Re: [FT] Military Overcharging

Ryan Gill wrote:

> 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 was quoting an article that I read in Atlantic Magazine about military
procurement in general, and the commercial failure of the F-20
Tigershark.  It may
have been badly researched, I wasn't in a position to know.  It made
nasty comments
about how the DoD tended to spend too much money on gee-whiz gadgets
(AMRAAM), and
too little on weapons known to work very well (Sidewinder).