Content

Defense Industrialist

Oct 30, 2014

Conglomerates or Alliances?

By James Hasik

  The defense industry may not be headed for another merger wave, but something much more interesting.   Bankers, lawyers, and other business advisors have been waiting for years for that coming wave of mergers amongst military contractors. As one consultant told me recently, his firm was founded on the notion that some post-post-Cold War […]

Defense Industrialist

Oct 30, 2014

An Abundance of Caution, But Not Capacity

By James Hasik

The CDC and the DoD wisely funded an air transport technology for Ebola patients—just not enough of it.   In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Josh Hicks observes that Phoenix Air, a jet-charter service based in Georgia, is the only airline flying Ebola patients from West Africa to hospitals in Europe and North America. Help, however, is on […]

North & West Africa

Defense Industrialist

Oct 27, 2014

Should an End to Urgency Mean an End to Effectiveness?

By Alex Haber

 In defense acquisitions, privileges reserved for urgent needs should be extended to a broader set of systems.   A sense of urgency can bring out the best in us; the US Defense Department’s acquisitions community is no exception. Once the decision was made, it took just 27 months to develop and deploy fully today’s fleet of Mine-Resistant […]

Defense Industrialist

Oct 24, 2014

Robotic overwatch for the Baltic?

By James Hasik

  Unmanned surface vessels could supplement navies in peace and war.   General Sverker Göransson, the Swedish chief of defense, is rather upset that a presumably Russian submarine can waltz into, and then out of, the Stockholm archipelago unchallenged. Before we complain about the previous government’s paying-off the Navy’s sub-hunting CH-46 helicopters before securing their NH-90 replacements, we should […]

NATO Northern Europe

Defense Industrialist

Oct 20, 2014

Can Coastal Artillery Backstop the Navy?

By James Hasik

Yes, but there are hard ways and easy ways for an army to stand up new capabilities.   The question of coastal artillery was all over the trade press last week, starting with a speech by Defense Secretary Hagel at the AUSA meeting. Hagel noted that for a century after 1812, the US Army protected American ports with a […]

China Japan

Defense Industrialist

Oct 15, 2014

A Nobel Prize for Procurement

By James Hasik

  Jean Tirole’s award in economics reminds us that defense procurement is a deeply challenging business problem.   For me, it’s a great week when a procurement theorist wins a Nobel Prize. Fairly, Jean Tirole of the University of Toulouse won the 2014 Prize in Economic Sciences mostly for his extensive and wide-ranging work in regulatory […]

France

Defense Industrialist

Oct 6, 2014

A JDAM for Human Rights

By James Hasik

Major Mariam al Mansouri’s exploits are an unintended benefit of a looser arms export regime.   Arms sales bear a bad reputation for mortgaging global political sensibilities to domestic economic interests. But as a diplomat in Washington reminded me over dinner last week, to have influence, one must be willing to talk. As sociologist Ori […]

International Organizations Politics & Diplomacy

Defense Industrialist

Oct 3, 2014

Assimilating Disruption, or Offboarding Innovation?

By James Hasik

Big defense contractors’ reactions to start-ups may be more proactive than we suppose.   In a speech at the Air Force Association (AFA) meeting in Maryland last month, Chris Chadwick, CEO of Boeing Defense & Space, spoke of his company’s enthusiasm for incorporating innovative ideas into old products. In effect, he endorsed—as a CEO from Boeing just […]

Drones Technology & Innovation

Defense Industrialist

Sep 28, 2014

Is the Armored Vehicle Industry Shifting Away from the United States?

By James Hasik

Russian threats and US economizing may be driving the business north and east.   Earlier this month, investors’ website the Motley Fool called the recently-announced alliance between France’s Nexter and Germany’s KMW the possible “birth of a European tank-building superpower” and “General Dynamics’ new challenger”. All the same, in a recent essay for the Lexington Institute, Dan Gouré argues that General […]

Central Europe NATO

Defense Industrialist

Sep 27, 2014

How to Stiff-Arm Transatlantic Economic Integration

By James Hasik

Rosa DeLauro’s HR 5581 is a very bad bill indeed.   Last week, the Wall Street Journal carried a long story—”German Firms Go on U.S. Buying Spree”—about the $70 billion they have spent this year acquiring businesses in the United States. That figure is second only to Canadian activity–another $77 billion so far—and indicates just how economies on […]

NATO Security & Defense
Load More