Category: Emerging Defense Challenges

Divesting the MRAP

By James Hasik

    BAE’s planned sale of Land Systems South Africa reminds us that not just companies, but countries, can reconstitute some industrial capabilities when needed.   As was widely reported on Monday, BAE Systems and investment firm DGD are selling their Land Systems South Africa business to state-owned Denel for (US) $80 million. As Bloomberg Business Week noted, LSSA does make more […]

QDR, then NDP: Serially Avoiding Hard Choices

By James Hasik

  The National Defense Panel Wants More Money for Defense. That’s Just Not Happening. At the end of July, the congressionally-mandated National Defense Panel released its assessment of 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review QDR), with the inspiring title Ensuring a Strong US Defense for the Future. The panel, hosted by the US Institute for Peace, was composed of an august group of former generals, […]

Russian Imports, Ukrainian Exports

By James Hasik

Kiev will have an easier time severing military-industrial ties than Moscow will. Harsher sanctions, meant specifically to limit technologically advanced imports to the Russian armaments industry, are on the way from the countries of Europe and North America. In response, President Putin earlier this week convened a meeting of officials from government and industry on “import replacement.” […]

Wanted: the Pentagon’s Next Industrial Policy Chief

By James Hasik

Elana Broitman was the Voice for Industry. Find her Replacement Expeditiously. Here at the Defense Industrialist, the US government official whose duties concern us most is perhaps the deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial base policy—the DASD MIBP. From 2009 through 2013, the job was held by Brett Lambert, who is now doing great work at the National […]

Textron’s Market Categorization Problem at Farnborough

By James Hasik

The Scorpion Beat the JSF to Britain. Now Starts the Sales Challenge. The Scorpion flew over From Wichita With only one support plane Some fuel stops en route Where is the F-35?  It has been all over the news that Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter isn’t making it to Farnborough 2014—apparently it’s unsafe—but Textron AirLand’s Scorpion was never doubted at the […]

The Globalization of the Defense Industry

How should the defense industry adjust to greater economic globalization, with novel regional and functional challenges? How is the private sector going to manage decreasing national defense budgets while maintaining high levels of innovation, research, and development?

LPTAs “don’t necessarily represent the best value”

By James Hasik

Keep Providers that are Cheap, or Providers that are Good—You Choose. Politico Pro ran an article earlier this week on Engility (NYSE:EGL), in which CEO Anthony Smeraglinolo argues that its “low cost contracting model works,” but that two years in, “the company is now under pressure to prove that it can boost its sales and profit.” Politico goes on to note that […]

The Globalization of the Defense Industry

Please join us on July 8, 2014 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. for a discussion with William J. Lynn III, CEO, Finmeccanica North America and DRS Technologies Inc. on how private-sector technologies and international markets can revolutionize the defense-industrial base and existing strategies.

Battlestar Google, Part 2

By James Hasik

DARPA Needs Cylons—Just not from Google. As I was asking last week, how ever will it build its Cylons (er, rescue robots) if Google keeps buying all the promising suppliers? Boston Dynamics and Tokyo’s SCHAFT looked very promising, so Google hoovered them up. Suppose Houston’s TRAC Labs looks good in the next round—will Google simply […]

Four Questions on the LRS-B, Part 4

By James Hasik

Can it Meet its Cost and Schedule Objectives?  Weeks later, we are still awaiting that RFP for the LRS-B, the one that was supposed to be available “within days” back in mid-June. Early on, I had formulated four questions that I thought any policymaker ought to ask about the program. It is entirely possible that a classified […]