Programmed to Fail - 1. Unification & 2. Program Budgeting

Welcome to a special series on the acquisition talk podcast that gives you an audiobook tour of my research project titled, Programmed to Fail: The Rise of Central Planning in Defense Acquisition 1945 to 1975. I’m Eric Lofgren of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. You can find this book for free and over 1,300 blog posts on my website, AcquisitionTalk.com.
In this episode, we take a look at the history of the unification of the armed forces under a single Department of Defense. Even today, we hear calls for the elimination of duplication, competition, and overlap between the military services. Proponents believe that military affairs can be brought into a state of perfection.
But could you imagine if the government decided that only IBM could build computers, only Ford could build cars, and only AT&T could provide telecommunications? It’s pretty clear that innovation would have been stopped in its tracks.
The following provides an overview of two chapters: first, how calls for centralization resulted in unification of the armed forces, and second, the seeds of program budgeting which was intended to be the administrative tool of centralized decision makers.
This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at AcquisitionTalk.com