Experts

Content

Defense Industrialist

Apr 14, 2015

Shield of Poland, Shield from Poland

By James Hasik

Liberalized technology sharing and globalized supply chains are needed for controlling the cost of defense. I spent last Wednesday in Warsaw at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), for a conference on Balancing Strategy and Economic Imperatives: the Future of US-Polish Defense-Industrial Cooperation. My task was moderating a panel discussion on “The Industry’s View,” amongst Marek Dras, […]

Korea Missile Defense

Emerging Defense Challenges

Apr 5, 2015

Grundman on the Iran Nuclear Deal

By Steven Grundman

M.A. and George Lund Fellow for Emerging Defense Challenges Steven Grundman joins Defense News with Vago Muradian to discuss the Iran nuclear deal:

Iran

Corporate Strategy Forum

Apr 3, 2015

Rafales, Not Rules

By James Hasik

While Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon and the White House make policy, the Élysée Palace makes sales. King Abdullah wants drones, and 23 US congressmen want to loan Jordan some American Predators for the duration of the war. The Emirates want drones, and my colleague Bilal Saab told the Beirut Daily Star that industry there is getting quite capable making […]

Defense Industry France

Defense Industrialist

Apr 1, 2015

What Does Shay Assad Mean by “Fair Price”?

By James Hasik

Pentagon pricing policy should aim for long-term value, not an economically intractable concept. Shay Assad, the Pentagon’s director of pricing policy, has had over his tenure a tense relationship with industry. At a private meeting at the Aerospace Industries Association last week, and in an interview with Reuters this week, Assad insisted that his accountants haven’t been always and everywhere […]

Defense Industry Security & Defense

Defense Industrialist

Mar 31, 2015

Force Structure That’s Too Big to Fail?

By James Hasik

Against more challenging adversaries, temper enthusiasm for returns to scale. Ever since I was a midshipman—way back under a Navy Secretary named Lehman—pundits, analysts, and strategists have been wondering whether the US Navy’s supercarriers are too big. And so again in 2015. The new Ford-class ships are a few billion more expensive than their Nimitz predecessors, and Senate […]

Drones National Security

Defense Industrialist

Mar 27, 2015

TXT Loves Helos; UTC Not So Much

By James Hasik

What accounts for two multi-industrial companies’ differing views of the attractiveness of similar subsidiaries? I do not own shares in Sikorsky. None of my friends own shares in Sikorsky. That’s because, since 1929, United Technologies Corporation has in effect owned all the shares in Sikorsky. Indeed, the other four of the world’s five largest helicopter manufacturers are […]

Defense Industrialist

Mar 23, 2015

Why Can’t More Agencies be like DARPA or SOCOM?

By James Hasik

Thornberry’s aim for agility may mean more agency, with faster-better-cheaper results. David Ignatius thinks that the “federal government could use more agencies like DARPA”. Earlier this month in the Washington Post, he wrote that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency “behaves more like a Silicon Valley start-up than a bureaucracy.” Alex Haber and Jeff Jeffress […]

Art of Future Warfare

Mar 20, 2015

How the Next Great War Begins

By Brent Scowcroft Center

The Art of Future Warfare, an initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, hosted an event titled “How the Next Great War Begins” on March 17. The event served as a conclusion to the initiative’s recent essay contest that explored the same question. With a distinguished panel that included Admiral James […]

Emerging Defense Challenges

Mar 14, 2015

Grundman on United Technologies and Sikorsky

By Steven Grundman

Defense News quotes M.A. and George Lund Fellow for Emerging Defense Challenges Steven Grundman on whether United Technologies will divest its Sikorsky unit and what this says about the shrinking profit margins across the defense sector:

Defense Industrialist

Mar 11, 2015

Treaty Limitation Spurs Military Innovation

By James Hasik

Boeing and Saab’s ground-launched glide bomb is quite possibly a brilliantly cost-effective supplement to close air support. The defense trade press has devoted a flurry of coverage over the past two days to Boeing and Saab’s announcement that it recently tested a ground-launched version of the GBU-39B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). The 250-pound unitary is a clean replacement of the cluster munitions on […]

Defense Industry Security & Defense