Defence Spending

Secular themes

A government-budget cycle rather than a market cycle. The industry itself is covered under defence and aerospace; this entry is about the spending wave and its procurement politics.

8 books

Start here

  1. Skunk WorksBen R. Rich, Leo Janos, 1994
  2. The Kill ChainChristian Brose, 2020
  3. Augustine's LawsNorman R. Augustine, 1983

Books 8

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
T1 The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Paul M. Kennedy · 1987 · Military spending measured against the economy that has to carry it.
Open Library
Ray DalioMichael Wong
Augustine's Laws
T2 Augustine's Laws
Norman R. Augustine · 1983 · A defence chief executive on why unit costs rise faster than budgets.
Open Library
Skunk Works
T2 Skunk Works
Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos · 1994 · Insider memoir on what fast, cheap defence development once looked like.
Open Library
Sam Altman
Freedom's Forge
T2 Freedom's Forge
Arthur Herman · 2012 · American industrial mobilisation in the 1940s; the precedent everyone reaches for.
Open Library
Christopher BloomstranPatrick Collison
The Kill Chain
T2 The Kill Chain
Christian Brose · 2020 · Why the procurement system buys the wrong things, by a former staff director.
Open Library
Palmer Luckey
The Pentagon Wars
T3 The Pentagon Wars
James G. Burton · 1993 · Procurement politics from inside, by the officer who fought them.
Open Library
Prophets of War
T3 Prophets of War
William D. Hartung · 2011 · Lockheed Martin as a study in how the contractor lobby works.
Open Library
Unit X
T3 Unit X
Raj Shah, Christopher Kirchhoff · 2024 · Insider account of trying to buy commercial technology for the Pentagon.
Open Library