Griffin’s seeming skepticism about commercial ventures to provide global broadband and Internet services is in stark contrast to the enthusiasm bubbling out of the Air Force and the Army.
By Theresa HitchensWhy did Amazon bypass the GAO protest process and go straight to federal court? That strategy faces two major risks.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.If Amazon protests the Pentagon’s award of the $10 billion JEDI contract to rival Microsoft — and they almost certainly will — the president’s public feud with CEO Jeff Bezos will be central to their case.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON The massive and troubled $10 billion cloud contract the Pentagon has been pursuing has run into another snag. DoD revealed Tuesday it has obtained “new information” pointing to potential of conflicts of interest in the competition, already widely criticized for favoring Amazon Web Services. Pentagon spokesperson Elissa Smith confirmed to Breaking Defense that “new…
By Paul McLeary“You’re not looking at my mission needs,” Brig. Gen. Crall told an audience of contractors. “If ‘there’s an app for that,’ does the app work when you’re disconnected?” Crall asked. “Does the app work when you haven’t had food for three days and you’ve been cut off?”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.DETROIT: The Artificial Intelligence the military needs most is not some kind of killer robot, the Army’s three-star senior futurist told me today. The Army really needs AI to make sense of lots of data, fast, so commanders and quartermasters can send the right forces with the right supplies to the right place on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.HALIFAX: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs expressed frustration Saturday over the refusal of some tech giants to work with the US military. “I have a hard time with companies that are working very hard to engage in the market inside China,” said Gen. Joe Dunford at the Halifax Security Forum, “then don’t want to work…
By Paul McLearyTwo lawmakers don’t mention Amazon Web Services by name in their letter to the DoD IG, but the Web retailer is all over the complaint.
By Paul McLearyWhat did Amazon founder, Washington Post owner and space entrepreneur Jeff Bezos tell the Air Force Association?
Don’t overthink it.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, but it’s not all small stuff.
On low stakes decisions, you should go fast, experiment, try and fail and try again; but on the big stuff — the irreversible decisions — for God’s sake, take your time.
WASHINGTON: The JEDI cloud computing contract may be one of the most controversial deals the Pentagon hasn’t even awarded. Worth up to $10 billion over a decade, the Pentagon’s attempt to build its first true enterprise-wide cloud has sparked charges that the deal is designed to go straight to Amazon, which already supplies the CIA…
By Colin ClarkBill Greenwalt is sort of the Pied Piper of military acquisition policy. Where he leads, others often follow. After he wrote a series of op-eds for Breaking Defense recommending major changes to the Pentagon’s acquisition system, Sen. John McCain lured Bill back to his old job at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Greenwalt rewrote the laws, shaking up Defense Department acquisition. Bill is back, pointing to new acquisition problems, this latest one with his former employer — the Government Accountability Office. It’s a doozy, as you’ll see.
By Bill GreenwaltFORT MEADE, MD: “Remember the peace dividend we took in the Clinton years in the ’90s? Welcome back,” said Douglas Packard. “That’s where we’re at.” Some 20 years ago as defense budgets plummeted post-Cold War, the defense industry consolidated, recalled Packard, acting head of procurement at the Defense Information Systems Agency. Contractors better beware once more,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.After three years of the “age of austerity” in Western military spending, investors’ imperatives and corporate strategies show one indication of how the defense-industrial base will evolve over the next decade. Investors want public companies that demonstrate an attractive risk-adjusted total return, not just M&A-fueled arbitrage plays. In response, companies are husbanding or harvesting their financial…
By Steven Grundman
What went wrong and what happens next? CSIS experts Mark Cancian & Andrew Hunter dive deep into JEDI.
By Mark Cancian and Andrew Hunter