Top Shoe
I was very pleased to see a piece in San Diego Union-Tribune this morning about the establishment a Top Gun-type school for our Surface Warriors. VADM Tom Copeland, Commander of Naval Surface Forces established “Top Shoe” (my term, not his) to foster a generation of young surface warriors who really know their craft, not just their weapons systems. For those outside of the Navy, there are a few terms which you should probably know. Aviators are know as “Brown Shoes” because they wore brown shoes with their working uniforms and their aviation green dress uniform...
Read MoreSECNAV and Mowing the Grass
As I was reading the morning news, I saw a piece in The Hill about SECNAV Mabus’ comments regarding the savings associated with “scrubbing” the $ 40 Billion or so the Navy spends on service contracts. Service contracts can be just about anything from feeding Sailors in the chow hall to fixing the leaky toilets at the 4 Star’s headquarters building. SECNAV says “We know we can save significant amounts of money just by setting up things like contract courts, which require … contracting officers to come in every year and justify the contracts.” I don’t...
Read MoreStealth Works in the Budget Too!
First thing: Yesterday’s blog on Shared Services fell flat on the website with only a handful of hits. I take it the world of Shared Services is not so hot on the list of “interesting” topics. But there’s still a lot of money to be saved there. In fact, I would contend that there’s a lot of money floating around in areas that most people don’t find so interesting. It’s the uninteresting that ironically is the most interesting in terms of budget cutting. They escape scrutiny during the year-to-year budget battles, floundering in cash. The big...
Read MoreDavid and Goliath
Over the past few weeks there has been a lot in the press about the larger defense contractors worries about “shrinking” (see DoD Budget Cuts: Less of More) defense budgets and the effects on their profitability. Bloomberg News had a piece today about deals dropping for Pentagon contractors. While it doesn’t appear any of the big guys will be going out of business any time soon, they are indeed under pressure to deliver the goods to their shareholders. I would guess that most everyone who has a 401(k) has some amount of money invested in the large defense-related...
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