Category: Content Series

Impossible, But Still inadequate?

By James Hasik

The MRAP experience still shows how military requirements need to hew to the state of the art in attainable technologies.   Early this month, the US Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command held a conference at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to discuss ways to reduce the weight of armored vehicles by 40 percent, but without […]

The Local Debate about TTIP in Several European Countries

TTIP – Debate: European Goals and FearsIn this video from Deutsche Welle, an international German broadcaster, Olaf Böhnke, head of the Berlin Office of the European Council on Foreign Affairs is interviewed on the European goals and fears about TTIP. Böhnke says that even though agriculture and food safety issues currently make the headlines in […]

The three big questions of defense-industrial strategy

By Steven Grundman

Commercial or military, autarkic or globalized, public or private? What are the industrial base issues that need to be considered in any defense strategy? In this age of austerity in military spending, we are hearing calls for bolder policies that would break with past practice, rewarding companies for taking risks, and punishing those that failed. We hear […]

On the Arrogance of Should-Cost

By James Hasik

Better outcomes in military procurement still await a better-educated workforce. In April 2010, then-Under Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter promulgated the first version of his Better Buying Power concept, which mandated (amongst other things) “should-cost” reviews for major procurements. The strategy aims to determine what a weapon should cost, if the government and the contractors […]

What Uber Can Teach the Pentagon

By James Hasik

The appointment of SVP Emil Michael to the Defense Business Board is a good start.   Last week, the Defense Department announced that fully eight new members would be joining its Defense Business Board, the panel that advises the Pentagon on, well, business. We might hope that the Defense would pay more attention to its Business Board, […]

Agile, or Fragile?

By James Hasik

The USAF’s strategy sounds better than its plans.   In Real Clear Defense, my Atlantic Council colleague Alex Ward recently endorsed the US Air Force’s concept of strategic agility as what’s needed for the service “to employ new technologies, better deal with increasingly powerful state and non-state actors, and adapt operations to new environments over the next thirty years.” In its recently published […]

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 […]

Natural Gas: A New Hope for TPP

By Katelyn Lamson

Though squabbles over automobiles and agricultural products appear to have stalled negotiations for the time being, all hope for a deal is far from lost. Indeed, there is one issue that might prove the lynchpin of concluding negotiations: energy. A free trade agreement that includes an element of national treatment of liquefied natural gas has […]