Return-To-Moon Not Quite Dead Yet

NASA’s prior work to return Americans to the moon isn’t dead yet, but we may want to get a priest. The big remaining issue will be about funding for contract termination, which I predict will be paid for by NASA.  And that’s not a very bold prediction. Termination costs are why no contractor in their [...]

Cutting Capability To Create Strength?

The guidance for the services to come up with $2 billion in cuts for the FY2012 budget has been met with hosannas from the Secretary of the Army John McHugh. The alleged carrot in this is that the services are supposed to be allowed to keep some of the savings.  I’m not sure how that [...]

Space Security Programs of Interest

Remember the golden rule of just about everything: if it ain’t funded, it ain’t.  While policy is interesting, it is actually revealed in what gets–or doesn’t get–funded. This analysis is basically appears to largely be putting a number of the budgetary requirements documents (known as r-docs) into a table and providing commentary from the respective r-docs’ word [...]

Mail-in the QDR?

The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is a legislatively mandated review of DoD strategy and priorities. Some in Congress feel the QDR has been used to avoid DoD transparency and accountability and that an honest review of fundamental national security issues will not be addressed in the QDR, but rather, that the QDR will rather be [...]

Fund It Or Kill It

During the mid and late 1990s, when we were reaping the benefits of the peace dividend, I first heard an ancient and wise programmer (someone who runs a DoD program or series of programs, not a software person) use the mathematical phrase D + I = O. For the uninitiated, that was shorthand for “disconnects [...]