter of Programmed to Fail. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

In this episode of Programmed to Fail, we explore how accounting costs do not reveal the value being generated in the production process and cannot be used, on their own, as a guide for specific choices. Cost is not an objective reality, particularly to those who know the vagaries of cost accounting. Instead, our view of cost depends on subjective use value and is related to the term opportunity cost, or the next-best choice foregone. This chapter reveals that for defense acquisition to truly understand weapons value and leverage the power of commercial markets, it needs to shift away from its obsession with financial metrics. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

In this episode of the Acquisition Talk podcast, Dorothy Engelhart joins me to discuss unmanned surface and underwater vessel development in the United States Navy. Dorothy is the Director of Unmanned Systems in the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for ships, and she has been in this role since 2015. Before that, she was a senior acquisition manager for Marine Corps MDAPs, and had over 20 years of experience in NAVAIR as well as experience on the Hill. 1:04 - Rundown of the unmanned portfolio 2:40 - Enabling technologies vs. Program of Record 4:45 - Timeline to fielding USVs and UUVs 7:00 - Owning the data for autonomy 11:10 - Capability over time curves and USV requirements 15:00 - USV Concept of operations 19:30 - Industry's readiness for USV production 27:40 - Agile funding and acquisition authorities 35:00 - Speed of adoption in Turkey and other nations 37:30 - "As a service" business model 41:50 - Navy's autonomy roadmap 45:00 - Total cost of ownership 49:40 - The Disruptor newsletter This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

In this episode of Programmed to Fail, we discuss the integral role of rivalrous competition in the discovery of knowledge and the growth of technology. It finds that policy maker's dreams about single best plans and pre-coordinating service behavior to avoid duplication, competition, and overlap is a false economy, one that stamps out the true creative potential of the American people and harms national security. Competition not only regulates incentives by prospect of punishment and reward. Just as importantly, the competitive process solves critical problems of knowledge. In fact, competition is most important under the presence of uncertainty. Planners cannot know what is optimal outside the process in which alternative courses of action are developed, brought into competition, and evaluated. Friedrich Hayek described how “In sporting events, examinations, the awarding of government contracts, or the bestowal of prizes for poems, not to mention science, it would be patently absurd to sponsor a contest if we knew in advance who the winner would be.” The information on which sports team performs better, or which project plan provides the most value, is only discovered in the process of competition. Otherwise, the rivalry is wasteful if one could reliably pre-determine the winner. Dynamic competition results in the emergence of complex patterns of economic behavior, and consequently, technological growth. It is very different from the type of competition taught in economic textbooks or practiced in defense management. In economics, we are told about “perfect” competition, a concept which relies on bizarre assumptions of complete information and product homogeneity. In defense, we are told that contracts are awarded “competitively,” even when solutions are pre-specified and the contractors who buy-in get bailed-out. While officials in the Department of Defense have often talked about the benefits of competition, the policies they’ve pursued continually run counter to the one real condition necessary for competitive forces to occur: free entry. Contrary to traditional wisdom, the history of defense acquisition has shown that the advertisement and open bid process does not provide assurance of free entry. When government is the only buyer, free entry requires an organization designed for pluralism. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, https://AcquisitionTalk.com. In this chapter of Programmed to Fail, we dive into how complex order in the real world emerges from simple and iterative systems of nonlinear interactions. The umbrella term of complex adaptive systems is used to describe self-organizing systems of emergent order that adapt to an uncertain environment. While these properties are not in general desirable for weapon systems that humans use in the field, they are certainly desirable properties for the defense acquisition system as much as they are for market economies. In this chapter, we trace John Boyd’s work from weapon systems design into complexity theory that leverages Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the second law of thermodynamics. We find that the only realistic way to generate a system that exhibits complex behaviors beyond the foresight of any individual is to build from the bottom-up according to simple rules. Tacit coordination based on local conditions can then give rise to emergent order, a process not appreciated by advocates of top-down planning and built into the foundations of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System. While complexity theories have started to penetrate the philosophy of military operations, we are still at the early stages of appreciating these ideas in the world of defense acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

In this episode, we take a look at the history of the the defense innovation process and compare it to processes in Western Europe and the Soviet Union. It also discusses the origins of the 5000-series regulations for acquisition and the stage-gate theory of development. It includes a case study on the Lightweight Fighter program which provided DoD the F-16 and F-18 fighter aircraft, and traces how their success was an unlikely outcome that required the dogged intervention of John Boyd and the fighter mafia, demonstrating how difficult non-consensual innovation can be in the Department of Defense. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, AcquisitionTalk.com. Monolithic program budgets have led to monolithic contracts that have thwarted technical goals. However, if DoD can reform its budgeting process, it can also unpack system requirements and modularize contracts alongside technically separable components. This is important because different elements of a system have different development cycle times. For example, advances in material sciences and infrastructure move slowly, perhaps on the order of five to ten years or more. Aided by Moore’s law, electronics can cycle through new models every couple of years. Software is even faster, capable of deploying new updates potentially every day. Defense officials cannot afford to slow down entire weapon systems to the slowest common denominator, and must instead move in asynchronous times to maximize technological progress. In this episode of Programmed to Fail, the relationship between the budgeting and contracting processes will be made. It finds that the premature of defining entire program lifecycles also makes its way into the contract, which constrains the adaptive learning process. A properly functioning contract process with industry requires a flexible budgeting process within government. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

In this episode, we explore how the Department of Defense radically broke from liberal traditions and American values by installing a Soviet-style process called the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, or PPBS. It is not a coincidence that progress in military technologies dramatically slowed down over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. This is a direct implication of the PPBS which took decisions out of the hands of people closest to the work and rose the status of unaccountable bureaucrats aligned with comptrollers, accountants, economists, and analysis. There has been a growing recognition of the need to reform the industrial age PPBE process so that the United States can outpace peer-competitors like China and Russia in military technology. Senator Jack Reed said of PPBE, “It is likely too slow and cumbersome to meet many of DoD’s requirements to adopt new technologies in a rapid, agile manner.” Representative Adam Smith said, “We’ve got to give the Pentagon greater flexibility in terms of moving money around so that they’re not locked into a two-year or five-year cycle.” Former Representative Mac Thornberry wrote how “Today’s rapid innovation and technological change renders our industrial age approach to funding obsolete” The fiscal year 2022 national defense authorization act created a congressional commission to investigate reform of the PPB system. The commission has a hefty duty for it is the first major review of the resourcing system since the Jackson Committee hearings of the late 1960s. They are tasked with analyzing the extensive timelines, new and agile budgeting methods, how other agencies and countries resource programs, and make recommendations. This episode of Programmed to Fail provides an important economic backdrop to the adoption of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, a system that continues to dominate how money flows and weapons are resourced today, and why it must be reformed. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, AcquisitionTalk.com. In this third episode, we look at the 1950s debates over how weapons development should proceed. The listener will find strong parallels to the modern debates over waterfall vs. agile development practices. Weapons development in the 1940s and 50s followed an agile method of iterative and incremental decisions made by small, empowered teams. Yet this practice became supplanted by the belief that iteration and competitive developments revealed a failure to plan, and that planning could relieve all uncertainties in weapons development. As you listen to the story, consider how weapons today are expected to proceed linearly from science, to prototyping, to full scale development, production, then operations and sustainment. There is little or no room for feedback mechanisms and learning. However, another important aspect of software today is not just agile development, but continuous development and deployment of capability in what is called devops. The lines between development and production are not as clear today as they were presented in the hardware-oriented world of the 1950s. Listen in on our third chapter of the Programmed to Fail story, this time focusing of the emerging religion of systems analysis, a religion which continues to pervade the defense acquisition system 70 years later. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, AcquisitionTalk.com. In this episode, we take a look at the history of the unification of the armed forces under a single Department of Defense. Even today, we hear calls for the elimination of duplication, competition, and overlap between the military services. Proponents believe that military affairs can be brought into a state of perfection. But could you imagine if the government decided that only IBM could build computers, only Ford could build cars, and only AT&T could provide telecommunications? It’s pretty clear that innovation would have been stopped in its tracks. The following provides an overview of two chapters: first, how calls for centralization resulted in unification of the armed forces, and second, the seeds of program budgeting which was intended to be the administrative tool of centralized decision makers. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Balloon bloodlust, the epic military history of balloons, the fate of US-China relations, and how balloon expertise can help you on Hinge What on Earth is a Chinese spy balloon doing over the US? To discuss, we have William “Balloon Guy” Kim of The Marathon Initiative, Eric Lofgren of Acquisition Talk, and Gerard DiPippo of CSIS. We dive into: The epic military history of balloons; - Why it’s surprisingly difficult to shoot down a balloon, and the US-China “balloon gap” - Whether Secretary of State Blinken should have canceled his trip to China; - How expertise in balloons could improve your dating prospects. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, https://AcquisitionTalk.com. This series traces the rise of the modern system for acquiring weapons between 1945 and 1975. It documents how pluralistic methods of market-like competition were replaced by industrial era concepts of top-down control. Technology developments became treated like reproducible goods moving down an assembly line. More decisions were consumed by an overly centralized bureaucracy obsessed with perfection on paper rather than experimentation and rapid scaling of what works. This series argues that failure is built into modern defense acquisition. Attempts to detail financial plans by program output has corrupted the decision-making process. Hundreds of requirements are levied from all corners of the bureaucracy. Dozens of approvals are required to authorize funds. Years pass before the program can proceed, and once it does, plans become locked-in for five, ten, or twenty years into the future. The programming aspect of the budget is the ultimate source of rigidity in acquisition. Hence, the series title Programmed to Fail. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

I was pleased to have Pete Newell back on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the urgency of getting innovative defense prototypes into the field and working with partner nations. Pete is founder and CEO of BMNT Inc., a global technology advisory firm, co-founder of Hacking 4 Defense, and a retired Army Colonel who ran the Rapid Equipping Force that fielded hundreds of products into Iraq and Afghanistan. 1:05 - The problem with the National Defense Strategy 2:55 - Hacking for Allies program 5:30 - Doing DOTMLPF in six months instead of six years 7:50 - Congress will have to drive change 10:00 - Acquisition risk reduction increases warfighter risk 12:25 - Joint assignments for innovation 14:40 - Ukraine's speed to incorporate new tech 16:30 - Story of heroic tech transition at the REF 23:30 - Turning saboteurs into advocates 28:00 - Program Manager personal networks 32:50 - What to do in 3-5 years to deter China 35:00 - How to fix Defense Innovation Unit 40:00 - Office of Strategic Capital This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Matt Steckman and Trae Stephens joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss their approach at Anduril Industries to scaling up in defense. Matt is the Chief Revenue Officer and a former guest of Acquisition Talk, while Trae is Anduril's co-founder and executive chairman, as well as a partner at Founder's Fund.  In the episode, we discuss: - How Anduril is becoming a hardware rich company - Reactions as to whether tech-bros are helping in Ukraine - Why software companies have larger margins than defense primes - Whether Anduril will adopt DoD business systems as they scale - How to improve competition through product over white papers This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

At the 2022 GMU-DAU annual conference, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD R&E) Heidi Shyu joined us to discuss her priorities, approaches, and challenges. The audio has been republished on the Acquisition Talk podcast for your listening convenience. GMU senior fellow Shay Assad was the special interviewer, the former Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy. 0:50 - Remembering Ash Carter 3:45 - Making an impact in national security 4:30 - Integrating wargaming and physics simulation 6:10 - Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) 10:45 - Defining tech transition 15:30 - Creating a SAP umbrella with allies/partners 20:10 - USD R&E collaboration with A&S 23:50 - Budgeting challenges, hurry up and wait 28:30 - Digital engineering for all new ACAT Is 32:20 - Venture capital and the APFIT program 36:20 - R&E's impact on the JROC (requirements) 41:30 - Industry dialogues, 14 priority areas 46:30 - Workforce and Smart Scholar program 49:20 - Impact of continuing resolutions This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

On Monday, December 12, the Baroni Center for Government Contracting held a webinar to discuss a recent report on how funding flexibility can help bridge the valley of death in defense acquisition. The discussion was republished to the Acquisition Talk podcast for your listening convenience. I was pleased to have insights from three leaders in this space: - James Ruocco, Director of Air Platforms and Weapons, in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition; - Katie Wheelbarger, Vice President of Global Program Support at Lockheed Martin; and - Elaine McCusker, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Acting Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller). Tons of great audience questions throughout. The discussion ranged across some key topics including: - How the Department of Defense (DoD) is managing integrated acquisition portfolios to help drive decision making and close capability gaps - Efforts by DoD to close gaps in joint all-domain command and control and quickly target specific instances of interoperability or kill chains such as connecting an F-35 sensor with a HIMARS firing solution - Ideas to create flexible tech insertion lines, mitigate inefficiencies resulting from continuing resolutions, and increase transparency and trust between DoD and Congress This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

I was pleased to have Colin Carroll join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the acquisition of machine learning in the Department of Defense. He is the Director of Government Relations at Applied Intuition, a company that enables autonomous vehicles through simulation development and validation. Before that, Colin had a number of positions including Chief Operating Officer at the JAIC, mission Integration Lead for Project Maven, and 10 years of active service in the Marine Corps. 2:30 -Project Maven started with Bob Work and 10 slides 6:30 - Everyone in the Pentagon's in the fight 10:30 - There's not yet an urgency like in 2009 with MRAP 12:30 - How JAIC operations differed from Project Maven 15:00 - DoD autonomy programs often have zero data 17:00 - How to structure AI/ML programs in DoD 19:00 - The Joint Common Foundations is no more 24:40 - Most DoD's data is owned by industry 27:00 - DoD is buying brittle AI/ML models 29:00 - Competing with GOTS software 31:00 - Separating HW acquisition from SW 37:00 - DoD's $2B AI/ML spending estimate likely high 42:00 - We don't win by reforming SBIR 59:20 - The buzzword of JADC2 1:05:16 - The idea behind Title 10 failed 1:09:50 - Force Design 2030 and the future fight 1:20:10 - How to build a defense team at a tech company This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com