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 …

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 …

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 …

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 cre…

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 …

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…

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 …

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 i…

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 …

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 …

Balloon bloodlust, the epic military history of balloons, the fate of US-China relations, and how balloon expertise can help you on HingeWhat 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 ep…

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 …

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…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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:- …

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 Di…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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 positio…

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 Inf…

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…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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 pu…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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 (JAI…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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 Prom…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

A new paper from MITRE takes an end-to-end look at how military strategy gets translated into the types of weapon systems actually bought through the acquisition process. It is called Five First Steps to a Modern Defense Budgeting System, and I was pleased to have the authors on the podcast to discuss it: Matt MacGregor, Greg Grant, and Pete Modigl…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

I was pleased to have Ben Van Roo on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss data on the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and potential reforms. The SBIR program was created in 1982 and is currently funded with 3.2 percent of extramural R&D performed by larger agencies. Coming from a founder and VC perspective, the question Ben ask…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

I was pleased to have the John Whitley join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss digital transformation, the potential for "as a service" business practices to bypass the valley of death, and deeper issues of program analysis and strategic planning. John was recently the acting Secretary of the Army in 2021, Army Comptroller before that, a…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

I was pleased to have Bill Johnson on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about how he helped bring commercial technology, open architecture, and continuous delivery to the sonar community in the 1990s with the Acoustic Rapid COTS Insertion (ARCI) program. Bill was the deputy program manger and pioneered many of the techniques DoD is still trying …

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

NatSec News: June 22, 2022 by Eric Lofgrenبقلم Eric Lofgren

I was pleased to have Amanda Bresler and Alex Bresler back on the podcast to discuss their newest Naval Postgraduate School symposium paper on the composition of small businesses in the defense industry. Amanda is the Chief Strategy Officer at PW Communications, and Alex is the Chief Data Officer.They found that small business funding grew 68 perce…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

Babak Siavoshy joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss opportunities for improving intellectual property and software data rights practices in defense contracts. He is Vice President and General Counsel of Anduril Industries, and has recently written an excellent article on one of the least understood aspects of the acquisition world.B…

In this episode of the Acquisition Talk podcast, I host an amazing panel on contracting practices for modern software with Florence Kasule (Director of Procurement, US Digital Service), Col. Eric Obergfell (Director of Contracts, Air Force Research Lab), and Caitlin Dohrman (President/GM, Improbable US National Security and Defense). The conversati…

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

Andrea Garrity joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss how the government can build relationships with nontraditional companies. She is the Chief Growth Officer at goTenna, a company that offers mesh networking for off-grid devices and decentralized communications. Before that she was vice president at In-Q-Tel and client executive at …

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.comبقلم Eric Lofgren

In this episode of #AcquisitionTalk, we listen in on a Twitter spaces discussion hosted by Andrew Kirima and Pablo Felgueres as part of their series on American industrial dynamism. Check out industrialdynamism.com and @morefactories. Tons of great speakers join, including Liz Stein, Jake Bullock, Jake Chapman, Griffin Barnicutt, John Dulin, AJ Pip…