Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

if I remember correctly, didn't mitre have a thing where they would siphon off some funds for admin that they would use to fund internal research. Then fruits of that research would be completely owned by mitre instead of tech transferred? I remember some people being upset about that.

Not sure about the intellectual property, but MITRE did have a for-profit subsidiary for a while (not sure if it still does) and its overhead rates were very high compared with any other firm.

Some believed the high overhead rates were being used to fund senior management's pet projects, but not sure if that is what was/is going on.

OH is welfare for people who cant find direct charge codes. This is why the double tax (high OH rates and fee off the top followed by management charges taken from labor during project execution) are so egregious. The CORs should ask more questions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

if I remember correctly, didn't mitre have a thing where they would siphon off some funds for admin that they would use to fund internal research. Then fruits of that research would be completely owned by mitre instead of tech transferred? I remember some people being upset about that.

Not sure about the intellectual property, but MITRE did have a for-profit subsidiary for a while (not sure if it still does) and its overhead rates were very high compared with any other firm.

Some believed the high overhead rates were being used to fund senior management's pet projects, but not sure if that is what was/is going on.

Correct. It was named Enginuity and it closed

Engenuity was a non-profit. Part of Jason's brilliant attempt to monetize MITRE IP. The core problem being... How can MITRE maintain it's independence when selling something. The exact reason the big contractors were forced to spin off the SETAs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

if I remember correctly, didn't mitre have a thing where they would siphon off some funds for admin that they would use to fund internal research. Then fruits of that research would be completely owned by mitre instead of tech transferred? I remember some people being upset about that.

Not sure about the intellectual property, but MITRE did have a for-profit subsidiary for a while (not sure if it still does) and its overhead rates were very high compared with any other firm.

Some believed the high overhead rates were being used to fund senior management's pet projects, but not sure if that is what was/is going on.

Correct. It was named Enginuity and it closed

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

The nsec ceiling is a ceiling on staff headcount, not budget.

The irony is that increasing the ceiling encouraged hiring more staff with the same budget, which led to compensation pressure, which drove away the expert staff, which led to complaints of inexperienced 'SME', which led to reduced budget.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

if I remember correctly, didn't mitre have a thing where they would siphon off some funds for admin that they would use to fund internal research. Then fruits of that research would be completely owned by mitre instead of tech transferred? I remember some people being upset about that.

Not sure about the intellectual property, but MITRE did have a for-profit subsidiary for a while (not sure if it still does) and its overhead rates were very high compared with any other firm.

Some believed the high overhead rates were being used to fund senior management's pet projects, but not sure if that is what was/is going on.

Anonymous wrote:Can lobbying firms also operate FFRDCs?

Some might argue that RAND's CEO would say yes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

The CNA FFRDC is very small and very narrowly focused on a single customer (DoN).

SEI is similar to CNA, but a bit larger, and also with a narrow customer focus.

Aerospace FFRDC is mid-sized, but also very focused on DoAF and closely related organizations.

MITRE tries to be everything to everyone, civilian agencies and the military and the IC. It has lacked focus in recent years. Customers have been unhappy at being charged high rates for inexperienced people or for pseudo-experts. MITRE needs to focus and needs to return to its roots of providing specialized genuine scientific/technical expertise (and move away from general IT support). I doubt this will happen.

Can lobbying firms also operate FFRDCs?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

These days, any DoW SETA also has an unbiased viewpoint and also cannot profit off of any advice or recommendations. There are very strict rules preventing any SETA from having Organizational Conflicts of Interest (OCI) now. Firms like Amentum or Arcfield were spun out as totally independent firms to comply with the current strict OCI rules.

In the 1990s, these strict OCI rules did not exist and OCI issues were a good reason to have FFRDCs. Now that OCI is legally prohibited for all DoW SETAs, and very strictly enforced, the need for FFRDCs honestly is much much lower.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

if I remember correctly, didn't mitre have a thing where they would siphon off some funds for admin that they would use to fund internal research. Then fruits of that research would be completely owned by mitre instead of tech transferred? I remember some people being upset about that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.

Why wasn't attrition high for CNA, IDA, Aerospace, LL, and SEI?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FY 2025 FFRDC Attrition Rates (Page 34, Figure 15) -- Rand and Mitre are the only two FFRDCs with double-digit attrition.

http://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Defense-Research-Enterprise-Review.pdf

They were targeted.

By who? For what?

They are gatekeepers. They evaluate systems (products and vendors) with an
unbiased viewpoint and cannot personally profit off their recommendations. Inconvenient truths that can cause others to lose business.

The report is correct in identifying the nsec ceiling as an arbitrary barrier. In today's world FFRDC funding is in the noise.