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I’ve often thought of my Grandfather and the changes he saw in his 95 years.  Once he plowed fields with a mule (~1 HP) , but switched to plowing with a turbocharged International Harvester tractor (~300 HP) in his later years. As a young man on a farm in Alabama he got the news of what happened last week by horseback, but in his later years he got the news as it happened from the television.  He even went from watching the man in the moon from the back porch to watching a man walk on the moon.  At the turn of the century he saddled his horse and rode four hours to town and just before he died , he hopped on a plane and was in Las Vegas in four hours.  And he saw the horse-drawn wagon turned into a horseless carriage.  I suspect he wondered what possible benefit could come from getting rid of the reliable horse and replacing the Old Grey Mare with an unreliable, noisy and complicated gasoline engine.  In fact, I bet he would still saddle his horse to go to town, even when he could have taken the Ford and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one.  As I was looking at an MQ-9 Reaper, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) doing touch-and-go’s at Creech AFB near Las Vegas this morning,  I thought once again about my grandfather and the parallels in our lives.  I’ve gone from giving the Operator the phone number to having my iPhone give me the number.  I’ve moved up from the Atari 800 (with the 32K memory module) to the MacBook Air….heck, I even have a three terabyte server sitting in my basement (at significantly less cost than the 32K Atari I might add).  My fleet airplane, the A-6 Intruder, had a computer with a memory made up of 32,000 little round ceramic magnets woven together, operating at a speed of 8 Hertz (32 Hertz in Attack).  Watching the JSF flying this morning I can’t even imagine how much memory it has, although I suspect it’s in the Giga’s.  And my guess is the speed of its computer is in the Giga range as well.  Wow!

So think about the early attempts to field a pilotless airplane or what was called a drone.  I remember the Navy’s attempt at pilotless aircraft as a midshipman looking at the DASH helicopter operating from the deck of a destroyer.  You never see them in museums because they all were last seen flying over the horizon, never to return.  We made several other attempts before arriving with Fire Scout.  We are now on the dawn of deploying a fixed-wing, pilotless, tactical aircraft on aircraft carriers with the X-47B and long-range Global Hawks operating from our Naval Air Stations.  The Air Force is conducting routine combat patrols with MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Raptors and contributing to our war efforts in Afghanistan daily.  The Air Force pilots who remotely fly these aircraft are quick to point out that they are not flying drones, but rather Remotely Piloted Aircraft.  Just like at the turn of the century when people thought of automobiles as “horseless carriages.” Because of that narrow view they had no concept of what the automobile might become.  I submit the same is true in the RPA world.  Even now,  I suspect that many of the “Old Salts” are questioning the value of a carrier-based RPA because they see it a merely an A-7 or A-4 flying around with no pilot inside.  We have no idea how the addition of the X-47B to carrier air wings will change the way the Navy flies and fights.  But the sooner we get out of the “horseless carriage” mindset and look at the X-47B not as an airplane without a pilot, but as a radically new way of projecting power, the better off we will be.

Ever watch toddlers playing together?  It doesn’t take long for one of them to decide that something belongs to them and they jealously guard it.  Sometimes even hitting other children trying to take the toy.  That’s a lot like what sometimes happens in the world of Shared Services. Agencies are sometimes not all that anxious to share their IT systems.  On the flip side, other agencies are not usually begging to migrate their systems to someone else’s system.  There are bright spots in the Federal Government…just check out this website to see some great examples of Shared Services in action.

Why then do organizations continue to resist the sharing of IT-related services?  Mostly because of a perceived lack of control would be my guess.  “I don’t want to be at the mercy of something or someone that I can’t control,” seems to be the prevalent attitude.  Why, on the other hand, do agencies decide to set up Shared Services Centers?  It’s the money!  The prospect of using another agency’s money  to pay their bills in these times of tight government budgets is very tempting.  So regardless of the motivations, it’s a win-win.  Everybody gets to benefit from reduced costs in procuring, maintaining and upgrading the systems.  And the question of control is pretty silly don’t you think?  I have seen the same issues of control arise in my other life in the world of non-profits.  Admin and IT costs were eating our lunch, reducing the funds available to help our constituents. We decided to approach similar organizations and see if they would be interested in sharing back-office and IT functions.  We are all under the same financial pressures so you think it would be no brainer to share some things.  But a funny thing happened.  There were organizations that would rather just wither and die than to share anything.  That’s a rather short-sighted view and does a dis-service to those the organizations are supporting, don’t you think?  In the end, survival trumped control and the economics drove us to share back-office and IT functions, without losing our outward identity to the public.  Yet we reduced administrative costs by over half.  Survival can be a powerful motivator.

That’s what’s lacking in the Federal Shared Services arena–survival.  Survival is not an issue for most Federal organizations.  It doesn’t matter how poorly they are run or how woefully inadequate their budget is, they just keep on keeping on.  So I think the key to enforcing Federal Shared Service initiatives is to put an element of survival into the mix.  How to do that I leave up the the wonks, but I would suggest it’s all about the money.  Put someone in charge and give them the purse strings.  Then things will happen. Until then we will just jealousy guard all our toys, refusing to share with anyone. That’s not how I want my kids to be and it’s now how we should want our government to be.

The Defense world is all atwitter at the upcoming peek at the DoD 2015 budget that Secretary Hagel will be giving today and thus kicking off a new round of olympic games, the Budget Olympithon (let’s just call it the Bolympics), which will most likely last until at least Christmas.  After two weeks of the NBC olympi-blitz I was growing just a bit weary of yet another human interest story.  Unfortunately never-ceasing “breaking news” about the olympics will be replaced with never-ceasing “breaking news” about the DoD budget for the next 8 months .  I know I sound a bit cynical, but after scanning the copious quantities of DoD budget-related news this morning I had to sigh.  I am always fascinated at the obsession of the press with the “Winners and Losers” angle.  Given the huge barrel of bucks residing in the Pentagon coffers it’s hard to picture a loser.  My experience is that there are big winners and some not so big winners and then the rest of the pack.  Ironically the winners are generally the ones who deserve to win the least, while the solid performers wind up paying the bills.  It’s the ultimate penally for being good–they take your money to reward another program for being bad.  Particularly interesting given the recent “focus” on ethics and truth-telling at DoD.  Let me see…”Rob the poor to pay the rich?”  Did I get that right?

Anyway, there is huge swirl around the DoD budget this year and SECDEF Hagel will increase the vorticity today at 1PM EST as he divulges the worst kept secret in DC-The DoD Budget.  Already we know it will basically ignore sequestration and come in around $496 Billion with $30 Billion or so in war costs, plus another $26 Billion in “unfounded”….. oooppsss,  I mean “unfunded” requirements (see Kids in the Grocery Store Checkout Aisle).  Your losers: Less Army, less Marines, less ships, less airplanes, less ground vehicles, less commissary subsidies, more TRICARE premiums, less compensation, fewer overseas bases, less of this and less of that.  Your winners: Less JSFs but at higher cost (odd how that is considered a winner isn’t it?), more ethics, more readiness, more American-made flags flying over our bases and more technology investments.  There are a few that I have a hard time placing in a category: Like a pay freeze for top brass (already the most richly compensated group in DoD, especially considering the fact that many of the top guys will actually make 10-15%  or more more in retirement than on active duty). But alas, we all have to make sacrifices, don’t we? Or how about the National Defense Strategy itself?  It’s hard to see where the money for the shift to Asia-Pacific region ( a major part of the strategy) resides in the budget. Are they winners or losers? Only our panel of Bolympic judges (sometime known as Congress) can tell.

I also am fascinated  by the disconnect between the concern by leadership to be ethical and the budget submission.  The happy talk is that people are DoD’s most important resource, yet that’s where a big chunk of cuts are placed.  I’m not talking about reducing the number of people, but all the other promises that were, oh so easy to make,  when we were at war…like Tricare benefits, commissary subsidies, robust training funds, and a few more.  Compared to the waste in the procurement system, the money spent on those programs is not significant, yet that’s where the focus goes.  What’s ethical about that?    So in my mind,  when the smoke clears here’s the message I hear:  The outstanding day-to-day performance of our people is DoD’s most important asset, so let’s cut that funding so we will have money to pay for our poorly performing programs like JSF or Enterprise Resource Planning IT systems.

So get ready for the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat!  I predict there’s going to be a lot more agony that thrill in the Bolympics this year.

I feel compelled to react to acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox’s remarks yesterday regarding the questionable combat capability of the Navy’s controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Her views are that the threats to surface ships are so great that we ought not invest in them, especially the less capable LCS. Instead we should put our bucks in submarines (to the tune of about $2 Billion apiece) and other “enablers” like Electronic Warfare capabilities. She’s obviously been bitten by the Sub Bug! The facts are that we simply can’t afford the high-end “Lamborghinis” in the quantity necessary to make a difference in an uncertain peace or war. The idea behind the LCS was not to be a part of a “Main Battle Force” going toe-to-toe with some imagined foe of the future (The Chinese I assume), but instead the LCS was part of an “engagement” fleet, capable of operating in areas where US presence makes a difference. Frankly I’m as much surprised by her remarks in their timing as in their substance.
Ask yourself if you think we are likely to become involved in some sort of major world conflict between superpowers anytime in the next few decades. That’s where we need high-end ships like carriers and submarines, and frankly they are so potent that we don’t’ need that many of them. I think a rational person would say that our future, at least in this century, is  building relationships in key areas, South America, Africa and the Asian Pacific. This is exactly what the LCS was designed for. They too, are the enablers that Ms. Fox stresses the need for.
And then there’s the question of numbers. Imagine yourself standing on the beach of an emerging democracy somewhere in the littoral. What’s going to give you a better sense that America is supporting you, a black SSN sail and a rudder sticking our of the water  a couple of thousand yards off the coast or an LCS, a couple of hundred yards off the coast?
The latest flights of Arleigh Burke destroyers cost north of $1 Billion; Zumwalt destroyers well above $3 Billion, Virginia Class submarines around $2 Billion and the granddaddy of them all, $10-12 Billion for an aircraft carrier. While I love the capability, they just aren’t focused on what we need and can afford. We are likely to become a Navy of 100 ships if we focus our investments on the high-end. LCS is compromise between capability and cost. We have to think about both.
So I’m confused. DEPSECDEF says surface ships are vulnerable, but supports the biggest of them all, an aircraft carrier. She says enablers are important, but fails to support a key enabler, the LCS. The sad fact is that while we all want lots of submarines and other high-end capabilities, we can’t afford them all.  It’s too easy to get enamored of the high-end when one sits in the Pentagon day after day where the predisposition is to go BIG and fancy.  It’s where the money is, but money for whom?  We need a reasonable balance, focused on likely threats. It is indeed a balance between capability on cost.

There’s nothing wrong with buying a Mini when your goal is to zip around, parking in unlikely places and have a little fun while doing it.  That’s why you get it.  When you have a Lamborghini, you park it in a deserted area of the parking lot, if you drive it at all.  You impress the rich who can afford one, but insult the poor who can not.  A wise person keeps both in the garage, and drives the one appropriate for the situation.