On June 1, I became the new Director of Supply Chain Strategy and Analytics at Flexjet . I'm excited for it: the role is aimed at the kind of process-building that I greatly enjoy , the team is high-energy and passionate, and I get to stay in the aviation industry. I spent 14 months unemployed (while serving as a stay-at-home parent and through bouts of self-employment and otherwise occupying myself ), and I want to reflect a little on my job hunt.

Flying low-observable "stealth" aircraft means near-perfection in maintenance, or the aircraft aren't low-observable anymore. This has implications for a "big-boy war".

Twelve people have walked on the moon, and the most recent was over 50 years ago . Now we are looking at a return to crewed missions to the moon using a space station called the Lunar Gateway. Gary Johnson just did some calculations that show that surprisingly the lunar Gateway would require a larger craft to land in the same sites as just launching directly from earth on a single rocket Apollo style.

I've had the rare privilege of managing an aircraft development program from early drawings on napkins through first-flight approval. During that time I had the most effective of feedback loops: living with the consequences of my choices earlier in the process. Due to the holiday on Wednesday, today is my only post this week.

I've written about wartime industrialization before , but a recent podcast and blog post made me more optimistic about the US' ability to ramp up production...as long as we start planning better.

It's fashionable to ask if the aircraft carrier is obsolete: small uncrewed aircraft can operate from smaller ships or extremely-far land bases, long-ranged anti-ship missiles put them at risk, and they're extremely expensive to build and operate. My opinion is that the carrier is still valuable as long as it can re-focus the carrier strike group for range and endurance.

I've attended the Cleveland National Air Show regularly since 2008. Because I'm such an aviation geek , I love giving tours to the people who come with me. And sometimes I attract attention.

In 2019, the country of Turkey took delivery of S-400 air-defense systems from Russia. The US government then took long-threatened action and forced Turkey off the F-35 fighter jet program. The six F-35s that Turkey had received were impounded in the US (there for training) and Turkey was banned from manufacturing F-35 components .  Enter me.

Collecting approvals and signatures is never fun, but in order to implement a large change in any organization, it needs people with authority to "buy in" to the change. In a large organization, that includes signatures and presentations; in a small business it might be pausing between bites of lunch to mention the change and see if the owner objects. Either way, if the people with the power to implement or stop a change aren't in favor, the change won't happen. One of my first tasks in 2023 upon assuming a new role was learning about a key initiative and pushing its approval through many layers of management.

Today--August 6, 2025--marks 80 years since the first nuclear weapon was used in anger, and August 9 will mark 80 years since the last one was deployed against an enemy (I expect and hope). Although the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II is tragic, the fact that we as a species have kept a nuclear taboo is worth celebrating.

Enthusiasts of naval history might know that the aircraft carrier made the big-gun battleship obsolete: the air wing's extreme range advantage over big guns coupled with inherent speed of an aircraft carrier (because it needed to provide "wind over deck" to enable its air wing to take off and land) meant that a battleship might never be able to return fire before it was sunk. But in World War II the Imperial Japanese Navy's plan for the Battle of Midway was to destroy the US Navy's aircraft carriers primarily by the gun power of its battleships. The result was the sinking of all four Japanese aircraft carriers assigned to the operation, but in a way that surprised me.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a manager in possession of a project, must be in want of a project schedule ( With apologies to Jane Austen ). On large projects for the US government there is an "Integrated Master Schedule" (IMS). The IMS is often used as a report deliverable, and so is updated monthly for the customer to see it. I have found that the IMS is most useful as a working document. This is for two reasons: 1) it saves me all of the time to update the IMS for the customer because it's already updated for me, and 2) the IMS is recommended for a reason, and I try to take full advantage of it. 1937 Panama Canal schedule My peak time using IMS as a tool was doing new product introductions for military landing gears. At that time I had several simultaneous projects, all requiring Department-of-Defense-compliant Integrated Master Schedules, which included a 14-point compliance check as well as a variety of metrics that defined the "health" ...

As I've been defining my "brand" of what I do well, one of my early attempts at a brand was "force-multiplier" or a creator of force-multipliers. I've found that most people don't have the (normally military) background to understand the term right away, so I wanted to write about how I came to the term. For me, it was webcomic Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler .

I've gotten a broad view of the various aircraft out there today, and have been involved in the design or manufacture of many too. All photos are mine or public domain.

Or "DEFM":  Designing (Engineers) for Manufacturing".

I just finished Scott Kelly's book Endurance about his year (-ish) in space on the International Space Station.  Before Kelly was an astronaut, he w as a US Navy naval aviator flying the F-14 Tomcat.  He surprised me by ragging on the F-14.  What's his criticism ?

Or "Defiant to the End"

Apollo 13 was in the news briefly this past week: Ed Smylie appeared in the Economist's obituary , having died on April 21 at the age of 95. Ed led the team of engineers that saved Apollo 13 and the whole won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their efforts. Apollo 13 probably my favorite space movie, despite a lot of competition, and I think the main reason is the love of the material and the particular competence on display: the astronauts are definitely in mortal danger, but it's not because they're making silly mistakes. I've mentioned a couple movies lately, including Top Gun and Battle: Los Angeles . Love of the material Space travel is really cool! I can't count the number of times that I've watched the scene of the Saturn V rocket launching in that movie and it still gives me chills. All of the people who have to work together on the launch, the rousing music, the sheer power of the Saturn V at liftoff...it's a great sequence. And even tho...

Often, we think about rules and regulations as concrete: even if the language is fuzzy (and needs interpretation), in theory there is a single "right" interpretation of the rule, and we can know if we're following the rule. One regulation where this is not the case is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) rule that moving work between factories can cause "no undue burden" to the FAA to monitor the work. I encountered this issue when cleaning up a regulatory violation at my former company: the violation was inadvertent, we disclosed it to the FAA, and we needed to 1) catch up on undue-burden assessment requests, and 2) put better processes in-place to avoid the issue coming up again. Like other "special" projects , I was pulled in to help on this one because I could quickly absorb the data and turn it into actions and close the issues. This post will have a brief discussion on how I solved the issues, and a longer musing on the difficul...

In the past few months, Southwest Airlines has been taking on some major changes in how they fly people. Southwest had several unusual or unique ways of operating, including open (unassigned) seating and free checked bags. It also had an offbeat, loyal workforce that was maintained through a corporate history of never having a layoff. Now all of those are being removed and it makes me both a little sad (end of an era) and wonder whether it will actually work out for the company. It makes me wonder about...New Coke. Southwest's Decision Although Southwest has been profitable most years, has it been profitable enough ? Investment firm Elliott Management says no , and they now have the power to decide . Every other US airline (or almost every?) has embraced ancillary fees like seat-selection, premium seating options (e.g. extra legroom, seats near the front), and baggage fees. So why shouldn't Southwest get its cut? They did market research and it looked like they would ga...