A. A device on Star Fleet starships that can replicate every thing from Chicken soup to a full bore Phaser bank array.
B. The Replicators are a highly-advanced machine race from P3S-517 in the Milky Way galaxy and are capable of reproducing themselves indefinitely, consuming all available resources in an area to create more of themselves. The Replicators were created at an unspecified time in the past on a Human world.
C. A DOD program for building jillions of drones to swamp the enemy seeking out and destroying their ability to fight and their will to resist.
That's how it's supposed to be anyway. DoD systems are supposed to be built with mature and proven technology, not a science project that you hope will work.
Annapolis has always been the most unserious of the military academies and senior military colleges. Squishy subjects and questionable staff have roamed the halls while the Middies scoff and giggle at how serious the other schools conduct themselves.
I personally think we need to see a lot more career consequences for screwing up an acquisition program. Next officer managing a Nunn-McCurdy program gets run out of the service pour encourager les autres.
The problem is that the poor sod managing a program when the breach happens is rarely the incompetent manager responsible for it. THAT individual moved on a year or two ago.
That’s fair. I don’t know enough about the intricacies of general officer career progression but the way managing major programs seems like box checking is really problematic.
I fully get that, which is why we need a new standard by which to measure the performance, and sometimes the mere competence, of acquisition program managers. When I retired from being an EDO, I went to work for a company that dealt with the lawsuits following every fracking construction job on the planet. Our job was to analyze program cost and schedule overruns and figure out who was to blame. When it was our client, we told them so, and urged them to settle quickly. When our client was the victim, we testified in court. I have long urged a PM fitrep system that did the following:
1. Measure the actual risk in a project on the PM’s first day in the billet.
2. Do the same for the PM’s last day on the job.
3. A PM’s primary task is to be a good steward of public funds and eliminate as much risk to an acquisition as possible, given a fixed set to technical requirements. All unresolved risk results in program budget increases.
4. Use the GAO to measure #1 and #2 solely in terms of $MUSD, adjusting for all of the outside influences the PM had no power over, like inflation and Congress. The financial calculations MUST be done by a party outside of DoD, and GAO has done a credible job of calling out the Navy for keeping two sets of books. Risk must also be evaluated by an outside party; otherwise risk will be totally lowballed.
5. Good performance gets accolades and a promotion. Bad performance gets a formal board of inquiry, complete with a public report. The public report serves notice to the American public that the Navy is FINALLY serious about being good stewards of the public trust, and to future employers that that might just want to pass on this particular retiree.
Great read as always. There was just something about the language in the beginning that me think this was some kind of a "Hail Mary" attempt to deal with a realization within the DOD of the consequence of what they neglected to do years ago. "Big bets..." is not exactly confidence-inspiring, explicit wording that I think belongs to an acquition program that requires explicit answer... just saying.
(Regarding the Kfir link) By now, Israel could have had a 5th-generation Kfir, with plans for a 6th generation well underway. Has Israel been better off with F-15s, 16s and 35s? I don't know. Any thoughts, out there?
IMHO, yes. They saved comparatively more from R&D on proven airframes (yes, I know about the Mirage). Particularly true for F-15 as an AS fighter. The robust Israeli defense industry evidently does not share DODs arcane genius in matters of procurement. The IAF sensibly mods most everything...that's why we're still talking about Kfir (serious avionics and targeting packages).
What frustrates me the most is the horde of people blathering on about unmanned systems who have NO real expertise. Hands-on experience is scarce, but there IS some...mostly going to waste. Stuck in operational units, doing T&E, or retired. It's the glib talkers who get promoted, not the scarred veterans who know what's needed, and where the pitfalls lie.
And there are a LOT of pitfalls. Cheap FPV one-way systems are getting the headlines today, but they are short-legged and easily defeated. Hell, a good old-fashioned smoke screen would put many of them out of the fight. And a Second World War vintage quad Bofors would scythe them out of the sky. There's a reason why the serious anti-ship missiles are either very-low-flying high subsonic, or VERY fast.
(Pro tip: Take an LCS, put another 3-5 57mm mounts on the helo deck. Might be useful.)
At this point Nobody has any real expertise in unmanned systems, just as nobody had any real expertise in aviation in 1914. Drone warfare is going to get a lot more complex, just as conventional aviation (offense and defense) did. We are going to need an effective anti-drone system of sensors and weapons, just to start with. And a C&C system, maybe an AWACS equivalent.
And, as an added bonus, it will require a lot of staff and support infrastructure & personnel that we don't have now and, given current recruiting difficulties, don't have much possibility of getting without sacrificing other units.
What the hell is the DepSecDef doing on Twitter anyway? She doesn't have to lobby for a top govt. post, she already has it. Her next move into the contractor world will be a lateral move, less power and prestige but with the trade-off of a lot more money (a move I'll make any day of the week). These people make no sense to me.
1. Go deep into the Federal Workforce. Look for GS-14s, especially the technical specialists in the field activities. Promote them.
2. Push decision-making down to the working-level people. Having senior FOGOs rubber-stamp decisions (think JROC) is a recipe for a very slow process.
3. Fund REAL competition. The instant you down-select to one vendor, you are stuck with whatever he delivers, get it when that vendor delivers it, and pay whatever price is set. Competition lets you reduce the Government management footprint considerably.
4. Specification compliance does NOT define satisfactory performance. Implication - spending a lot of effort on specification decomposition and tracking is time and resources wasted.
5. Fund the ground/shore test rigs. That goes TRIPLE for software...and software has been the driver in every major aviation program. When the software developers are demanding that flight test assets be used for troubleshooting software, you have a Very Big Problem.
6. Don't assume the big Aerospace & Defense contractors are any better than the Government. They are often just as top-heavy and ossified.
“Build a little, test a little, learn a lot.” It’s no surprise that we continue to build AEGIS DDGs, because they all contain the DNA of Wayne E. Meyer. Unfortunately, fundamental concepts like Cornerstones of AEGIS, Aegis Shipbuilding Milestones of Eight, CSEDS, PTC, Norton Sound seem to be considered obsolete or outdated.
Another great read. I think we should approach this like the sports world approaches building a new stadium, often in the shadow of the old one. The idea is to keep the elements that are essential to the game, but change all the other stuff that impedes the total experience. The newer stadiums find ways to get the fans to their seats faster, let them see more of the action and speed the flow of the game (except for the @#$&! Commercial timeouts and instant replay calls). But the point is to build the new structure, test it and then switch over completely once it is ready for use - and then destroy the old structure completely- not patch the old one over and over again. I’ve been reading about acquisition reform since high school with the Packard Commission and success has been fleeting and rare.
It's a great example. They never live up to the power point, they always lose money. They steal money from the poor people in the city and gives to the billionaire team owners, putting all the risk on the government taxpayers and giving all the profits to the rich and well connected. All so the people who watch the local team on TV can continue to watch the local team on TV, unlike how it would work if the team was in another city and they had to watch it on TV.
" I’ve been reading about acquisition reform since high school with the Packard Commission and success has been fleeting and rare."
Because no matter what kind of system you implement, human beings are going to run it. The Garden of Eden was a perfect system, then God turned it over to Adam & Eve.
Hardly. Waste and inefficiency are not the same as corruption and incompetence. The Soviet Union was synonymous with both corruption and incompetence and their grandsons maintain the impulse (in Russia and Ukraine).
"Waste and inefficiency are not the same as corruption and incompetence." That maybe true. Unfortunately, given the current track record by NAVSEA, it looks like they have 3 out of the 4 traits listed.
I can't argue against that. I don't say the four are mutually exclusive but your comment does raise the question: How long do you tolerate the first two traits until you unconsciously embrace the others? We are not at Soviet levels of inefficiency yet; the marxism will have to finish leveling its way through academia, the courts, culture and government before the real money is touched. Meanwhile, we spend a lot, talk a lot, with pathetically little to show for the effort.
I suspect that "Replicator" will whither like a big ball of cotton candy in the rain when Dep Sec Hicks revolves the door back to one of the Primes....
Its a concept, not a money making program making over priced widgets.
BTW...
I also suspect that this TQM-esque new fangled management 'way' that is making the rounds in the corporate world may gain recognition...
From Harvard...Of course... It has an appealing (to the Progressives, Elites, and Oligarchs anyway) Orwellian vibe to it....
by Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin A. Converse, Andrew Hales, and Leidy Klotz
"Imagining ways to introduce change is an essential skill no matter one’s occupation, role, or rank. To distinguish an app, a designer envisions a unique new feature. To enhance workplace culture, a manager considers new training modules or incentives. To increase corporate social responsibility, an advisory board identifies green-energy investment opportunities.
Notice that each of these changes would add something to what already exists."
This 'Less Is More' idea sure sounds a whole lot like "Work Will Set You Free"...
"...if [addition] becomes a business’s default path to improvement, that business may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities. In one study of organizational change, for example, we found that when stakeholders suggested hundreds of ways to improve an organization, fewer than 10% of those improvements involved taking something away. Across a series of follow-up experiments, we demonstrated that people systematically overlook subtractive changes."
What is Replicator? I still don't know
A. A device on Star Fleet starships that can replicate every thing from Chicken soup to a full bore Phaser bank array.
B. The Replicators are a highly-advanced machine race from P3S-517 in the Milky Way galaxy and are capable of reproducing themselves indefinitely, consuming all available resources in an area to create more of themselves. The Replicators were created at an unspecified time in the past on a Human world.
C. A DOD program for building jillions of drones to swamp the enemy seeking out and destroying their ability to fight and their will to resist.
C- The Houthis already are ahead of us on that one!
Indeed!
Really cool when you use them for self replicating mines.
In theory, we'd pick several useful designs, then support the companies making them develop a domestic supply chain. As is, I also don't know.
I'm sure after they are done explaining it, you will know less.
Pronouncements by Hicks should be known, appropriately, as Jabberwocky Speak.
This is like our Family Motto: "You can buy better but you can't pay more!"
When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.'
I agree. No more future wonder weapons' still on the fantasy stage, real workable platforms for the near future.
That's how it's supposed to be anyway. DoD systems are supposed to be built with mature and proven technology, not a science project that you hope will work.
Meanwhile at the Naval academy;
https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/25/navy-gender-sexuality-class/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defensereport&pnespid=qOB3VyAWbfkYyuafqTGwDIKSuBXxTcVuMeymwOFovx1mngHS_APl.IcTqusWS4ZZar9uilvvoA
I warned everyone...
Annapolis has always been the most unserious of the military academies and senior military colleges. Squishy subjects and questionable staff have roamed the halls while the Middies scoff and giggle at how serious the other schools conduct themselves.
I am still in favor of eliminating the service academics. They are completing their transformation into Harvard without the anti semitism.
Transformations, especially fundamental transformations, take time, Aurelian. Give it time.
Oh my lord....
Is Congress willing to change the procurement process though?
As GHR would say "There wouldn't be enough room for graft" if they did.
I personally think we need to see a lot more career consequences for screwing up an acquisition program. Next officer managing a Nunn-McCurdy program gets run out of the service pour encourager les autres.
The problem is that the poor sod managing a program when the breach happens is rarely the incompetent manager responsible for it. THAT individual moved on a year or two ago.
Yep. The 6 classic phases of a project:
Enthusiasm
Disillusionment
Panic
Search for the guilty
Punishment of the innocent
Praise and honors for the non-participants
That’s fair. I don’t know enough about the intricacies of general officer career progression but the way managing major programs seems like box checking is really problematic.
I fully get that, which is why we need a new standard by which to measure the performance, and sometimes the mere competence, of acquisition program managers. When I retired from being an EDO, I went to work for a company that dealt with the lawsuits following every fracking construction job on the planet. Our job was to analyze program cost and schedule overruns and figure out who was to blame. When it was our client, we told them so, and urged them to settle quickly. When our client was the victim, we testified in court. I have long urged a PM fitrep system that did the following:
1. Measure the actual risk in a project on the PM’s first day in the billet.
2. Do the same for the PM’s last day on the job.
3. A PM’s primary task is to be a good steward of public funds and eliminate as much risk to an acquisition as possible, given a fixed set to technical requirements. All unresolved risk results in program budget increases.
4. Use the GAO to measure #1 and #2 solely in terms of $MUSD, adjusting for all of the outside influences the PM had no power over, like inflation and Congress. The financial calculations MUST be done by a party outside of DoD, and GAO has done a credible job of calling out the Navy for keeping two sets of books. Risk must also be evaluated by an outside party; otherwise risk will be totally lowballed.
5. Good performance gets accolades and a promotion. Bad performance gets a formal board of inquiry, complete with a public report. The public report serves notice to the American public that the Navy is FINALLY serious about being good stewards of the public trust, and to future employers that that might just want to pass on this particular retiree.
The triumph of the FPV drone is that it marries the cheapest available guidance system - a human - to a cheap, low-observable missile.
The triumph of Replicator is that it marries the most expensive possible acquisition system - ours - to a nebulous, never-achieved objective.
"the cheapest available guidance system "
Maybe the cheapest, but certainly not cheap. It takes 18+ years to build, considerable cost to clothe and equip, and at least 16 weeks to train.
It appears that white hat deckplate gallows humor is becoming an essential coping tool while awaiting the CDR's promise of a "return to clarity."
Soon we will be as powerful as today's Royal Navy.
Great read as always. There was just something about the language in the beginning that me think this was some kind of a "Hail Mary" attempt to deal with a realization within the DOD of the consequence of what they neglected to do years ago. "Big bets..." is not exactly confidence-inspiring, explicit wording that I think belongs to an acquition program that requires explicit answer... just saying.
(Regarding the Kfir link) By now, Israel could have had a 5th-generation Kfir, with plans for a 6th generation well underway. Has Israel been better off with F-15s, 16s and 35s? I don't know. Any thoughts, out there?
IMHO, yes. They saved comparatively more from R&D on proven airframes (yes, I know about the Mirage). Particularly true for F-15 as an AS fighter. The robust Israeli defense industry evidently does not share DODs arcane genius in matters of procurement. The IAF sensibly mods most everything...that's why we're still talking about Kfir (serious avionics and targeting packages).
What frustrates me the most is the horde of people blathering on about unmanned systems who have NO real expertise. Hands-on experience is scarce, but there IS some...mostly going to waste. Stuck in operational units, doing T&E, or retired. It's the glib talkers who get promoted, not the scarred veterans who know what's needed, and where the pitfalls lie.
And there are a LOT of pitfalls. Cheap FPV one-way systems are getting the headlines today, but they are short-legged and easily defeated. Hell, a good old-fashioned smoke screen would put many of them out of the fight. And a Second World War vintage quad Bofors would scythe them out of the sky. There's a reason why the serious anti-ship missiles are either very-low-flying high subsonic, or VERY fast.
(Pro tip: Take an LCS, put another 3-5 57mm mounts on the helo deck. Might be useful.)
Yep, you don't advance if you don't join the chant that unmanned is the way to go and that everything has to be battery-powered or solar.
At this point Nobody has any real expertise in unmanned systems, just as nobody had any real expertise in aviation in 1914. Drone warfare is going to get a lot more complex, just as conventional aviation (offense and defense) did. We are going to need an effective anti-drone system of sensors and weapons, just to start with. And a C&C system, maybe an AWACS equivalent.
And, as an added bonus, it will require a lot of staff and support infrastructure & personnel that we don't have now and, given current recruiting difficulties, don't have much possibility of getting without sacrificing other units.
What the hell is the DepSecDef doing on Twitter anyway? She doesn't have to lobby for a top govt. post, she already has it. Her next move into the contractor world will be a lateral move, less power and prestige but with the trade-off of a lot more money (a move I'll make any day of the week). These people make no sense to me.
Now, if you are serious about acquisition reform:
1. Go deep into the Federal Workforce. Look for GS-14s, especially the technical specialists in the field activities. Promote them.
2. Push decision-making down to the working-level people. Having senior FOGOs rubber-stamp decisions (think JROC) is a recipe for a very slow process.
3. Fund REAL competition. The instant you down-select to one vendor, you are stuck with whatever he delivers, get it when that vendor delivers it, and pay whatever price is set. Competition lets you reduce the Government management footprint considerably.
4. Specification compliance does NOT define satisfactory performance. Implication - spending a lot of effort on specification decomposition and tracking is time and resources wasted.
5. Fund the ground/shore test rigs. That goes TRIPLE for software...and software has been the driver in every major aviation program. When the software developers are demanding that flight test assets be used for troubleshooting software, you have a Very Big Problem.
6. Don't assume the big Aerospace & Defense contractors are any better than the Government. They are often just as top-heavy and ossified.
“Build a little, test a little, learn a lot.” It’s no surprise that we continue to build AEGIS DDGs, because they all contain the DNA of Wayne E. Meyer. Unfortunately, fundamental concepts like Cornerstones of AEGIS, Aegis Shipbuilding Milestones of Eight, CSEDS, PTC, Norton Sound seem to be considered obsolete or outdated.
Another great read. I think we should approach this like the sports world approaches building a new stadium, often in the shadow of the old one. The idea is to keep the elements that are essential to the game, but change all the other stuff that impedes the total experience. The newer stadiums find ways to get the fans to their seats faster, let them see more of the action and speed the flow of the game (except for the @#$&! Commercial timeouts and instant replay calls). But the point is to build the new structure, test it and then switch over completely once it is ready for use - and then destroy the old structure completely- not patch the old one over and over again. I’ve been reading about acquisition reform since high school with the Packard Commission and success has been fleeting and rare.
why is everything a game to you?
The "problem" is USA has no threats, so you can have inefficient "spending"
The US has threats few are taking seriously, start at the southern border...
It's a great example. They never live up to the power point, they always lose money. They steal money from the poor people in the city and gives to the billionaire team owners, putting all the risk on the government taxpayers and giving all the profits to the rich and well connected. All so the people who watch the local team on TV can continue to watch the local team on TV, unlike how it would work if the team was in another city and they had to watch it on TV.
" I’ve been reading about acquisition reform since high school with the Packard Commission and success has been fleeting and rare."
Because no matter what kind of system you implement, human beings are going to run it. The Garden of Eden was a perfect system, then God turned it over to Adam & Eve.
A bit like BBBW3? Just announcements that turn out to be nothing.
Unlike the PLA which says less but actually churns out ships etc.
I imagine the US is the modern day USSR.
Hardly. Waste and inefficiency are not the same as corruption and incompetence. The Soviet Union was synonymous with both corruption and incompetence and their grandsons maintain the impulse (in Russia and Ukraine).
"Waste and inefficiency are not the same as corruption and incompetence." That maybe true. Unfortunately, given the current track record by NAVSEA, it looks like they have 3 out of the 4 traits listed.
I can't argue against that. I don't say the four are mutually exclusive but your comment does raise the question: How long do you tolerate the first two traits until you unconsciously embrace the others? We are not at Soviet levels of inefficiency yet; the marxism will have to finish leveling its way through academia, the courts, culture and government before the real money is touched. Meanwhile, we spend a lot, talk a lot, with pathetically little to show for the effort.
My preference is to be wrong.
Corrosive ideology, check
Empire building, check
Corruption, check
Old party apparatchiks, check
I suspect that "Replicator" will whither like a big ball of cotton candy in the rain when Dep Sec Hicks revolves the door back to one of the Primes....
Its a concept, not a money making program making over priced widgets.
BTW...
I also suspect that this TQM-esque new fangled management 'way' that is making the rounds in the corporate world may gain recognition...
From Harvard...Of course... It has an appealing (to the Progressives, Elites, and Oligarchs anyway) Orwellian vibe to it....
https://hbr.org/2022/02/when-subtraction-adds-value
(the book)
https://www.amazon.com/Subtract-Untapped-Science-Leidy-Klotz/dp/1250249864
"When Subtraction Adds Value"
by Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin A. Converse, Andrew Hales, and Leidy Klotz
"Imagining ways to introduce change is an essential skill no matter one’s occupation, role, or rank. To distinguish an app, a designer envisions a unique new feature. To enhance workplace culture, a manager considers new training modules or incentives. To increase corporate social responsibility, an advisory board identifies green-energy investment opportunities.
Notice that each of these changes would add something to what already exists."
This 'Less Is More' idea sure sounds a whole lot like "Work Will Set You Free"...
"...if [addition] becomes a business’s default path to improvement, that business may be failing to consider a whole class of other opportunities. In one study of organizational change, for example, we found that when stakeholders suggested hundreds of ways to improve an organization, fewer than 10% of those improvements involved taking something away. Across a series of follow-up experiments, we demonstrated that people systematically overlook subtractive changes."