The new independent panel will make legislative and policy recommendations to reform the budgeting process “to enable the United States to more effectively counter near-peer competitors.”
As the Army races forward to take flight in its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), Breaking Defense contributor and acquisition expert Bill Greenwalt sees too many troubling parallels with the Air Force’s infamous production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. With taxpayer dollars and Army tactical capabilities in the balance, he argues in the op-ed […]
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has been the trailblazer in the UAS revolution for over three decades.
When Australia, the US and UK announced a new pacific-focused defense agreement last month, it was hard not to notice that the deal excluded the other two members of the Five Eyes intelligence agreement. Local media in Canada certainly seized on it to raise questions about Ottawa’s standing in the world. Bill Greenwalt, a member […]
Bill Greenwalt worked hand in glove with the late Sen. Sen. McCain as he tried — and repeatedly failed — to cleanse the defense budget of huge amounts of what isn’t really defense spending — cancer research, health care, grocery stores and the list goes on and on. If you strip this from the defense […]
Despite reforms, the Pentagon and Congress have failed to break out of a Cold War, central-planning model that’s stifled innovation.
Eisenhower's speech, principally aimed at tamping down the shrill and untrue claims of the famous "missile gap," perhaps unintentionally stoked the historic fire of populism that distrusted the private sector and feared wartime profiteering. His words would be used to destroy the very defense innovation system he had helped create and shepherd.
The MQ-9B is uniquely suited to meet the challenges of modern conflict.
Almost ten years ago, Congress tried — after much self-flagellation — to do away with earmarks by declaring a moratorium on their use. An earmark was defined in House and Senate rules as any congressionally directed spending, tax advantage or tariff that would benefit an entity or a specific state, locality or congressional district. Members at the […]
The House Buy American provisions will destroy U.S. jobs when these countries buy from other countries. And Congress would be ripping up and overriding signed agreements with our closest allies that have served as the foundations of reciprocity in defense trade and cooperation within NATO and with other partners such as Australia and Israel for over 40 years. Our allies are our greatest advantage and this will undermine NATO and our commitment to other global allies.
The inability of DoD to tailor its processes to incentivize non-traditional participation in the market has serious national security implications.
Every word is worth reading to find out what the 809 Panel did right and what needs to be done to fix some of its missteps. Read on! The Editor.
As missions stretch farther and comms grow less reliable, predictive software could become the edge that keeps missions afloat.
Bill Greenwalt is sort of the Pied Piper of military acquisition policy. Where he leads, others often follow. After he wrote a series of op-eds for Breaking Defense recommending major changes to the Pentagon's acquisition system, Sen. John McCain lured Bill back to his old job at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Greenwalt rewrote the laws, shaking up Defense Department acquisition. Bill is back, pointing to new acquisition problems, this latest one with his former employer -- the Government Accountability Office. It's a doozy, as you'll see.
Here’s the final piece of Bill Greenwalt’s blueprint for a new defense acquisition system. As Bill points out in this, the third piece: “now comes the hard part.” Congress and the Pentagon have proven clumsily adept at tinkering with the acquisition system over the last 20 years. But no matter how well intentioned, weapons just […]
This is the second of three op-eds by acquisition guru Bill Greenwalt. Since the devil is often in the details of improving how America buys its weapons, Bill delves deep into those details in this piece, arguing that the acquisition system is really so bad we just need to figure out how to get around […]
Bill Greenwalt knows acquisition like few people on earth. For more than a decade he wrote acquisition laws — and fought off some — while a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Then he went to the Pentagon, where he oversaw industrial base issues, which often included acquisition policies. Bill, now a wise man […]