Feral Jundi

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Quotes: Norm Augustine’s Prediction For 2010–Industry More Competitor With Government

Filed under: Industry Talk,Quotes — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:03 AM

   The way he worded this quote and the points brought up are certainly compelling.  That private industry is a competitor with government, over the ninety percent of assets out there that are privately owned.  Think about it this way, would you rather have the TSA guarding your business, or a company like Triple Canopy?  If you have the money, and you are really concerned about who you want to use for security services, do you ‘hope’ the government can protect you, or do you go for the sure thing and go with private security? And can you even depend upon what limited resources the government has, to be everywhere at once?  How about for oil companies or refineries?   Or how about information technology or internet giants like Google?  Who do these folks turn to for protection, the government or private industry?

     My favorite one is the media.  Did they beg the government to protect them as they gallop across the world, reporting on disasters or events related to our military and the war?  Maybe for the embeds they are able to depend upon the military, but for the most part, they just hire former Special Forces guys to protect them.  You won’t hear about the media contracting with the big companies, because they have to have someone to take a giant crap on with sensational stories.  So they turn to individuals or small teams to get their high dollar security.

      Either way, interesting words coming from the former CEO of Lockheed Martin. Check it out. –Matt

—————————————————————–

Norm Augustine

Industry More Competitor with Government (From ExecutiveBiz)

Norm Augustine’s 2010 Prediction:

“The issues facing the nation and the world increasingly transcend the ability of either government or industry to solve alone. For example, the government clearly has overall responsibility for homeland security, yet 90 percent of the assets to be protected currently reside in the private sector.

“At the same time, as the federal debt grows along with the non-discretionary part of the federal budget, heightening fiscal pressures will be placed on the procurement process. As a consequence, industry is unfortunately likely to find itself more and more a competitor with government than a partner … with proven bad ideas rising from the ashes yet another time (e.g., fixed price research and development contracting).  The problem will be exacerbated by the inability/unwillingness of qualified individuals with industry experience to serve terms in government.

“As one who has spent a significant part of his professional life in each government and industry, I truly hope the above is wrong but that would not be how I would bet.”

(Norm Augustine is retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp.)

 

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Military News: U.S, Afghan Troops Beat Back Bold Enemy Assault in Nuristan

Filed under: Afghanistan,Military News — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:54 AM

   This is the question to ask. Did we kill hundreds of Taliban, or did eight of our own die?  Do you call this a success or a failure?  I mean in wars, people die, and battles often require an investment in blood.  So did we get a return on investment in this battle?  That is what I want to hear about.

   What a fight I tell you, and my heart goes out to the friends and families of the fallen.  I am sure this attack will be studied just like the Wanat attack, and we will be making adjustments if needed.  Or not.  War is a dirty and deadly business, and sometimes stuff like this happens and soldiers die.  I am not going to comment on what they did right or wrong, just emphasize that we must learn from the incident. There are always lessons to be learned.

    But back to the reporting on this. One thing I would like to hear from the MSM one of these days, is how many Taliban we killed in skirmishes like this. I want the Taliban to be sick to their stomaches from all the death of their fellow jihadists, when they read reports like this.  I want them to know, that they just lost a lot of folks because of this attack.  The Taliban are only motivated and empowered, when the MSM reports on this as some kind of tragic loss on our side.        Reportage seems to always emphasize how many we lost, and it never focuses on what was gained in these types of incidents.  We could have killed hundreds in this skirmish, yet I am told to focus on something else.

     Don’t get me wrong though, because every death on the Afghan and Coalition side is tragic. It’s just in a war we should also try to promote what we are doing right, and say ‘hey, that was one hell of a fight boys, good job’.  That is the least we could do, to honor the deaths who fell in that battle.

   The other angle on this one is the defense of a base.  This attack emphasizes the importance of having your defenses well thought out and properly resourced.  Don’t be a marshmallow eater, and take the easy way out on preparing the defense.  If you apply Kaizen to your defense, and continue to spitball ideas on how to repel the various types of attacks out there, then you are in the right. Your defense should be hardened, flexible, random, surprising, and show constant vigilance and strength. Your defense should only enhance your OODA, not hinder it. You must always look at your defense through the eyes of the enemy, and think how you would attack your position. You should also be studying other attacks in that region, and learn all you can from these in order to adjust your own defenses. Lot’s to think about, and this latest attack must be studied over and over in order to gain any lessons learned.-Matt

P.S. – I think Bill over at Long War Journal had a far better treatment of what happened, and has a far better title for the incident: US, Afghan Troops Beat Back Bold Enemy Assault in Eastern Afghanistan

——————————————————————

8 US troops killed in fierce Afghan fighting

By ROBERT H. REID and RAHIM FAIEZ (AP)

October 4, 2009

KABUL — Hundreds of insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight U.S. soldiers and capturing more than 20 Afghan security troops in the deadliest assault against U.S. forces in more than a year, military officials said Sunday.

The fierce gunbattle, which erupted at dawn Saturday in the Kamdesh district of mountainous Nuristan province and raged throughout the day, is likely to fuel the debate in Washington over the direction of the troubled eight-year war.

It was the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle since July 2008, when nine American soldiers were killed in a raid on an outpost in Wanat in the same province.

(more…)

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Quotes: Secretary of Defense Gates Answers a Question About Contractors

Filed under: Quotes — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 4:15 AM

   I thought that this was an interesting little quote and worthy of a mention here on FJ. On a funny note, notice the liberal use of ‘and’ in Sec. Gate’s replies?-Matt

——————————————————————

SEC. GATES: So now I’ll take a few questions. Yes, sir?

Q     Sir, Sergeant — (inaudible) — from 57-TRANS. A question, the subject is civilian contractors, especially down-range, the populace of over 2,000 civilian contractors doing or taking our jobs — i.e., truck drivers. Is there — the reasoning on that, sir?

SEC. GATES: Well, you’re talking about down-range or here at home?

Q     (Off mike.) Both, sir.

SEC. GATES: What we’re trying to do — and I think that the Congress has obviously taken a lot of interest in this, and I think, at the high point in Iraq we had on the order of 160,000 contractors, and probably only about a third of them were actually American contractors.

     And the contractors did everything but running the dining facility (DEFAC) and doing the laundry, doing the cleaning chores, doing some security work. But, the need was to try and free up as many soldiers for actual combat duty, rather than having them do things that civilian contractors could do. The problem is, we’ve — I think we let it grow without the kind of controls that we should, in terms of looking at it repeatedly.

     And I’ll just give you an example of what we’re working on right now — and, frankly, prompted by some questions from Senator Webb, and it was how we have turned over increasing numbers of training roles to civilian contractors, and where should we have a combat veteran doing that training, and where could we have a civilian doing it? And I think we’ve — we really had no idea where that line should be drawn. And we’re going back and looking at that now.

      And so, for example, for the Air Force it probably doesn’t make any sense to have a combat-capable pilot teach somebody how to fly for the first time in a Beechcraft just to get that kind of “Flying 101.” On the other hand, when that person graduates to an F-15 or an F-16, it probably ought to be a combat trained veteran or a person in uniform who’s teaching them. So, we’re kind of going back through all of these roles, at this point, to figure out where military ought to be doing these things and where civilian contractors can be.

      To tell you the truth, we’ve got a contractor problem on the civilian side of the government as well. I discovered, when we started working on this issue, that I actually have more contractors working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense than I do Civil Servants. And we’re going to fix that too. So, it is a problem.

      And I think that there is enough of a demand signal for experienced soldiers that nobody has to worry about losing their job. But, the question is, how can we make the best possible use of our soldiers and the skills that they’ve acquired?        And so you’ve raised an issue that’s taken a lot of our time and that we’re focused on, and it’s one that we need to get better control of.

Link to quote here.

 

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress