Category: Content Series

The Unintended Consequences of Saving Lives

By James Hasik

Experiences with cruise missiles, MRAPs, and Iron Dome provide a warning about the F-35.    When and why do defense officials choose to procure equipment specifically to reduce wartime casualties? As recounted at a recent Cato Institute conference that I attended, there are competing answers attempting to explain why voters offer or withhold their support. Officials sometimes act […]

The Customer Is Not Always Right

By James Hasik

At a point, customer closeness becomes “the worst thing possible” for a 21st-century defense business.   At what point does acting and thinking like your customer pass the point of marginal value in defense contracting? Hiring those bobble-head retired flag officers as marketing representatives is clearly a widely valued strategy. In recent essay on “Assimilating Disruption, or Offboarding Innovation,” I […]

Defense Contractors Are Not From Lake Wobegon.

By James Hasik

  Northrop Grumman will spend its cash buying back shares.   The board of Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), the Wall Street Journal reports, has just authorized the company’s management to buy back $3 billion of shares next year. That means that the company will return $3 billion to its shareholders, rather than investing it in its own […]

TTIP Action | December 2

By Global Business & Economics Program

  Donald Tusk Takes Office as President of the European Council“Both we and the Americans are responsible for the future of our relations. The year ahead will be crucial.”On December 1, former prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk replaced Herman van Rompuy as the President of the European Council. At the handover ceremony, he stressed […]

Crowdsourcing the New New Thing?

By James Hasik

DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make program shows the measured promise of innovative approaches for engineering innovative armaments.   Anyone up for designing a new swimming tank? For counterattacks against possible Chinese landings in that first island chain, the Japanese Army wants to buy 52 amphibious assault vehicles. The most likely candidate, according to Stars & Stripes this […]

Are Lockheed, Raytheon, and L-3 “Ripe for a Spinoff”?

By James Hasik

The largest defense contractors are conglomerates, and excessive conglomeration may not be helping the customers.   Last month I argued that the rumored spinoff of Oshkosh’s military trucks business wouldn’t be good for either the company or its customers. But anti-mergers are in the air, as evidenced by the Wall Street Journal’s almost simultaneous article “Smucker, […]

Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge: 2016 Gallery

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