Contracting Out Security Strategy

Seen at Economists’ View, Friday Mar 30:

Bryan Wysocki Jr at WSJ say:

“Fueling the growth … is a move toward giant, complex projects, awarded by Uncle Sam but pulled together by what’s called a “lead systems integrator.” Big contractors have become even more powerful in the post-9/11 era, some say, because the government has turned conservative, preferring to award contracts on critical national-security projects to proven players, especially as knowledgeable civil servants retire.”

Not conservative, rather business friendly. Who decides who are the proven players?

Lead system integrator is new business development for the “major players”, the same old culprits, in government service contracts, a new growth sector. It is politically and PAC motivated. Private industry has been doing this for DoE in the national lab system for years and for FAA as well as NASA. It is new to the national security business development model and more work for the shadow government while the real government ends up doing the same as it did before.

SAIC is marketing the idea that they can do better than the government planners, while planning is always a governmental function as it is the basis for funding and long term expenditure decisions and only makes sense to me to outsource if you want to plunder the treasury.

In the good old days the soldiers got their equipment from a Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE). This was built from the company (200-250 soldiers) on up to the Battalion, made up of 4 or 5 somewhat similar TOE companies to the Brigade (now 4 or 5 battalions, used to be 2 or more battalions made regiment), up to a division with 4 to 6 Brigades.

The old days the TOE were built by Army staff guys.

Same kind of strategic thinking farmed out to the suppliers will be applied to the other services and homeland security.

The innovation is these resource lists are going to be done by SAIC, Boeing etc.

In many ways large global system engineering is the same as strategy development. The tasks and functions are done to develop plans which become federal budgets.

A real mess when the evolution is to the contractors developing long terms plans for federal buying that they sell to.

This explains why soldiers don’t have adequate individual gear like body armour while we buy expensive solutions to fight WW II again.