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 us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.

I was pleased to have an impressive trio from MITRE join me to discuss the future of acquisition reform. Dan Ward, Pete Modigliani, and Matt MacGregor have been in on the ground floor of the Department's implementation of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, which has been hailed as the "most transformational change to acquisition policy in decades." With six tailorable pathways, programs can potentially cut years of paperwork for software and rapid prototyping efforts.

While there is certainly more effectiveness to squeeze out of the AAF, my guests are looking ahead to other elements of the "big A" acquisition systems that will need change to support the ideals of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework. For example, rapid prototyping efforts using the Middle Tier pathway don't have to use the JCIDS requirements process, but they still need a process that could take up to a year. Then it takes another two or more years to line up the funds to get started. These processes create barriers to programs being run with speed, thrift, and simplicity.

Requirements, budgeting, oversight, and workforce provide the next frontier of acquisition reform. Last year, MITRE released an excellent report that outlined enterprise-level requirements and a proposal for an Adaptive Requirements Framework. This year, they released another report called Five-by-Five which took that even further into an Adaptive Budgeting Framework and implementation of portfolio management.

https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/pr-20-03241-1-five-by-five-five-disciplines-and-five-strategic-initiatives-for-the-pentagon-in-the-digital-age.pdf

https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/modernizing-dod-requirements-enabling-speed-agility-and-innovation

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.

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 us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at 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. Soundtrack by urmymuse: "reflections of u". You can follow us on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com.

Mike Benitez joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about the current state and future of the Air Force fighter inventory. He discusses the rationale behind the recent announcement from Chief of Staff CQ Brown that the USAF will neck down it's inventory from seven systems to "four plus one." Mike explains how the NGAD will replace the F-22, the logic behind buying both the F-35 and F-15EX, and the options for replacing the F-16. We also play a round of "retire it or not" for the A-10, RQ-4 Global Hawk, and the KC-135 tanker.

During the episode, Mike argues that laying in several major advances in the same clean-sheet development leads to poor outcomes -- not only for the systems themselves but the industrial base. Shifting to a government reference architecture can help open up competition and even change business models. Rather than companies making their profits in sustainment, which represents 70% of lifecycle costs, the Air Force could change the paradigm by making development pay and potentially even breaking the link between development and production.

The F-117 was a great example of tackling one hard problem (low observability) while leveraging existing components everywhere else. While making a slightly different case, Mike points to Boeing's T-7A which used digital engineering and parts commonality. "The T-7 was engineered from the ground up for commonality within its parts," Mike said. "So the the left horizontal stabilizer is the same exact part as the right is just put in upside down... they've built an aircraft that has such a skinny supply chain that you're able to actually operate... but the point is that most of the fighters right now are not developed like that."

Mike discusses a more agile approach to fighter development, opportunities for test and evaluation techniques, the challenges presented by the budget process, the need to increase emphasis on logistics and communications, and much more.

You can find more from Mike Benitez by signing up for his weekly newsletter The Merge at https://themerge.co

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.

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.

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.

George Mason University and Wharton Aerospace Community held an excellent event on the productivity of independent research and development (IR&D). Discussing the topic was an insightful panel including former ASD(A) Kevin Fahey, defense analyst Byron Callan, and former Acquisition Talk guest Anne Marie Knott moderated by Stephanie Halcrow, senior fellow at GMU's Center for Government Contracting. 

IR&D, of course, in the defense world is different than the R&D done at commercial firms like Google and Netflix. IR&D projects are funded by defense contractors, but the cost is reimbursed by government as an indirect rate spread across their portfolio of contracts. (You can find more about that in the forward pricing rate process). This provides for some interesting incentives and comparisons with the commercial sector. The panelists discuss:

- Whether defense contractors spend enough on IR&D

- Rates of return on corporate venture capital

- The effect of profit policy on IR&D

- How to align contractor IR&D with defense objectives

- How the Research Quotient can be used to benchmark IR&D

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.

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.

Thomas Shugart joined Jordan Schneider and I on another cross-over episode of the China Talk and Acquisition Talk podcasts. Thomas spent 25 years in the US Navy and is currently an adjunct senior fellow at CNAS. He argues that the Chinese justify preemptive strikes to be defensive in nature if they are challenged in the political realm, such as Taiwan declaring independence.

This possibility is made more dangerous considering the rise of China's military, particularly in long-range missiles, bombers, and navy. The expansion of the PLA Navy over the last five years as been nearly identical to the legendary 1980s Reagan build-up. "For all the talk of them being next generation swarming and unmanned," Thomas said, "they sure are bending a lot of iron building ships."

Thomas notes that the United States' response has been primarily the dispersion of forces to avoid concentration in large bases or carrier groups. But he doesn't see the demise of multi-purpose manned systems like destroyers and bombers. The systems are survivable in a contested communications environment. Coupled with greater operational experience and warfighter initiative, this provides the US an advantage. However, the advantage can quickly dissipate if leaders make decisions from the wrong lessons.

We close the podcast discussing the computer game EVE and the military lessons that can be drawn from it. EVE is a massively open online game where tens of thousands of people self-organize into corporations that compete against each other in battles using spaceships, rail guns, electronic warfare, and many other capabilities. Actions in the universe are complex and the corporations are sophisticated. We compare the decentralized complexity of EVE to the relative simplicity and centralization found in StarCraft and Ender's Game.

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.