Latest Articles
New DOD Other Transactions Guide: A Retreat from Innovation
The new (2023) Other Transactions Guide was waylaid by the DoD acquisition bureaucracy for a few years. Now out, the new guide, as expected, reflects business-as-usual thinking and a desire to limit... READ MORE
DoD: You have License to Think
A June 2023 Government Accountability Office report shows that DoD has a plethora of flexible authorities for more effectively pursuing and advancing knowledge and capability that are going unused or little used.... READ MORE
Outsider POV: Anti-Leadership in Defense Acquisition fails the Warfighter and a Nation
For an intellectual, a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for normative problems, it is vexing to ponder why federal... READ MORE
The Narrow Mindedness of Defense Acquisition
Given the pitiful state of defense acquisition for R&D and delivering new capability that defers risk to the warfighter, wastes taxpayer funding, shrinks the industrial base, steals from the future, and is an... READ MORE
DoD’s National Defense S&T Strategy 2023 is a “Wish-list” not Strategy
The Department of Defense recently published “National Defense Science and Technology Strategy 2023” that contains ZERO consequential strategy and parrots what others have said ad nauseam. The document correctly identifies... READ MORE
Unsticking DoD’s Acquisition Process – easier done than talking about it forever!
In this episode Rick Dunn, former DARPA General Counsel, talks with TC Hoot, a long time DoD Acquisition Program Manager, currently Senior Program Manager at MISI, a Partnership Intermediary serving U.S.... READ MORE
Is DoD’s Acquisition System for R&D Institutionally Corrupt?
Most people have a good idea of what fraud, waste, and abuse looks like, but few recognize institutional corruption, because it’s “normal”. From Harvard’s, Safra Center for Ethics: “Institutional corruption is manifest when... READ MORE
WWII Pacific Air War and Modern Defense Acquisition
In this episode, Strategic Institute’s Founder, Rick Dunn hosts professional WWII Historian, Justin Taylan, to discuss how major events are effected and shaped by numerous discrete small decisions and events, as is... READ MORE