Friday, April 25, 2008
Department of Defense At Work
Never mind that the contractors are chock-full of ex-high-ranking-military officers, they would never try to cheat Uncle Sam....it's just that weapon systems always cost a lot more and take much longer than the way they are sold. Just the way it is, right? (Like those news "analysts" who used to wear stars on their shoulder.)
- A project heralded as the dawning of an innovative, low-cost era in Navy shipbuilding has turned into a case study of how not to build a combat ship. The bill for the ship, being built by Lockheed Martin, has soared to $531 million, more than double the original, and by some calculations could be $100 million more.
- ..... a dynamic of mutually re-enforcing deficiencies: ever-changing Pentagon design requirements; unrealistic cost estimates and production schedules abetted by companies eager to win contracts, and a fondness for commercial technologies that often, as with the ferry concept, prove unsuitable for specialized military projects. At the same time, a policy of letting contractors take the lead in managing weapons programs has coincided with an acute shortage of government engineers trained to oversee these increasingly complex enterprises.
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