The plan to fix the Defense Industrial Base
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- Опубліковано 2 бер 2024
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Mike and Jake host Dr. Christine (Chris) Michienzi, supply chain expert and former senior Pentagon executive, on the US government’s recently released National Defense Industrial Strategy-plan to revive its fragile defense industrial base.
With 30 years of experience in this sector, she was recently the Chief Technology Officer for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy and the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment. Chris knows all the ins and outs of the woes of the industrial base-she saw the issues first-hand when she led the Pentagon’s efforts to surge munition production lines to support Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Hear just how big the problem is-and how it’s 100X harder to fix than it may sound.
For those interested in #defense #military #business #technology #nationalsecurity #industry #supplychains #logistics
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● Chris Michienzi on LinkedIn / christine-chris-michie...
● 2023 National Defense Industrial Strategy www.businessdefense.gov/docs/...
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Show Notes
(01:27) Intro
(02:36) investing supply chains
(6:26) CTO of the supply chain office
(8:11) what is the Defense Industrial Base?
(9:52) the 2023 NDIS
(17:16) efficiency vs resiliency
(23:40) don’t compare this to WWII
(26:52) multi-year buy authorities
(30:28) reverse engineering obsolete parts
(31:40) ball bearings
(33:28) how to incentivize companies?
(35:05) the investor side of the equation
(37:10) solid rocket motors
(40:15) what does success look like?
(42:10) the F-35 magnet story
(44:03) how supply chain visibility doesn’t work
(45:58) Chinse brushless motors
(48:31) COVID-19 raised supply chain awareness
(49:31) crystal ball of badness
(51:33) isolation the solution?
(54:11) magic wand for Chris
(56:21) metrics for success
(59:30) outro - Розваги
Thank you. That was not entirely depressing.
Pako, THIS is the kind of content The Merge does best. Great conversation on a topic that is hugely important, but not as sexy as a review of Top Gun: Maverick. Hopefully our leadership and populous will heed the warnings.
This podcast is so informative and illuminates this murky world which I doubt a lot of the inhabitants of Congress grasp. Interesting point on the supply chain and the challenges of our service economy combating supply chain issues too. Bravo.
Thank you!
Also, a major obstacle for our tech infrastructure is the lack of technical education programs in our schools.
A major problem is that within the aerospace industry there is minimal documentation on the supply chain. There is also problems with basic bill of materials. If you ask Boeing how many bearings are in an airplane they do not know. The automotive industry has a detailed requirements for supply chain documentation. The APQP process is widely used and adopted within the auto industry. You can find the supply chain for every part in a car quickly and easily. The APQP also includes capacity for meeting demand. If you had the same thing in aerospace you could find the supply chain and the bottlenecks very quickly.
Awesome. I love these deep dives.
Glad you like them!
Actually Eisenhauer was issuing a warning about not letting politicians and other interested parties buy overpriced and things that we didn't need. He gave us a warning about this.
When Eisenhower said that defense spending was almost 3x more than it is now.
It seems that is exactly what happened.
Excellent discussion.
I met a person with a rock quarry with very high-quality rock, it took him about 6 years to get thru the quality testing to be able to sell to the Army Corp of Engineers for a in water rock project.
Great discussion!
❤❤
Excellent discussion over a range of topics
Dr. Michienzi reminds me of a scene from "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," a 1950's perhaps "socially conscious," or at least sociological, novel of American business life. The book is famous within literature as a critique of white (that's today's "White") middle-class smugness, but what Dr. Chris brings to mind is something different: the period of armament for "The War," the wars in both Europe and Asia after Pearl Harbour. (Yes, it's spelled with a U, for the same reason that Hawaii has the Union Jack in the corner of its state flag.)
The grey flannel suit character, a sane and competent young business executive in a sea of mediocrity and incompetence, finds himself among an entire stratum of the American business world unable to conceive, even faintly, of what war mobilization had to mean for business and industry.
Ukraine right now? Thank God for the Europeans!
Yea well, (leaving NASAMS and the IRIS-t etc out of this to make a point) the US has given us ONE patriot battery, the rest has come from our European partners. You'd think POTUS could use his 6 billion in emergency draw down funds to send a few more Patriots here! It's not all rosy in Europe, Macron shows some strength by saying boots on the ground is not off the table (even if it's never going to happen, which it wont, why let the Kremlin think otherwise) but then Scholz immediately shows weakness by denying it. As the ex-Chiefs of staff and Generals have been saying, Ben Hodges, Phil Breedlove (USAF), Admiral James Foggo (USN) - US arms manufacturers are not charity's they need contracts & Dr. Michienzi re-iterated that. Where are the frackin' contracts ? We've got no ammo left. North Korea and Iran outperforming EU + US arms industry! I get the feeling here in Ukraine that we are up 💩creek without the proverbial paddle.😥
Wow what a web we weave!!!! Great info. Thanks👍😁😁
Yes!!!! A new episode! Cheers!
The lament that "Rosie the riveter" cannot become Rosie the gyro tech is a great misunderstanding of how industry works. Rosie the robot technician or industrial electrician or controls tech can go from a plant making canned goods to a factory building defense articles tomorrow. The skills and techniques and institutional knowledge is all very similar for producrion at scale of...anything. The problem is that MOST industry left the US, and the DOD for a variety of reasons has built a cottage industry of tiny shops using antiquated methods to do anything. Today, as it was 80 years ago, Ford is better suited to scale gyroscope production than Raytheon is. The Pentagon is throwing pennies at this problem with half measures like the CHIPs act, a decade long program thats smaller than a single year of TSMCs capital spend. This country needs onshore manufacturing period. Scale isnt going to come from the Pentagon and never has.
Pako , great show with Jello and his podcast about drones. Good job 👍🏼
Thank you for this episode!! Sharing with all my contacts. Great to raise the United States and call yourself a patriot. Have to be all willing to push and understand our sovereignty is based on our ability to build what we need when it’s needed 10 years out. Millions of immigrants. Get them to work with helping build to our ability to be America.. no hand outs. Contribute to our nation.
Great guest! IMHO we need to step away from programs that take 20 years from concept to full rate production, we can't do concurrent manufacturing that slipstreams changes into supplier tiers and kills their ability to scale out production runs, we need to pull back on overclassification, and we need to stop NIH custom-specifying systems that already exist (E-7) unless there's a pressing need to do so.
Great discussion! 👍👍
People learned about the fragility of supply chains on March 11, 2011 (Fukushima EQ)
If you want them to have modern equipment, put in the contract that they can bill the government for the equipment, or furnish the equipment to the winning bidder. Government has to do this if they want the capacity.
IDK this time. As a veteran, I had to use some of this equipment in ground force operations. I don't think this is a money issue, more than a waste and corruption issue. Mrs MacKenzie doesn't seem very forthcoming with the issue other than 'we need more investment', as in more money.
This does bother me, because as a former operator of this equipment in a high-risk scenario on the ground, It would be nice to have assurance that it is more than just a money game when our lives are on the line.
Time reference; 9:25 - and on.
Hmm, thinking about the predictive analytics opportunity now....
If you really want to nerd out on global supply chains, Peter Zeihan has a lot of content, and several books on the topic. He’d be an entertaining guest if you can get him.
I'm posting my comment from another video here because I like the show and would like to see it grow.
I think you really need to create a 'The Merge Clips" channel or offer small, interesting segments (3-10 minutes) as gets done with other podcasts like Lex and such. People are not going to take the plunge on an hour long video if they aren't familiar and viewers like me often can't dedicate that much time, even though I know I'll enjoy it. Yes, I could just pause and come back, but that takes more clicks and people are notorious for doing whatever they can to avoid more clicks to do something.
I think you're mainly going to only get views from people that get led to the channel from direct channel recommendations from other UA-camrs. If almost everything you produce is an hour, you will only get a very small number of views from people who get recommended the show by the algorithm. If you posted short segments and clips you would at least get a higher percentage of UA-cam recommendations turning into views, even for people that already watch some videos. It's not just the hosts that people can feel unsure about, it's every different guest. If you have clips for each guest you'll allow people to get a feel for whether they want to watch the whole episode. If you feel like you're cutting to much it just remember that if you leave a non offensive (over-the-top) cliffhanger in the clip people will want to know how it ends.
Again, I'm not talking about shorts either, I think 3-10 minute segments or occasionally up to 15 minutes. The other popular shows do a ton of short segments, so it seems like it works and is important. Putting out at least two or three segments for every guest and episode seems like a decent goal. Plus, having more regular posted videos and getting more views helps get the algorithm's attention and you might get more recommendations. I know that's a ton of extra work, but that's my uneducated, inexperienced feeling about growing the channel and podcast, at least on UA-cam.
What is the list from DLA?
I would this this is not just an issue for the USA but many countries around the world. Even China, What research has been done for that?
Budget and planning is the issue. Justifying the surge needs to be clear.
Intel agencies seem to be generating conflict with their clandestine operations. Take the money from those Ops. Maybe we won't need to surge.
Submarine and battle tank construction were the issue when i was on service - we had no demand, but we needed surge. They ordered upgrades to M1 tank that had limited capability improvement to keep the production line and capability open. Submarine purchases were to keep two commercial builders operational so we can surge in the future.
When you add subcontractor capability, that is even harder.
Remember when the MRAP program office spent a billion dollars on the wrong parts? They knew they were the wrong parts but when the designs were ready the supply chain was too.
Lots of overpriced weapon systems too.
I don’t normally comment to these types of issues. I do get your news letter and I follow some of your videos. On this issue, I believe the ship has already sailed. No amount of persuasion is going to fix this problem, not when you add capitalism to the arena. So running your country’s defense like it is a business is a failure. America’s downfall has been excessive capitalism to the point where small percentage of those who make all the profits will never be satisfied with making 100% more than those they employ, so this drives business offshore, so you can make more money. I think in a few more years the United States would not even be able to make anything, it’s all offshore and we are reduced to being consumers, working in the service industry rather than production. What would change it? Nothing because those people sitting at the head of the table don’t care as long as they are making more money and patriotism, don’t get me started there, that is long gone except for a few diehards. Once we allowed corporate greed to take over most aspects of our economy, we sealed our doom as a great nation. Now we can only hope that other countries like China will be smitten by the same desires in the long run.
Capitalism has nothing to do with it. You can pay a company to build capacity by building things, or to build capacity through subsidies, or you can budget a state owned firm to do the same. Paying government employees to take long breaks and remember how to build things isn’t any cheaper than paying industry for the same, and subsidizing capacity is like buying lots of things except you don’t get to keep the things. So there’s only one good choice.
How much of this is due to the unnecessary multitude of small suppliers in every Congressional district (so as to make the F-35 uncancellable)?
Greed greed and more greed from the top and extreme over reliance on over priced tech. Artillery is still king in ukraine war and armor is getting torn up way faster then it can be repaired. More administrative positions then labor for many programs.
👽👽👽👽alien invasion👽👽👽👽
You shouldn’t be looking at military spending of GDP. You should be stating it as a % of taxes spent.