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Defense Industrialist

Sep 26, 2016

Applying an investor’s mindset to military aid

By James Hasik

Restricting US military aid may affect more than Israeli industry and the IDF. As has been widely reported, the United States and Israeli governments have come to a new ten-year understanding of how the former will subsidize the latter’s military spending. The new amount that the Obama Administration promises to submit annually to the US […]

Defense Industry Drones

Defense Industrialist

Sep 21, 2016

My strike fighter for a cooling line

By James Hasik

Lockheed Martin’s recent quality problem reminds us how challenging massively multinational development and production programs can be. Almost a squadron’s worth of Joint Strike Fighters, Courtney Albon wrote for Inside Defense, “may not fly for months.” As Colin Clark wrote for Breaking Defense, the US Air Force and the Royal Norwegian Air Force have suspended […]

Australia Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Sep 14, 2016

How to man the unmanned: A counterpoint

By Ian Fairchild

Unquestionably, the Air Force needs to retain experienced operators if the service hopes to remain the most powerful air force on the planet. The question of how to best do this surfaces in many areas. How to retain more women and minorities? How to retain more fighter pilots? Earlier this week, Defense Industrialist editor James […]

Defense Industry Drones

Defense Industrialist

Sep 9, 2016

Who should own the rights to the software in the JSF?

By James Hasik

The economics of intellectual property rights in weapon systems make for challenging managerial problems, and mandate some detailed legal work. Who owns the intellectual property rights to weapon systems? Who should? In a notable essay in Foreign Affairs on “The End of the Military Industrial Complex,” former Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn once wrote of […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

Sep 8, 2016

How to man the unmanned

By James Hasik

With enthusiastic recruits, from all corners, and with a lot of cash. In the New York Times this past Tuesday, Michael Schmidt wrote of how the the US Air Force, “Running Low on Drone Pilots,” is turning to contractors to reconnoitre battlefields. Many of these are “former drone or fighter pilots who are making double or […]

Afghanistan Conflict

Defense Industrialist

Sep 1, 2016

On earnings and cash

By James Hasik

Do the compensation schemes for top management teams in the defense industry incentivize the right goals? Federal contracts lawyer Jim McAleese recently covered the briefing by Phebe Novakovic, CEO of General Dynamics, at the Jefferies Investors Conference on August 9. His first point: “General Dynamics’ senior team is paid based on ‘earnings and cash,’ which […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

Aug 31, 2016

The inelegant mess

By James Hasik

If software is making the world indecipherable, how can the military manage its development? Psibernetix, it seems, has built an artificial intelligence smarter than a fighter pilot. As I mentioned here at the beginning of the month, the company hatched at the University of Cincinnati has developed software for a Raspberry Pi machine that has defeated […]

Cybersecurity Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Aug 29, 2016

Reforming the acquisition mindset

By Steven Grundman

Defense innovation requires the impulse of investors, not consumers. In what may be his last act to shape defense authorizations, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is pulling out all the stops to remake the Pentagon. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) is advancing a National Defense Authorization Act for 2017 that would make […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

Aug 22, 2016

On cash

By James Hasik

The Pentagon’s billion-dollar cash advance to Lockheed Martin is just a cost of doing business in a trillion-dollar program. Lockheed Martin’s billion-dollar cash advance is by now big news—or not so big news against the backdrop of a bigger program. As Defense News and others reported over a week ago, the Pentagon recently sent its […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

Aug 19, 2016

The mutually assured destruction of the Airbus-Boeing rivalry

By James Hasik

The ongoing sagas of the KC-46 and A400M are a reminder of how military-industrial hubris is bad for both business and government. On Breaking Defense this morning, Colin Clark notes that Boeing has just won “$2.8 billion for KC-46 tanker low rate production.” That’s good news. As multiple reporters have written this year, the company has […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business
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