Advanced Topics in Defense Project Management

Augustine weapons are costly, high-technology weapons. They are associated with Norman Augustine, who forecast that by 2054 the entire US defense budget would purchase just one aircraft. This reflected the observation that the unit cost of fighter aircraft had grown by a factor of four every ten years. According to Augustine, new technology opens vast new capability vistas, which are then crammed into each new generation of weapons. Computers and software represent vast new capabilities. An economic approach is taken, which begins with a principal-agent framework for procurement and project management. The military-industrial-political complex provides the background to procurement choices. A significant problem is the lack of any money valuation of defense output. The procurement problem is outlined in terms of what to buy, how to buy it, from which contractor, and when to make the purchase. A brief history of UK military aircraft and associated procurement policy is presented. The following section presents UK evidence on cost escalation and statistical evidence on the determinants of unit prices for UK fighter and bomber aircraft. Cost-quantity relationships for the Vampire aircraft are presented. The article concludes by assessing prospects and challenges.

This chapter utilizes the case study of the British aircraft industry between 1936 and 1939 to highlight the extent to which historical challenges of defense procurement persist in the twenty-first century. By examining the challenges of expanding the British aircraft industry from a relatively low productive base, which needed to be completed quickly to bolster British diplomatic efforts against Nazi Germany as part of the broader policy of appeasement, we observe that some of the inter-war challenges—most notably the shortage of skilled labor—might appear less acute in Britain’s contemporary aerospace sector, yet similar constraints are unmistakable elsewhere. The U.S. naval shipbuilding base currently struggles to recruit welders and other trades, and Canada’s surface combatant projects have been hampered for years by a limited pool of specialized workers. Recognizing that labor availability still shapes defense programs worldwide, this chapter treats the 1930s bottleneck as an instructive analogue and links it to today’s reality of fewer firms capable of executing technologically complex projects for modern armed forces. This chapter, however, does not focus solely on the history of the British aircraft industry during the 1930s. The challenges of contemporary defense procurement are linked to the themes raised by exploring this particular aspect of historic defense procurement. These themes include the difficulties of producing technologically sophisticated defense equipment, applicable to both eras discussed in this chapter, as well as issues of capacity and the challenges of increasing productive capability in a short time with little to no warning. This is something that Western nations are beginning to experience after supplying Ukrainian forces with weapons and equipment that had been stockpiled and finding lead times prohibitive to replace stock. Finance and the ability to support domestic defense industries will also be explored to highlight the complex and strained relationship that exists between governments, militaries, and the firms that supply equipment.

The concept of “Security of Supply” has gained increasing attention in the wake of events, such as the Fukushima accident in 2011, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Suez Canal blockage in 2021, the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and heightened rivalry between the US and China. These incidents have laid bare the vulnerabilities of global supply chains and the lack of access to critical resources, such as rare earth elements. Consequently, many nations, authorities, and companies have initiated efforts to secure access to resources essential for societal preparedness, national defense, and the production of vital goods and services. Achieving greater independence in critical sectors, reducing reliance on strategic materials and components, and enhancing the resilience of supply chains are crucial goals. The definition of critical resources and supplies varies depending on the perspective of the examining organization, whether it be a nation, authority, or company. This chapter aims to clarify the concept of “security of supply” and demonstrate various factors that influence the possibility of achieving a reasonable degree of security of supply. The approach posits that security of supply is attained through supply chains comprising various stakeholders, including authorities, suppliers, transporters, warehouses, receivers, and information and payment solutions. The endurance of security of supply is contingent on the robustness of the supply chain. The chapter includes a literature survey of the “security of supply” concept and empirical data from four companies and two authorities in Sweden involved in the defense sector. Beyond providing a deeper understanding of the concept, this chapter illustrates the interconnectedness of various factors influencing the development and sustainability of security of supply. 

After the Cold War, many governments in the West downsized their armed forces, changed their objectives from territorial defense to participation in peace support operations, and made them increasingly dependent on global commercial supply chains. These governments considered this operational risk-taking acceptable because of the perceived lack of military threat to their nations. However, due to recent events in the world, the geopolitical situation has changed, and many of these governments are now transforming their armed forces back to territorial defense. Nevertheless, many military supply chains are still dependent on global commercial supply chains, which remain lean and thus vulnerable to disruptive events. This chapter addresses the question of how armed forces, together with defense procurement agencies and the defense industry, can enhance defense supply chain resilience to meet the reestablished operational requirements for readiness and sustainability. This chapter describes a model for the segmentation of supplies and a decision-making methodology for the differentiation of supply chain strategies. Defense acquisition projects can utilize the model and methodology to ensure that not only legal, commercial, and technical issues inform defense acquisition decision-making, but that military operational requirements are also given appropriate attention prior to any decisions. At the heart of the methodology is an in-depth discussion among relevant stakeholders, including the armed forces, to ensure that defense acquisition projects make informed decisions regarding defense supply chain resilience and, if necessary, lead to explicit operational risk-taking.

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), the formal application of modeling to systems engineering activities, is widely used by the defense community for the development of new systems. It is used across the entire system life cycle, from the initial formulation of requirements through design and development to testing, production, and ultimately, operations. A major focus of MBSE is developing a system model that captures all relevant information about a system in a single model that can be viewed from multiple perspectives. This enables multidisciplinary and multiorganizational teams to communicate more effectively, manage change more efficiently, and trace the system architecture from initial stakeholder requirements to detailed engineering design decisions. In turn, the employment of MBSE results in a better-quality product that is delivered on schedule and within budget. MBSE is widely used in the defense industry for all of the aforementioned reasons and is now coupled with other modern engineering and product life-cycle management methods as part of a larger digital engineering ecosystem. This increasing demand makes it important for defense project managers to understand what MBSE is, what is required to implement it, and how to use it to inform decisions, reduce risk, and produce high-quality products. This chapter defines MBSE, reviews key MBSE elements including tools, modeling languages, and architecture frameworks, assesses project management decisions related to implementing MBSE on a project, and discusses how MBSE can inform key project management processes.

This chapter applies the Systems Decision Process (SDP) to the practice of Project Management (PM) through the lens of the defense industry, using applicable case studies and realistic examples. Systems thinking enables project managers to identify the root causes of problems they face, assess the risks associated with different alternatives, recognize the interconnected relationships and dependencies between system elements, and ultimately make informed decisions to meet their clients’ needs. The SDP’s Problem Definition phase ensures that the project manager considers the needs of all stakeholders within the broader environment, which is often vast in the defense sector, and establishes clear boundaries for the scope of work. Solution Design directs the project manager’s focus to generating value-based alternatives that optimize outcomes within clear budget constraints, informing their choices as they transition into the Decision Making phase. Through the employment of value scoring methods, sensitivity and risk analysis, and tradeoff analysis, the project manager executes their plan during the Solution Implementation phase of the SDP. The SDP augments and enhances the most accepted approaches to PM by providing project managers with a clear and repeatable decision-making process that explicitly considers the systems’ nature of the problem and focuses on stakeholder value when making decisions. This is invaluable as project managers make decisions in complex and dynamic environments, such as the defense industry. While Multi-Criteria Value Modeling (MCVM) is essential in the early phases of a project, it also serves as an invaluable tool for project managers as they encounter change order requests during execution, continuously conduct quality control and assurance, and ensure final deliverables are met while closing out a project. 

Progress in a system development effort is tracked through a series of metrics, including Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs), which measure a system's operational performance. Quantifying MOEs in defense projects poses formidable challenges, particularly concerning metrics like lethality or survivability. Indeed, nonmature systems will not be deployed into an operational setting to determine the impact of the system on survivability or lethality. In practice, surrogate performance parameters are often employed as proxies for the MOEs. However, combat simulations are a more precise means of apprehending and assessing MOEs. Combat simulations can comprehensively operate in operational context while also anticipating secondorder effects, for instance, the scenario of enhancing soldier survivability through body armor. Traditional performance metrics might link survivability to the armor's resilience against standard rounds. Yet, augmenting armor weight potentially compromises a soldier’s agility and speed, inversely affecting survivability. This chapter discusses the use of combat simulations to evaluate MOEs throughout a system's developmental trajectory. It will include an overview of how to develop the appropriate simulation, model the system under development, execute the simulation, and analyze the outputs.

Most of the major defense projects are carried out in civil-military partnerships. In the early days of these partnerships, responsibilities are shared, with the armed forces playing a key leadership role in ensuring efficient coordination, operationality, and political influence. However, today's major Defense projects are costly, risky, and complex. Emerging technologies and capabilities such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and sensor fusion technology present challenges. Primarily due to budget restrictions, limited personnel, and high turnover resulting in a shortage of knowledgeable staff, the armed forces have transferred many responsibilities to the civilian side, such as research and development, quality assurance, testing, and risk management. The duties of the armed forces are currently limited to defining the operational and technical requirements. At the same time, the Defense industry is tasked with delivering a product ‘off-the-shelf,’ i.e., ready to be operated in a military environment. This raises the question of what role a military project manager should fill and what competencies are required? Remarkably, the value and importance of project leadership in the military are being called into question. This chapter aims to demonstrate that leadership is not necessarily as important as it used to be, but technical skills concerning the type of project are of the utmost importance for understanding the environment and situational awareness. The proposed model, where a project manager of a complex project should be selected based on their technical skills even to the detriment of leadership competencies, is based on both the real-life experience of one of the authors and a reconciliation of this experience with a literature review. Pragmatically speaking, prioritizing technical skills over leadership at the level of the project manager and their team, such as a PMO, could generate significant benefits and reduce, for example, the risk of cost and/or deadline overruns. Thus, the operationalization of the model tends to show the advantage of choosing a management team with high technical competency over a team with solid leadership abilities when a major project becomes highly complex in terms of technology. 

Due to increasing political tensions, the procurement of required weapon systems and supply products needed to satisfy a country's defense needs, in short, Defense Acquisition Management (DAM), is currently under the spotlight. Therefore, the question arises as to how DAM is structured and executed in project management across different countries, and what lessons can be derived from comparing these approaches. It also raises the question of whether DAM (strategic management of overall defense requirements, including the supplier base) is fully implemented, or if countries concentrate solely on modeling sub-concepts within Defense Procurement (DP) (with a focus on armaments). For this purpose, this chapter analyzes published models for DP. The database comprises 76 models from 34 countries. The findings reveal four key observations: First, there is a great variety of models, indicating that DP knowledge is not yet consolidated. There are national peculiarities and different views of DP in individual cases. Second, an imbalance in the relevance of individual model elements is recognizable. Demand management is addressed in a high proportion, indicating that DP models often cater to what future military users require. In contrast, the subordinate tasks of strategic procurement, and in particular, the operational ordering process, are rarely mentioned. They can be described as a “blind spot” in DP models. Strategic procurement tasks and processes are mentioned but are usually only focused on partial aspects (e.g., definition of the planning framework), not elaborated and formulated in terms of content as a link between demand management and operational procurement. Lastly, the user forms the conceptual bracket and the orientation point for many DP models. The “utilization and implementation” section concludes many models, but without defining the interface between procurement and equipping the user. Furthermore, an outward orientation, i.e., towards suppliers and the procurement market, remains underrepresented both strategically and on the user side, and procurement is too one-sided in terms of a comprehensive strategy. The analysis also examines whether the steps recorded in the DP models are sufficient to cover an all-encompassing DAM. It shows that although steps of utilization are already included, differentiation between objects and orientation along the supply chain are not yet sufficiently addressed. This chapter presents the observations and concludes with a proposition for a synthesized view of the global mosaic, incorporating an aggregated DP/DAM model.

Strategic defense project management does not operate in isolation; it depends on robust national and international innovation systems for technological foresight, insight, Research and Development (R&D), and risk mitigation. Given the complexities and risks associated with Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) and the demands of coalition and combined military operations, the international Science and Technology (S&T) community is a critical and essential component of the defense innovation system. S&T collaboration and coordination across the human, information, and physical sciences facilitate technological advancement, address legal, moral, and ethical concerns, and help to ensure interoperability at all levels. This, in turn, fosters technologically relevant and operationally effective defense capabilities. For more than 70 years, the Science and Technology (S&T) community of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), particularly the Science and Technology Organization (STO) and its predecessor organizations, has played a crucial role for NATO and the Alliance. As the largest global network of defense and security researchers drawn from academia, industry, and government, the NATO STO has been instrumental in fostering these technologically relevant and operationally effective defense capabilities. Examining the NATO STO from the perspectives of sociotechnical systems and organizational theory provides valuable insights and highlights best practices, including those associated with collaborative project management. These insights underscore the importance of a global perspective in defence programme management, the structures that underlie its success, and the limitations and constraints inherent in collaborations across the global Science and Technology (S&T) network in defence and security.

This chapter examines the emerging phenomenon of creating educational institutions via a defense contracting model. This approach has been particularly prevalent in professional military education projects in the Gulf, including institutions such as the UAE National Defense College, the Qatari Joint Command and Staff College, and several cases in Saudi Arabia. In the UAE and Qatar, both states used a contracting model to develop a degree-granting educational structure based on foreign models. Contracting agreements were utilized to bring foreign faculty to develop the curriculum, staff the courses, and largely run the educational components of the institution, in an approach conceptually similar to contracting foreign personnel and curriculum for a training course. The chapter will critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of creating an educational institution via contracting, drawing on secondary literature and the author’s own experience as a contractor in the region. The chapter argues that while the contracting model has advantages in areas such as pace and flexibility in hiring, it also poses serious obstacles to the long-term academic goals of establishing a degree-granting educational institution, particularly in the areas of academic quality, faculty continuity, and international accreditation. Institutions considering adopting the contracting model should carefully weigh the implications of these disadvantages.

This chapter presents a case study on the successful partnership among academia, industry, and defense to develop weapons, starting from their conceptualization to their implementation. As for academia, public universities and research centers were called upon to support research and train defense personnel. In the industry, several small and medium-sized companies were selected to jointly manufacture certain weapon components as a strategy to produce high-quality parts, developing reliable suppliers as specialized techniques were required. A team of defense personnel, both engineers and technicians, had to be formed and trained in several areas, such as software for Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) applications; advanced and additive manufacturing; mold design and manufacturing; materials science; industrial property; and technological surveillance; and others. The successful results of this partnership suggest that interaction under clear rules and a willingness to collaborate among academia, industry, and defense leads to an accelerated pace of technological research and development, creating a virtuous circle in which all sectors benefit.