Acquisition Talk: A daily blog on the theory and practice of weapons system acquisition

That is a new blog by Eric Lofgren, an Emergent Ventures recipient.  Here is an excerpt from one post:

The story was from 1938. It sounds astounding to modern ears. Congress did not earmark money for special projects. Pitcairn was a bit of a political entrepreneur by convincing his representative to get a project funded that funneled money back to his own district.

Back then, the Army and Navy were funded according to organization and object. Project earmarking only started becoming routine with the implementation of the program budget in 1949 (and really not until the rise of the PPBS in 1961).

I often say that the budget should be the most important aspect of defense reform, not the acquisition or requirements processes.

By the way, the French parliament doesn’t earmark defense funding. There’s actually quite a bit to learn from the French experience.

Here is his post on cost disease in weapons acquisition, and more on that here: “It’s clear that defense acquisition costs are growing at least as fast, and probably much faster, than education and healthcare costs. Defense platform unit costs grow nominally from 7-11% per year. Doing some adjustments, DOD production costs probably grow twice the rate of inflation.”

Here is his general post on acquisition reform and the limits of decentralization, maybe the best introduction to his overall point of view.