Comments on: Is Levin-McCain Bill the Right Path?

By: loggie20

loggie20 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:07:13 +0000

Cost plus works; when the EAC becomes fiction the PM terminates the contract. Cost plus the government has all the risk.

Never happens, theory fine implementation flawed.

Fixed price, contractor has the price risk, have these things called adjustments (equitable or economic), flawed as well.

Oversight is flawed, usually goes to keep the cash out flowing.

It is mostly execution.

Theory is fine, execution is problem.

The organization on the TO&E don’t run the place.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:00:17 +0000

First step in right approach. I watched the testimony that the the “old guard”(i.e., Gansler) gave before the hearings on the McCain Levin bill. First of all there is no need for more acquisition “oversight” personnel. Second, the military should be kept out of the program management and procurement business and instead keep the military employed in needed military jobs; Third, get rid of cost plus contracts and the useless Earned Value Management processes that has allowed a $400 billion dollar plus over run in the top major contracts and has allowed more games with program Estimate To Complete EAC numbers on countless other cost plus programs,. Forth, if a cost plus contract is needed, use a tailored contract that uses firm fixed price for LOE positions and isolating the fixed costs and cost plus portions of a new development program; Forth, go back to the American way of fixed price contracts and competition to get them. Congress made a big mistake in the 1940s in allowing cost plus contracts and now is the time to end them. The reasons leading up to allowing cost plus contracts is not applicable to today’s defense industry technology (see congressional hearings held back then). The billions now being spent on non producing military acquisition can be instead given to more producible consumers to help the world economy and society, not to retired military officers who now hold a major number of the defense agency and military contractor top management positions. Congress keeps listening to the “old guard” who are still focused on cold war systems and old ways of doing business. It is time to move the defense acquisition business from the 1950s to the new business strategies of the 21st century.

By: loggie20

loggie20 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:39:02 +0000

“at program launch, projected maturity points would be established at which time trade-offs between capabilities and costs would be determined.”

Don’t bother with a performance baseline, already the rule.

This is design to cost, been around for as long as I remember, better described as design to fail.

More modern term is cost as an independent variable (CAIV) same o same o; designed to fail.

At some point all the waivers and deviations mean the weapon is useless, unreliable and continously redesigned expensively in the field where it is no godd to anyone.

But it is sustaining he revenues, which is the goal.

On one ever asks “is the thing worht the money”?

But then the insiders will answer: good at ten times the costs, 20 years late and with no performance.

By: loggie20

loggie20 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:32:06 +0000

Levin McCain won’t fix it.

Any more than Nunn McCurdy got any system overunning by 25% stopped.

The whole system is broken. Congress, acquisition and requirements all inept all fictions.

Designs are poorly engineered and the current skilled senior citizens, whose retirement is so daunting, do not baseline any solutions that match the over blown capability gaps, fictitious “solutions”.

As if the inept can determine the future enemy will tilt as the wehrmacht or the Imperial navy.

The purpose of the current system is maintaining an incompetent, protected industry and the huge bureaucarcy anticipating 20 more years work after they sell out the taxpayer.

The question is not to find the next generation to manage the acquisition process.

Rather it is to close down the useless and corrupt and find efficient design and manufacture.

Levin McCain does point out that system engieering and managing by fact is needed, but some teeth for Nunn McCurdy would be a step.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:43:48 +0000

As for the “oversight czar”: Hey, y’know, whatever. Is he going to be given authority over the services’ demands for new requirements? No? Well, then he’ll be as useful as tits on a boar hog.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:42:46 +0000

D Thomson: But it is still NUCLEAR!!!! so it uses ATOMS!!!!! just like in ATOM BOMBS!!!!!! And atom bombs EXPLODE AND WILL DESTROY THE WORLD!!!!!!!

(this being the state of the average American’s thinking about nuclear power.)

By: D Thomson

D Thomson — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:21:58 +0000

Nothing is wrong with Nuclear. It’s only the fuel “Uranium” that people are afraid of. Replace Uranium with Thorium and the plant will be safe from melt down, explosion, and controllable radiactive contamination, plus it cannot be made into Weapons Grade material. Costs for Securety and handling would be minimized.

By: p.w.prawl

p.w.prawl — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:07:46 +0000

as a 20-year navy, SBA, and consulting contract trainer, the problem with govt contracting is congress and lawyers in congress writing business rules!!
There are so many conflicts and contradictions written in Federal and Defense Acquisition regulations and loopholes big enough to drive a truck through and political interference, no wonder we have cost overruns!!!

By: John

John — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:36:12 +0000

We do not want to replicate in DoD what has happened to the nuclear power industry; we have process; we have no new physical plant.

This is a poor analogy. The public doesn’t wan’t nuclear power in their back yards period. No process is going to change that.

AA tzar is another stupid Congressional mandate by people whoaare part of the problem. Just restaff the government’s procurement oversite staff.