Category: Content Series

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 […]

Battlestar Google

By James Hasik

How is DARPA supposed to build its Cylons if Google is buying all its contractors? Schaft and Boston Dynamics are the two robotics companies that recently took first and second place in the penultimate round of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Both were bought by Google last December, and with an announcement from the new parent company […]