Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
GAO And BAE Systems Detail Concerns With Jammer Award On December 18, the Government Accountability Office released details of its decision to sustain a protest lodged by BAE Systems concerning a Navy award of the Next Generation Jammer technology-development contract to Raytheon. The GAO release was followed by a [Read More...]
Boeing Elevates Defense Chief, Potentially Positioning Him As Successor To McNerney (From Forbes) Boeing disclosed a series of executive shifts today, possibly signaling the beginning of the succession process that will anoint Chairman James McNerney’s successor. The head of the company’s defense unit, Dennis Muilenburg, was promoted to Corporate Vice Chairman, President and [Read More...]
“Foreign Policy” Signals Season Of Discontent For Secretary Hagel Gordon Lubold of Foreign Policy magazine has kicked off what promises to be a festive season here in the nation’s capital. I don’t mean the holiday season, I mean hunting season, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is squarely in [Read More...]
Defense Contractor Exelis Will Spin Off Services, Focus On High-Tech “Growth Platforms” (From Forbes) Only three years after industrial conglomerate ITT revealed plans to split into three independent businesses, the military contractor that emerged from that breakup is itself restructuring. Virginia-based Exelis, one of the 20 biggest defense companies in the world, announced yesterday [Read More...]
Mandela Should Be A Model For America’s Leaders Today’s mass memorial for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg is a reminder that no matter how powerful or compelling a political leader may seem at the height of his career, in the end history renders its own verdict as to that [Read More...]
Five Key Facts Likely To Be Left Out Of The Next National Security Strategy (From Forbes) The Obama Administration will release a revised version of the National Security Strategy early next year covering all the tools of global influence that Washington wields from military power to statecraft to trade policy to popular culture. However, a few [Read More...]
Healthcare.Gov Preliminary Diagnosis: Government Mismanagement After implementing over 400 software fixes and major hardware upgrades, the Obama Administration says it has achieved its goal of making the Healthcare.gov web-site “work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” Even if that assertion is true, it doesn’t [Read More...]
Sierra Nevada Technology Suppresses Prisoner Communications In the years since the 9-11 attacks, Sierra Nevada Corporation has emerged as one of the government’s most agile innovators of security solutions. Much of its federal business is secret, but the company is beginning to lift the veil by [Read More...]
Congressional Leaders Ignore Military Pleas, Raising Specter Of Death And Defeat (From Forbes) As the clock ticks down to a mid-December deadline for negotiators to find a way out of the federal government’s budget impasse, there isn’t much evidence congressional leaders are heeding the pleas of senior military officers. Those officers have been [Read More...]
What Planes Cost — And Why $550 Million Is Cheap For A New Bomber (From Forbes) The Air Force plans to buy 80-100 new long-range bombers at an average cost of $550 million per plane in 2010 dollars — probably closer to $700 million counting the cost of developing the plane. If this program follows the [Read More...]