Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: animage%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Cal-Animage Club) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Bat Plane Bux Message-ID: <13346@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 20 Jan 90 03:18:26 GMT References: <12850@cbnews.ATT.COM> <12981@cbnews.ATT.COM> <13218@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 68 Approved: military@att.att.com From: animage%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Cal-Animage Club) In article <13218@cbnews.ATT.COM> cmr@cvedc.Prime.Com (Chesley Reyburn) writes: >From: cmr@cvedc.Prime.Com (Chesley Reyburn) >In article <12981@cbnews.ATT.COM> animal@isis.rice.edu (Carl Rosene) writes: >>Sec. of Defense Cheney... >>...indicated that the incremental cost ... is 300 million dollars. >>...you) have already paid roughly 200 million per plane >Wait a minute... >Your assertions may work in Washington, but where I live all of the money >spent on a project is charged against that project. >If I spend $200 million designing and developing something I would >expect to include that cost in the total project cost. I don't believe that the problem in DOD spending money is the problem. Cutting systems will NOT, I repeat, NOT solve the budget problems. The real spending problems in the DOD are really NOT in the DOD. The US Congress is the body that controls where all the money goes. All the DOD can do is to give a list of recommendations as to where to cut. Remember that all these Senators and Representatives have constituents to worry about. If jobs are lost in their district, they may lose their seat in congress. As a result, you better believe that these politicians are going to lobby like hell to make sure that their constituents are affected as little as possible or not at all. As a result, congressmen get together with other congressmen and make deals like "if you vote for my bill, I'll vote for yours." More than a few times have congressmen spent money on systems and bases that the military has decided are obsolete and not practical or necessary to maintain. In fact, quite a few times, congressmen have spent more money to keep bases open in clear defiance of military recommendations. But the DOD is not blameless in all of this. Many times, companies which are required (say the case of Northrop and the MX missile) by the Air force to have the guidance system by a certain day, often cannot reasonably comply since the parts companies are not coordinated with the final guidance system assembley at Northorp. Required by contract, Northrop is caught in a bind and must comply with the contract and deliver on time. As a result, Nortrop cannot afford to wait for the parts and send their employees to Radio Shack around the corner to buy the parts needed. Needless to say, these parts do not meet the requirements for durability and toughness that the proper parts that go in the guidance system should. As a result, when the completed guidance systems are sent off, they contain cheap substandard parts. Months later, ALL the guidance systems are returned after all of them flunked the military tests and Northorp is told to repair the problem. This circle costs the tax-payers several million dollars per batch that is returned. Nortrop, however, is not blameless in all this either, since it throws away the good parts when they come in, though they came in late. The cycle repeats itself and pretty soon you get a problem. Parts are reordered, the military wants them by a deadline, the deadline is not practical, etc. Some of the guidance systems have the good parts, but since the military doesn't test EVERY single one, small batches are returned if a representative one is found defective. Otherwise, if the representative unit is good, the whole batch is kept. This is because, the military assumes that only the good parts were used. Now THIS, not only wastes OUR money, but doesn't exactly do miracles to our nuclear program either. I'd rather have a guidance system that works and nukes that work 60% of the time, than nukes that are guaranteed to work and a guidance system that works 60% of the time. Here is where I believe we have the REAL problem. The Daimyo wang@ocf.berkeley.edu