Episodes

• 2021

• NetSec News Roundup: April 5, 2021

  Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  April 13, 2021

  61 min

• Event: PPBE Reform Panel 2 -- From Ideas to Implementation

  In this second discussion on the future of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting-Execution (PPBE) process, Center for Government Contracting executive director Jerry McGinn hosts a distinguished panel including: - Jamie Morin -- VP at the Aerospace Corp and former Director of CAPE - Dov Zakheim -- Senior Fellow at CNA and former USD Comptroller - John Young -- Principal at JY Strategies LLC and former USD AT&L Watch the video here, and listen to it on the Acquisition Talk podcast here. It is difficult to boil the conversation down because each of the three panelists had unique views. However, one theme that all seemed to agree on was the importance of flexibility to make program tradeoffs, and that such a construct requires trust between DoD and Congressional personnel. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  April 6, 2021

  51 min

• NatSec News Roundup: April 5, 2021

  Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  April 6, 2021

  62 min

• Event: PPBE Reform Panel 1 -- Key Recommendations

  For the first time in more than 50 years, a serious discussion is emerging on the foundations of defense budgeting and oversight.  The "valley of death" issue has drawn people's attention to the budget at the highest level, but the problems run much deeper. No longer will business as usual -- comprised of industrial era methods and multi-year timelines -- suffice in an era of great power competition. I was excited to host a panel, hosted by George Mason University's Center for Government Contracting, representing three key perspectives on the future of defense resourcing, called the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, Execution (PPBE) process. They are Courtney Barno (NSCAI), Matt MacGregor (MITRE), and Dan Patt (Hudson). Each has contributed to a recent report addressing PPBE, and all three circle around the old concept of portfolio management. A short video describing the reports is here. The full video of our discussion is on YouTube here, and has been reproduced on the Acquisition Talk podcast. - Bill Greenwalt and Dan Patt: Competing in Time: Ensuring Capability Advantage and Mission Success through Adaptable Resource Allocation - Pete Modigliani, Matt MacGregor, and Dan Ward: Five by Five: Five Disciplines and Five Strategic Initiatives for the Pentagon in the Digital Age - National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: Final Report This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  April 4, 2021

  50 min

• NatSec News Roundup: March 29, 2021

  Eric Lofgren and Matt MacGregor chat about the week's newsworthy headlines the world of military acquisition. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  March 30, 2021

  60 min

• Affecting the strategic calculus with Michele Flournoy

  Michele Flournoy joined Jordan Schneider and I on a crossover episode of the China Talk and Acquisition Talk podcasts. She is a former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, co-founder of CNAS, and and currently the founder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors. We hit on a number of important issues, including: - China's approach to systems destruction warfare - How to make a compelling case for technologists to join DoD - Nuclear policy and affecting the strategic calculus - Whether "legacy" weapons need divestment - A "Manhattan Project" for AI/ML In the episode, Michele drives home the importance of the acquisition workforce to military outcomes. "We don't invest enough in the tech or business acumen of our professionals," she said. Being a smarter customer in terms of negotiating contracts and having technical chops has a tremendous impact on the weapons and CONOPS. As Michele points out, Great Power Competition is no longer about nuclear deterrence alone, but maneuvering in cyber, in space, and in other domains that requires a range of options for affecting the strategic calculus. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com.
  March 23, 2021

  39 min

• eVTOL, Agility Prime, and AFWERX with Col. Nathan Diller

  Colonel Nathan Diller joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the Agility Prime line of effort that seeks an innovative acquisition approach to advancing electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) systems. Colonel Diller is the Director of AFWERX and before that was a prolific pilot with over 2,700 hours in 60 aircraft. Agility Prime doesn't look to establish requirements and line up a large amount of RDT&E funding to develop military-ready eVTOL systems. Instead, it uses the Air Force's assets to help accelerate commercialization of eVTOL. For example, the Air Force has test ranges and experienced personnel that can help commercial firms make it through an airworthiness process that drives down regulatory risk. Of course, there will be some funding to defray costs to the firms, but Agility Prime will help five aircraft prototypes get ready to fly on a scant budget. Moreover, the process helps the Air Force get smart on use cases and market research to help build the requirements for a program of record down the line. The "Prime" methodology is ripe for several other areas of dual-use technologies. Colonel Diller identified some other potential Prime concepts: - Space Prime for two areas: (1) space mobility, transport, and logistics; and (2) data access - Energy Prime for batteries and perhaps other energy storage devices - Vector Prime for supersonic transportation - Autonomy Prime for... autonomous systems - Microelectronics Prime to help solve security and availability - Digital Game Prime to support digital engineering and even designing military campaigns This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  March 15, 2021

  53 min

• Mission Resilience with Trey Herr and Simon Handler

  Trey Herr and Simon Handler from the Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss how the Department of Defense can improve the mission resilience of its systems. The three pillars of resilience are robustness, responsiveness, and adaptability. In that description, resilience is more than about responding to adversity, but capitalizing on opportunity. Oversight agencies should take note that that adherence to plan is nowhere in that definition. During the episode, we discuss: - How mission resilience metrics differ from CMMC - The costs of excessive classification to security - How Netflix uses the chaos monkey to find failure modes - Comparing CIA's Corona satellite development to that of F-35 ALIS - How the BattleLab idea can increase recombinatorial innovation During the episode, we dive into a recent paper Trey and Simon wrote in conjunction with folks from MIT Lincoln Labs and Boston Cybernetics called "How do you fix a flying computer? Seeking resilience in software-intensive mission systems." They recommend a new Center of Excellence for Mission Resilience in the DoD. The purpose would not be to duplicate cybersecurity initiatives, but rather to create metrics which can be put on contract to better verify that firms are using modern development processes like DevSecOps. In order to have adequate status, such a Center of Excellence require a Senate-confirmed position, a dedicated budget account, and quick access to the DepSecDef. But ultimately, it shouldn't be a Top Secret project creating DoD-unique rules and processes. Instead, the Center should adopt the thought leadership from the commercial and academic sectors as to what makes organizations resilient. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com.
  March 7, 2021

  35 min

• Big questions in defense acquisition with Col. Bryon McClain

  I was pleased to speak with Colonel Bryon McClain on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the biggest questions facing the defense acquisition system. He is the senior acquisition course instructor at the Eisenhower School, and before that he was the materiel leader for the rapid acquisition branch in the MILSATCOM directorate at the Space and Missile Systems Center. We touch on: - The role of interservice rivalry in military innovation - How today's processes address risk but not uncertainty - Moving past cost accounting when monitoring contracts - How unintended consequences plagued the C-5 development - Whether reform should focus on workforce culture or rules and regs In the episode, Bryon suggests a framework for how to interrelate the defense acquisition system with multiple fields of thought. One interesting aspect of that is the concept of American anti-statism along the industry and political axis in which it is agreed that government won't pick winners and losers but instead write the "rules of the road." In defense, however, the government writes the contracts with industry. So it has to pick winners and losers, right? In some cases that is true -- DoD is living with the winners of previous competitions. But for disruptive capabilities, DoD could help create markets. Bryon points to the Air Force's agility prime initiative, which seeks to support commercial eVTOL companies with the expectation of military applications to follow. While government may let contracts which still has a winner/loser aspect, there are many other ways about it. For example, providing companies equal access to test ranges and facilities, or providing industry subsidies like in solar panels and electric cars. As companies move down the cost curve, DoD becomes well placed to access disruptive innovation earlier and create dynamism in its industrial base. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  February 7, 2021

  90 min

• How innovation really works with Anne Marie Knott

  Anne Marie Knott joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss her book How Innovation Really Works. She is a professor of strategy and innovation at Washington University at St. Louis, and is a former researcher at Hughes. Anne Marie tackles a lot of innovation dogma, including whether: - Smaller companies more effective at R&D than large - US federal research has actually declined - Decentralized R&D beats out central labs - We've picked the low hanging fruit and science is slowing down - Firms are not spending enough on R&D In the episode, Anne Marie discusses her measure for R&D productivity called the research quotient (RQ). You can think of it as the relationship between R&D spending and revenues for a given firm, controlling for other factors including capital (from the balance sheet), labor (from the number of employees), and a couple other variables. The more responsive revenues are to changes in R&D spending, the more productive a firm's R&D is relative to other firms. Anne Marie draws a number of conclusions from looking at firm RQs across sector and time. She finds a 65% decline in average R&D productivity over the past five or so decades. Two-thirds of firms are actually spending too much on R&D, and could increase revenues by cutting R&D. But she's also seen maximum RQs increasing over time particularly in newly formed industries, so there seems to be this divergence in outcomes. Anne Marie takes an optimistic view. There are ways firms can improve their R&D productivity, lessons that can benefit defense policy makers. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  February 1, 2021

  70 min
• 2020

• Great Power Competition with Richard Danzig

  Richard Danzig joined me on a joint episode of the Acquisition Talk and China Talk podcasts to discuss US-China relations and military innovation. Richard is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins APL, a former Secretary of the Navy, and much more than that. We traverse a number of subjects, including: How the risk of war with China is reflected in trade policy The problems regulators face in high-tech industries Views on growing the US Navy to 500 ships How US prime contracts differ from state-owned enterprises Whether the Chinese are more risk-tolerant than the US This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  December 29, 2020

  56 min

• Risk, cost, and project management with Christian Smart

  Christian Smart joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss his new book, Solving for Project Risk Management. He is the chief scientist at Galorath Federal, and before that he was the cost chief at the Missile Defense Agency. We touch on a number of important issues, including: - Whether Augustine's Laws still have relevance - The track record of NASA's better, faster, cheaper program - How to do cost estimates on data projects like AI/ML - Whether the DoD is trying to jam too many programs into the budget - The effect of MDA's matrixed organizational design In his book, Christian talked about a prevailing belief in the 2000s that the Department of Defense could benefit from a "free lunch" when it funded to portfolios of projects. Similar to how diversification between uncorrelated assets gives investors the chance to get the same return with lower risk (or a higher return for the same risk), funding a group of projects at the 60th percentile cost estimate could achieve an 80 percent confidence level for the portfolio overall. Christian argues that projects have asymmetric probability distributions for cost and schedule. You are more likely to see black swans in the cost growth direction than you are in cost savings. When more projects are put under a portfolio, the likelihood that one of them will have relatively extreme cost growth increases. We discuss the implications of this result, and what procedures managers can take to mitigate or even remedy the effects.
  December 15, 2020

  68 min

• Digital acquisition with Bryon Kroger and Matt Nelson

  Bryon Kroger and Matt Nelson joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about digital transformation in the Department of Defense. They are the CEO and COO of Rise8, a digital consulting company, and previously had leading roles in the Air Force's Kessel Run software factory. In the episode, we talk about: - Roper's 'There is no Spoon' paper on the digital trinity - Their take on the new DoDI 5000.87 Software Acquisition Pathway - What it means for government to "own" the tech stack - How Rise8 will support the Advanced Battle Management Program - Why the DoD's budget process makes digital transformation difficult
  December 7, 2020

  82 min

• Tech competition in China and the United States with Michael Brown

  In this special crossover episode with ChinaTalk podcast host Jordan Schneider, we interview director of the Defense Innovation Unit Michael Brown. We touch on a number of topics, including: Industrial espionage and foreign investment The debate over basic vs. applied research China starting to determine technical standards Coordinating with allies on semiconductors Transitioning tech in the DoD Before taking the helm of DIU in 2018, Michael co-authored a study with Pravneet Singh showing how Chinese participation in the US venture/tech ecosystem had surged from $300 million in 2010 to $11.52 billion in 2015. The Chinese made up of 16 percent of all deals in 2016. That work launched the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) which strengthened the government's ability to block Chinese investments. While the Chinese still work hard to transfer technology from the West, in several cases China itself is setting the standards and aggressively exporting that to other countries. They have national champions for artificial intelligence, e-commerce, 5G, drones, and so forth, which are strategically subsidized to achieve a monopoly on infrastructure. The competition with China is not like the Cold War. Decades ago, the Soviets were at a disadvantage. They (1) had a much smaller economy (about half the size); (2) were not integrated with the global economy; and (3) were not developing technology standards. The answer is not to anoint domestic champions in the United States, but to invest more heavily in S&T and provide safeguards to protect it from IP theft. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  November 21, 2020

  48 min

• Event: Intellectual property in defense contracts

  In this special episode of the Acquisition Talk podcast, we listen in to a great conversation on intellectual property in defense. The panel is moderated by my colleague Jim Hasik (who, by the way, has a great blog) and features Richard Gray (the DoD's IP chief), Shay Assad (former DoD pricing chief), Kelly Kyes (Boeing), and Bill Elkington (former IP director at Collins Aerospace). There were tons of great insights throughout, including: What causes companies to "buy-in" on production Whether there is a level playing field for commercial and defense contractors The difference between OMIT and DMPD data How the DoD is moving to negotiate specially tailored deals early Whether government should get IP rights for a modified commercial product The conversation is teed off by Jim's third IP white paper where he looked at the effects of IP rights on the prices of military trucks using a natural experiment. The Army bought the IP rights to the FMTV cargo truck while the Marines did not buy the IP rights for their equivalent MTVR. When they came up on follow-on procurement contracts, both services saw price increases roughly 20 percent, despite the fact the Army bought the IP rights. Jim has a good bit to say about that and more nuance in the paper. There were tons of great discussions, but one that caught my ear was the difference between IP rights related to defense and commercial contractors. Shay Assad argued that defense contractors have their independent R&D costs reimbursed by government, which puts them on an uneven playing field with commercial companies who funded R&D our of their gross profits. That dichotomy in risk should have consequences on pricing and on IP rights. Kelly Kyes argued that defense IR&D doesn't have commercial applications, so needs riskless reimbursement, and in the case of Other Transactions contracts, it waives the necessity of cost-sharing requirements for nontraditional contractors. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  November 12, 2020

  80 min

• Navy shipyards and defense supply chains with Maiya Clark

  Researcher Maiya Clark at the Heritage Foundation joined me on the Acquisition Talk to discuss her recent paper on the Navy's public shipyards as well as other industrial base matters. She finds that the four remaining public shipyards, which service the Navy's entire nuclear fleet, are all over 100 years old. They are not designed to maintain larger ships like the Ford-class carriers or Block 5 of the Virginia-class submarines. As a result of under-investment in capital, maintenance delays have been on the rise. Though delays have trended back in the right direction, exceptional procedures like 45% overtime on an on-going basis cannot last forever. During the episode, we discuss: - The Navy's Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP) - How a fault line can claim one shipyard in Puget Sound - What's wrong with Buy American proposals - A research agenda for defense supply chains - The viability of Trusted Capital Marketplace One major issue concerning the public shipyards is whether they can service a growing fleet. While the Navy's ship count reached a nadir of 275, Congress was receptive to a plan for 355 ships. More recent discussions have the figure north of 500. Much of that expansion is in non-nuclear surface and unmanned vessels. But it still raises the question about shipyard maintenance capacity. The Navy's SIOP capital investment plan of $21 billion over 20 years -- which is likely to be underfunded -- will recover most of the expected maintenance delays for today's fleet. Even if the Navy could expand ship production, it isn't clear how they could be maintained. The Navy may find itself with the same readiness metrics debate going on in the tactical aircraft world. I see two interpretations. First, over-production of major weapons that cannot be sustained in peacetime is a risk-management proposition. Production lead times are very long. In times of emergency, it is easier to surge operations and support capacity than it is industrial production capacity. Countering that view, it is likely that many existing weapon systems will be found vulnerable to new systems and CONOPS. Having more outdated and outclassed systems could be a recipe for disaster. Such was the stance the US Army found itself in prior to WWII. For example, General Hap Arnold said using B-18s against Germany was "suicide." This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  October 18, 2020

  52 min

• An aviator's perspective on AlphaDogfight, NGAD, and beyond with Ryan "Stinger" Fishel

  Ryan "Stinger" Fishel joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the future of the fighter aircraft community. Ryan is an F-15E pilot for the United States Air Force and a friend whose perspective I've benefited from over the past year. The views Ryan expresses in this episode are his own. Throughout the podcast, we discuss a number of timely issues, including: Implications of the DARPA AlphaDogfight simulation Hot takes on the news of NGAD's first demonstrator Why it's important to think about self-contained logistics How operators fit into the acquisition process John Boyd's legacy on tactics and the mental/moral aspects of war In the episode, Ryan argues that there is plenty of room for artificial intelligence to automate the tasks of a fighter pilot. However, many aspects of the job seem to require an understanding of the context that's beyond AI at this point. The battlefield can be a complex place with multiple actors of differing intentions. Escalation has to be managed carefully, as tactical decisions increasingly have operational or strategic implications. We also discussed the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. Recently, the Air Force announced that it built a new demonstrator aircraft in just one year as part of the program using digital engineering and mature subsystems. NGAD isn't intended to result in just a single aircraft, but progress a family of systems that can be integrated onto a new platform every few years. It hearkens back to how military aircraft used to be developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Though NGAD is controversial, it intends to inject competition into the aerospace industry, which has been going through a long period of consolidation and stagnation. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  October 5, 2020

  62 min

• Defense Budget Reform with Katharina McFarland, Bill Greenwalt, and Bob Daigle

  I was please to host a webinar event with George Mason's Center for Government Contracting featuring three former Pentagon executives. We discussed my white paper on defense budget reform, which provides an overview of (1) the history of budgeting; (2) why budget reform is necessary for accelerating innovation; and (3) a proposed solution. I argue that the budget is the primary obstacle to transforming the defense force structure away from legacy platforms and toward emerging technologies. If budget line items can be consolidated, allowing more flexibility to start, ramp up, pivot, or cancel projects, it will provide mission-driven organizations the one thing they've always lacked: the ability to become true portfolio managers. I was joined by Katharina McFarland (former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition), Bill Greenwalt (former SASC staffer and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industrial Policy), and Bob Daigle (former HASC staffer and Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation). In general, they agree with the idea of budget reform I put forward, but each panelist had their own insights and perspectives to add. Katharina argued that the defense acquisition process is not agile by design, and it cannot be changed overnight. There are too many people that have equity in each and every program, slowing the entire process down and creating roadblocks to substantial change. She considers how people aspect of the problem, as well as how to create better systems of data collection and analysis to inform decisions than what we currently have in the budget. Bill considers the defense budget process as a relic of the Cold War that needs complete change. The DoD attached itself to central planning ideologies because (1) it was the best practices of 1950s firms like Ford Motor and GM; and (2) because the Soviet Union posed an existential threat. Yet as Bill argues, the waterfall planning processes the DoD installed actually led to the rapid decline of US auto-makers in the decades after. Moreover, the US didn't win the Cold War because its defense management was better than at central planning than the Soviets, but simply because the US had a market economy. With modern tech companies doing agile development and a new Chinese threat, there may be a window to complete overhaul of the defense budget like was done in 1961. Bob points to the requirements process as the root of many problems with budgeting and accelerating technology. Requirements take several years to get defined, and are detailed to an excruciating level. That detail hen gets reflected in the programs that get budgeted for, creating inflexibility. Bob argues that both requirements and budgets should be less specified -- raised up a couple levels -- but that the fundamental Planning-Programming-Budgeting-Execution process is sound. Bob argues that defense is too big and complex to change at once, and requires smaller pilot programs that carve out completely new space that can then be scaled. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  September 13, 2020

  76 min

• Blockchain's potential for government with SIMBA Chain's Joel Neidig

  Joel Neidig joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss how blockchain technology can support the military across a wide range of use-cases including supply chain management, financial transactions, additive manufacturing, secure communications, digital engineering, and much more. He is the co-founder and CEO of SIMBA Chain, a startup that won an early DARPA grant back in 2016 exploring blockchain's potential for secure communications. The dual-use company has branched out into the military services, providing customers with low-code tools to build a diverse set of applications on top of several blockchain protocols. For those unfamiliar, blockchain is basically a shared ledger that makes an immutable record of transactions, verified through a peer-to-peer network. The network nodes check and validate transactions for consistency, making it incredibly difficult to attack. Of course, Bitcoin and the use-case for money is a popular application. But Joel explained how SIMBA Chain is working with Boeing and other companies to create a trusted supply chain. Any digital or physical item can be given a unique identifier on the blockchain, creating a trusted record of the transfer of goods throughout the supply chain, such as from a producer to a shipping terminal, then to a ship, delivery truck, storage at another supplier, integration onto a component or subsystem, and so on until an end-item is delivered to the customer. This not only protects the supply chain from cyber risks emanating from counterfeit or tampered hardware, but also non-malicious problems due to non-conforming parts that may be the wrong version or spec. Supply chain is just one blockchain application among many that could help revolutionize the way government does business and fights a war. While the US government is only putting a million dollars here and there into blockchain, China is putting billions of dollars into their own blockchain capabilities. China is forcing US suppliers like Starbucks and Wal-Mart onto their national blockchain, which is soon be the only way they are able to do business in China. The Pentagon cannot afford to slow-roll its adoption of blockchain because it will be a crucial factor in securing and automating workflows for additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, financial transactions, and much more. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  August 30, 2020

  56 min

• JADC2 and decision-centric warfare with Dan Patt and Bryan Clark

  I was pleased to have Dan Patt and Bryan Clark join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss a range of important subjects including mosaic warfare, joint all-domain command and control, the digital century series, systems architecture, and more. Bryan is the Director of a new center at the Hudson Institute, Defense Concepts and Technologies, where he is joined by a former deputy director at DARPA, Dan Patt. The two make a formidable team, and their center will help fill an important gap in the application of emerging technologies to military concepts of operation. In the episode, Dan and Bryan argue that the DoD's reliance of monolithic platforms -- a relic of the Cold War era -- makes it increasingly fragile to defeat against peer adversaries. Major systems today are expected to perform numerous missions, and package within them their own sensors, command and control, combat systems, and so forth. This not only increases unit costs and decreases force structure, but limits the number of different ways force packages can be composed. US commanders are thus limited in their options for effecting a result, making them much more predictable and subject to counter-measures. The alternative is decomposing monolithic platforms into a wide array of smaller systems. While each system itself has fewer capabilities and is less survivable, there will be far more of them. Their lower cost allows them to be attritable, and benefit from increased competition and economies of scale. Importantly, commanders will have far more options to decompose and re-compose the force structure. An important element in the mosaic warfare concept is joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2. This can be described as the network that connects the relevant nodes of the disaggregated force structure, such as between sensor and shoot, and is often called the military "internet-of-things." With a rise in the need for interfaces, we discuss a path forward to create ad-hoc interoperability between unique system requirements called STITCHES. This by-passes many of the rigidities facing the need to agree on global standards common in today's modular open systems architectures. This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.
  August 23, 2020

  69 min