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Defense Industrialist

May 10, 2017

Is imported steel a threat to American national security?

By James Hasik

It hasn’t been, it isn’t now, and it probably won’t be in the future. Last month, President Donald Trump promulgated a memorandum on “Steel Imports and Threats to National Security,” directing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to consider whether “steel is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to […]

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

May 5, 2017

Must go faster

By James Hasik

The Army, Navy, and Air Force Departments all seem to be talking up new ideas for fast-moving weapons. So does the Pentagon need to be putting more money there? Does any other defense ministry? Perhaps, but sometimes necessity is truncated by feasibility. For with hypersonics, the tactical advantages are great, but so are the technical challenges.

Defense Industry Defense Technologies

Defense Industrialist

Apr 28, 2017

Evolution and the occasional über-gizmo

By James Hasik

Thoughts on corporate strategies in the military aircraft industry  Last week, I provided a guest lecture at the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, that graduate college of the National Defense University formerly known as the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. The school was founded in 1924 as the Army Industrial College, on a […]

Defense Industry Defense Technologies

Defense Industrialist

Apr 21, 2017

An excess of buying and hiring American

By James Hasik

There are, of course, very valid strategic reasons for the United States to retain some degree of autarky in its armaments production. But if the engineers, logisticians, marketers, and financiers are coming to the United States, to work in the United States on long-term visas, building armaments for the American military, aren’t they then Americans?

Defense Industry Economy & Business

Defense Industrialist

Apr 10, 2017

R&E + A&S > AT&L

By James Hasik

Separating technology from procurement in the Pentagon may provide important organizational incentives for innovation. It’s old news by now, but in February 2018, the Pentagon’s under secretariat for acquisition, technology, and logistics (AT&L) will be split into two separate under secretariats, one for research and engineering (R&E, rather a chief of technological innovation) and another for acquisition and sustainment […]

Defense Policy Security & Defense

Emerging Defense Challenges

Apr 6, 2017

Grundman in Aviation Week: A Map Of Aerospace Mergers And Acquisitions

By Steven Grundman

Read the full article here.

Defense Industry Security & Defense

Defense Industrialist

Mar 27, 2017

Will DARPA get its Cylons back?

By James Hasik

The Pentagon’s concerns over Chinese investment in the US should be considered carefully. In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Michaels and his team write of how what’s “Driving U.S. Factories [is] Foreign Robotics.” All the best machine tools, it would seem, are made by the Germans and the Japanese. If that sounds like the 1980s, he asserts […]

China Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Mar 22, 2017

On the economics of cyber weapons, part 2

By James Hasik

Some industrial organization in cyber, and the organization of cyber forces We are now seven months past what Nicholas Weaver called the National Security Agency’s “No Good, Very Bad Monday.” We may not know who the Shadow Brokers really are, but as Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote on Motherboard, quoting Thomas Rid (“Cyber War Will Not Take Place”) of King’s College, […]

Cybersecurity Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Mar 13, 2017

Heithold’s heavy lasers

By James Hasik, Julian A. Eagle-Platón

Forthcoming developments in directed energy could bring tactical and geopolitical change.

China Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Feb 28, 2017

BRAC 2019

By James Hasik

Advice to the administration on military functions and footprint President Trump, the White House has announced, will announce the general outlines of his budget tomorrow: $54 billion more for the military, and an offsetting $54 billion less for everything else, except entitlements, which are not to be touched. Ring-fencing half the spending aims to fulfill […]

Defense Industry Defense Policy