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Defense Industrialist

Feb 28, 2017

The 75 percent solution

By James Hasik

The Marine Corps should move towards a mix of attack aircraft tailored for two classes of enemy, in wars small and large. In the short term, that means buying fixed-wing gunships. In the mid-term, it means buying tilt-rotor gunships, including drones. Both aircraft types are better suited for the small wars in which the Marine Corps has been engaged for most of the post-Cold War era. For now, that might seem to destroy Marine Aviation, but to save it in the long term for the big wars.

Defense Industry Defense Policy

Defense Industrialist

Feb 13, 2017

Make it so.

By James Hasik

Standing up a new military organization is hard institutional work, but work worth the effort over time. A proposal for a Space Force proposes short-term turmoil, but eventually better morale, stability, and focus after separation from the Air Force.

Defense Policy Space

Defense Industrialist

Jan 26, 2017

Keep that hiring freeze short

By James Hasik

Really reducing the Pentagon workforce will be a challenging task, because every office needs to be effectively searched for who’s not doing a great job, and who’s not doing a job that really needs to be done. It’s also an important job, because the layering-on of people and offices over the years has created a bureaucratic monster in which simple decisions can take months to effect. So here’s one bit of advice to the new administration, in the interests of efficient administration of defense. Make no small plans at the OMB. Get to work on that plan for eliminating the deadwood, the unimportant, and the sclerotic. Just don’t let this hiring freeze linger. Because until fresh hiring can resume, you’ll get none of the new talent you need.

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James Hasik was a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.

Over the past sixteen years, his advisory work has assisted defense contractors and defense ministries with their problems in business strategy, planning, and policy analysis. He has undertaken over fifty discrete advisory projects in sectors spanning armored vehicles, shipbuilding, armaments, ammunition, precision munitions, and training & simulation. His engagements have functionally included operations analysis, supply chain analysis, marketing, product development, competitive analysis, facilities management, portfolio strategy, business forecasting, privatization planning, organizational design, merger due diligence, and antitrust analysis.

Hasik previously worked as senior consultant at Booz & Company, a senior defense consultant at Charles River Associates, a procurement consultant at IBM, a logistician at Accenture, and a weapon systems analyst at ANSER. He began his career as a shipboard officer in the US Navy.

Hasik is the author Arms and Innovation: Entrepreneurship and Alliances in the Twenty-First Century Defense Industry (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and the co-author of Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfighting (Naval Institute Press, 2002). He has authored a further five book chapters. His research has also been published in RUSI Journal, Defense and Security Analysis, Joint Force Quarterly, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Contemporary Security Policy, Defense Acquisition Research Journal, and Proceedings of the US Naval Institute.

Hasik earned his BA in history and physics at Duke University, his MBA in business economics at the University of Chicago, and his PhD in public policy at the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation, MRAP: Marketing Military Innovation, investigated the processes by which Coalition ground forces came to adopt blast-resistant armored vehicles during the counterinsurgent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. His research investigated the marketing strategies, supply chains, political relationships, and manufacturing strategies of every significant armored vehicle manufacturer in North America, Western Europe, South Africa, and Australia.