Re: [FT] Military Overcharging

At 8:41 AM -0400 6/30/01, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:
>Derk Groeneveld wrote:The MIL Spec problem comes about from a large 
>number of peacetime warriors with
>nothing to do.  The specification for the C-130 Hercules transport 
>was a total of
>400 pages.  The pentagon did not have the man-hours to specify
everything, and
>left much of the details to the aircraft manufacturers.  Four 
>hundred pages may
>seem like a lot, but the specification document for the C-141 
>Starlifter could not
>be safely loaded into a C-130, if one expected it to take-off.

Having worked at Lockheed martin when they were putting together 
specifications for aircraft, this isn't quite so true.

I was there for the UK-RMPA, the C5-D bid and a few other smaller 
proposals. The documents aren't that big. They are in the 2,000+ page 
range but that's because it includes materials advances, changes in 
design from existing systems and all sorts of very in-depth details 
on the design and its capabilities. Once the book was compiled, it 
was sent to the government board and they broke it back down into the 
various sections for their experts to compare with the other bids.

I know this because I worked in the publications department and 
supported the Macs they used to generate the graphics and lay the 
pages out in Framemaker. I got to see the process first hand. I got a 
nasty speeding ticket on the day we finished the UK-RMPA (P3-Orion 
for the Brits) bid and the publications group was doing the final 
assembly of the document.

I'd have loved to have seen the C5-D.

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- Ryan Montieth Gill		DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
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