* Daniel Goure at the Lexington Institute challenges the value of the “should cost” procurement methodology pushed by Undersecretary of Defense Ashton Carter. He calls it “new” but finds it “rather traditional in nature”. Well, “should cost” looks traditional indeed because it is not new. That methodology first came up decades ago as shows this Air University Review article from 1972. The Defense Acquisition University has an analysis of the relevant literature from the 70s and 80s.
* The Heritage Foundation makes a good point on Nunn-McCurdy cost breaches: “The services should do everything possible to avoid the stigma of breach – no easy task today when breaches can be the result of dramatically cutting purchases (driving up per unit cost) as budgets are slashed rather than mismanagement of the program.” [Emphasis ours]. Case in point: the E-2D Hawkeye.
* The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget looks at how the GAO and the CBO differ on their long term fiscal outlook. This may seem “big picture” material of no immediate application, but defense budgets are not happening in a vacuum and will be increasingly constrained by larger fiscal and demographic constraints, in the US as elsewhere.
* The Sunlight Foundation crunched some data about the House of Representatives and found that being part of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is not nearly as strong a predictor of fundraising heft as belonging to Ways and Means, Financial Services or Energy and Commerce.
* HASC Chairman Buck McKeon wins the Understatement of the Day Award during his visit to a Northrop Grumman plant: “Things in Washington are not great.”
* Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan: 14th and final report to Parliament.
* Do the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries really have enough in common to pursue alignment and integration? In the defense sector it remains to be seen whether the recent bilateral talks [PDF, in Portuguese] between India and Brazil will amount to much in practice. Last week there was talks [in Portuguese] in the Brazilian press of a joint Rafale buy. Though there’s precedent of pooled aircraft procurement by airlines (for instance from Brazil’s TAM and Chile’s LAN), a major jet deal involving Brazil and India seems a bit farfetched.
* The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has very much “Made in India” in mind for weapons programs: “The government should enforce Make or Buy and Make (Indian) classification for all flagship defence contracts and mandate that the prime contractor be an Indian entity.”