Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, AcquisitionTalk.com.

In this third episode, we look at the 1950s debates over how weapons development should proceed. The listener will find strong parallels to the modern debates over waterfall vs. agile development practices. Weapons development in the 1940s and 50s followed an agile method of iterative and incremental decisions made by small, empowered teams. Yet this practice became supplanted by the belief that iteration and competitive developments revealed a failure to plan, and that planning could relieve all uncertainties in weapons development.

As you listen to the story, consider how weapons today are expected to proceed linearly from science, to prototyping, to full scale development, production, then operations and sustainment. There is little or no room for feedback mechanisms and learning.

However, another important aspect of software today is not just agile development, but continuous development and deployment of capability in what is called devops. The lines between development and production are not as clear today as they were presented in the hardware-oriented world of the 1950s. 

Listen in on our third chapter of the Programmed to Fail story, this time focusing of the emerging religion of systems analysis, a religion which continues to pervade the defense acquisition system 70 years later.

This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Programmed to Fail - 3. Systems Analysis

In this episode, we explore how the Department of Defense radically broke from liberal traditions and American values by installing a Soviet-style process called the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, or PPBS. It is not a coincidence that progress in military technologies dramatically slowed down over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. This is a direct implication of the PPBS which took decisions out of the hands of people closest to the work and rose the status of unaccountable bureaucrats aligned with comptrollers, accountants, economists, and analysis.

There has been a growing recognition of the need to reform the industrial age PPBE process so that the United States can outpace peer-competitors like China and Russia in military technology. Senator Jack Reed said of PPBE, “It is likely too slow and cumbersome to meet many of DoD’s requirements to adopt new technologies in a rapid, agile manner.” Representative Adam Smith said, “We’ve got to give the Pentagon greater flexibility in terms of moving money around so that they’re not locked into a two-year or five-year cycle.” Former Representative Mac Thornberry wrote how “Today’s rapid innovation and technological change renders our industrial age approach to funding obsolete”

The fiscal year 2022 national defense authorization act created a congressional commission to investigate reform of the PPB system. The commission has a hefty duty for it is the first major review of the resourcing system since the Jackson Committee hearings of the late 1960s. They are tasked with analyzing the extensive timelines, new and agile budgeting methods, how other agencies and countries resource programs, and make recommendations.

This episode of Programmed to Fail provides an important economic backdrop to the adoption of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, a system that continues to dominate how money flows and weapons are resourced today, and why it must be reformed.

This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com

Programmed to Fail - 4. Planning-Programming-Budgeting

A discussion of the book Decolonizing Economics by Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven with two of the authors, Dr. Dutt and Dr. Kesar.  Their book outlines the biases within the field of economics regarding theory as well as the bias of economists in general.   Too much of the economics discipline is filled with "eurocentrism."  

Economic Impact | Episode 57 | Decolonizing Economics

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A podcast on the management, technology, and political-economy of weapon systems acquisition.

New tracks tagged #Economic Theory