Irv Blickstein

Irv Blickstein is a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation. He has 50 years of experience in the field of defense analysis and management with a specialty in planning, programming, and budgeting as well as acquisition. For the past 13 years, Blickstein has managed the research of activities of a series of projects in support of the office of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Undersecretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics. The projects have covered a wide variety of topics, including directed energy, unmanned vehicles, reviews of foreign acquisition programs, sea basing, naval shipyards, operating and support costs in the DoD, evaluation of Navy Enterprises and the cost analyses of both ships and aircraft. He has studied the cost of statutory and regulatory constraints in the DoD and currently comanages a large project with the Performance Assessments and Root Cause Analysis branch of USD AT&L. He has served on two studies that developed or improved the analytic functions for the leadership of the Navy and the Director of National Intelligence. Blickstein serves on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. He served 31 years in the Department of Defense before joining RAND, 18 as a senior executive, and was awarded four Presidential Rank awards. He received the Department of the Navy’s Meritorious Public Service Award in 2011 for his service on the CNO’s Executive Panel. He holds an M.S. in engineering management from The George Washington University.