🛡️ “It’s just a flesh wound.” | Paul Garcia
🛡️ “It’s just a flesh wound.” Monty Python’s Black Knight is the perfect metaphor for how bloated PEOs treat failing programs.
Limbs gone. Immobile. Diminished firepower. But still swinging. Because killing a bad program is harder than admitting failure.
This is the sunk cost fallacy baked into our DoD acquisition system. They want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, but that instinct calcifies into institutional denial. Surrounded by consultants who say what they want to hear, they tune out the hard truth. And the longer they delay, the harder it becomes to stop the inertia.
Meanwhile, the real risk isn’t felt at the program office, it’s on the front lines. Cyber theater and acquisition apathy protect careers but transfer all the danger to the warfighter and mission. We see it every week: outdated platforms, legacy tech, and paper thin roadmaps that haven’t delivered in decades. Same people, same incentives, same outcome.
But not everywhere.
Operators and field-deployed engineers are breaking the cycle. They’re humble, credible, and approachable. They have opinions but they’re ready to work with teams that put the mission first. They’re incrementally compounding value with small, meaningful wins. They’re delivering outcomes. You don’t hear from them much b/c they’re too busy doing the work. You have to know where to look and who to talk to.
It’s time to pull the plug on the waste.
💀 “The Black Knight Portfolio: Top 5 Programs That Should’ve Died Already.” We all know who they are.
Drop your nominations.
