Acquisition Talk

Sabra Horne joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discussed her new book: Creating Innovation Navigators: Achieving Mission Through Innovation. She is an executive in residence at BMNT, and before that she held a number of important roles including Innovation Hub Chief at DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Deputy for Information Sharing and Collaboration at the National Security Agency, and an advisor to the Chief of Staff for the Director of National Intelligence. 1:20 - characterizing the 300 federal innovation efforts 3:40 - streamlining clearance and suitability processes 6:30 - how to select metrics and evaluate performance 10:00 - when mission calls, people deliver 13:30 - using commercial solutions openings  17:00 - leadership and the DHS procurement innovation lab 22:00 - partnering with general counsel to adopt authorities 23:50 - BMNT's innovation navigator's course 27:00 - how to get to 'yes' with the frozen middle and stakeholders 31:10 - we need 20 Hondo Geurts and 20 Mike Browns 32:30 - it took 30 years for government to organize around cyber 37:00 - the innovation pipeline 39:30 - requirements and budgeting misaligned with human-centered design 45:00 - engaging with industry 50:00 - investment readiness levels, adoption readiness levels This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com

Ellen Lord and Michael Brown joined me at the 2022 Conference hosted by George Mason University and Defense Acquisition University to discuss PPBE Reform. Ellen Lord is Vice Chair of the Commission on PPBE Reform and former USD A&S, while Mike Brown is a Partner at Shield Capital and Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institute, just recently finishing up as Director of the Defense Innovation Unit.

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

The Undersecretary for Acquisition & Sustainment (USD A&S) Bill LaPlante joined us at the 2022 Conference hosted by George Mason University and Defense Acquisition University. He was on fire and dropped a ton of amazing insights, so I had to republish the audio to the podcast. I'll link to the video when it's up, but you'll get to listen to it here first. Bill LaPlante touches a number of important areas. The outline of the discussion is below. 2:30 - Production really matters 3:30 - Minimum sustaining rate 4:50 - HIMARS produced in a converted diaper factory 5:50 - In the past, DoD stopped production on HIMARS, Mark 48 torpedo, and Tomahawk 6:45 - In 70 years of demos, DoD has not gotten hypersonics into production 7:50 - DoD was bad at prototyping until MTAs and OTAs 8:30 - Don't tell me it's got AI and quantum, don't drop DevSecOps -- production at scale 9:20 - If something blew up in INDOPACOM next week, what does DoD have in quantity? 10:30 - Null Program found it takes 4 years for DoD to produce nothing 11:15 - Tech bros aren't helping much in Ukraine 12:45 - RFPs, source selections, money -- that's what matters 14:30 - FFRDCs get paid to write a paper that finds when quantity goes down, price goes up (duh!) 15:00 - Predicts that Congress will put billions into production lines 15:30 - M777, HIMARS, Stinger all have obsolescence issues 17:30 - National Armaments Directors from 45 partner countries meet to coordinate 18:30 - Industry won't invest without demand signal because DoD left them "holding the bag" in the past 18:45 - Supply chain issues in microelectronics, solid rocket motors, actuators, rare earth magnets 19:15 - Allies must not only be interoperable, but interchangeable 20:00 - Industry must be forced into interchangeability, like MOSA, because it lowers barriers to entry 20:30 - Take advantage of allied non-recurring development, like on E-7 Wedgetail 21:30 - US weapon production lines opening in Japan and Australia is a key deterrent 22:45 - Outsourcing production was a bad idea, dev & prod must be co-located 23:45 - Japan strategically kept rare earth processing capacity 26:00 - In JADC2, latency matters, link budgets matter 27:40 - Services working together very well on JADC2 28:30 - JTRS architecture was flawed from first principles, no one caught it 29:00 - Service oriented architecture was wrong for things like GPS OCX 32:30 - $50B spent on MTA, $2B for SWP (and another $8B in POM) 33:15 - MTA, SWP, BA 8 are small slivers compared to traditional acquisition 34:15 - Cycle time from Milestone B to C has not increased since 1960s, still 5-7 years 35:40 - Definition of success: production, relevant in high-end fight, and DOTMLPF 36:15 - Derek Tournear and SDA on path to do something remarkable 36:45 - Conventional Prompt Strike MTA may be first hypersonic in production next year 37:00 - Not many MTA successes in production yet 37:30 - OTAs not good for large weapon systems where DoD needs data rights 40:30 - Requirements, PPBE, and acquisition report up different chains, not synced 40:00 - How Air Force RCO decisions are made at the top, quickly 41:30 - RCO model doesn't scale to entire DoD, senior lead attention limited 42:20 - PEOs must be able to trade requirements and money in year of execution 42:30 - Cool if PPBE commission could make PPBE agile 44:15 - Appropriators won't want to give DoD flexibility 44:30 - Without PPBE reform, DoD is doing a "Poor Man's" version of portfolio management 46:25 - Remembering the late Ash Carter 47:00 - Acquisition community was not at war until 2009 47:30 - Creation of the Senior Integration Group (SIG) 51:30 - Bipartisan support for national security 52:40 - DoD response to inflation 53:00 - Believes suppliers are hurt by inflation, but no data yet 55:30 - Expects CPIF contracts will slip due to inflation 57:30 - Competition changes behavior, no question 57:50 - Little difference between classified info on Ukraine and public news 58:40 - Acquisition is fun

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 Emily de la Bruyere join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast. She's a co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a geopolitical consultancy, and a senior fellow at the foundation for defensive democracies. She's frequently cited on China and industrial matters, and she has brought some excellent voices together on these topics in a new publication called Force Distance Times. In the episode we discuss: Vertical integration of supply in China If the term 'industrial policy' is naughty or not Whether US or European firms are transferring more tech to China How the DC consensus has changed The dangers of underestimating China Emily argues that Beijing's industrial strategy is to create incentives for private and state owned companies to invest in redundancy and excess capacity. While it produces inefficiencies, analysts on the outside are inclined to look at the failures rather than the totality of investments. Not only have many sectors been successfully developed, they gained enormous leverage over US supply chains that gives it coercive power -- not to mention how redundant industrial capacity is a critical to mobilize the nation for a major conflict. 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

In this cross-over episode of the Acquisition Talk and China Talk podcasts, we have Greg Allen on to discuss progress in AI/ML defense applications in China and the United States. Greg Allen is the director for the project on AI governance at CSIS, and was formerly the director of strategy and policy at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). During the episode, we discuss: - Military use cases of AI/ML as they are shaping up in Ukraine - Bureaucratic challenges in the US to fielding AI/ML systems - How far is the US away from weaponizing autonomy 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

In this episode of the Acquisition Talk podcast, we listen in an event hosted by the Center for Government Contracting to discuss a recent paper authored by Center Senior Fellow Stephanie Halcrow and longtime acquisition guru and President of Etherton and Associates Moshe Schwartz. The paper is called The Power of Many: Leveraging Consortia to Promote Innovation, Expand the Defense Industrial Base, and Accelerate Acquisition. In the episode, they discuss: Whether consortia have increased nontraditional participation with DoD - Challenges in Other Transaction data collection - How OT consortia can help DoD and industry collaborate in real time - Dangers of adding too much process onto consortia - How allies and foreign partners can participate To discuss the paper, Stephanie and Moshe invited an excellent panel including: Margaret Boatner, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Strategy and Acquisition Reform; David Simenc, Executive Director of Tactical Systems at SciTech Inc.; and Charlie Zisette, Executive Director of the National Armaments Consortium. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com