Current issues in military program control

There is currently a national furore over the way large military programs are managed. Some of it is politically or journalistically inspired. But some of it reflects a genuine disagreement over how these programs should be controlled. This paper presents a number of issues involved in the disagreement and develops the thesis that two diverging camps are being formed on their resolution: one focused on resources and the other on products. It then concludes that because there is much merit to the argument presented on both sides of many of these issues, the direction that must be taken in the program-control field is not to attempt to resolve the individual issues directly; rather it is to deal with root causes that can accommodate both points of view. It then offers a sample of three suggestions in this regard.