It would all depend on if they were affirmative action candidates like Obama now wouldn’t it? A “Dminus” for an affirmative action candidate would move that candidate to the top five to percent wouldn’t it? Then you could sail right on in to Harvard.

In the Chicago Police Department, affirmative action candidates scoring in the 40th percentile are often rescaled into the top five to ten percent.

Welfare for war profiteers? Thanks for advertising your politics that is a straight Marxist statement. You are a far left radical that would tear down everything this country stands for so you can get your free government cheese.

What F-22 are you talking? It is the best most technically advanced fighter plane ever built. Complex weapon systems need time to develop. Non-partison defense experts extol it war fighting capabilities on a regualr basis. It is performing very well in Red Flag exercises with 100–1 kill ratios.

There was just a report released that only $27 billion of the stimulas will be infrastructure and most won’t even be spent until 2010 or later.

Energy independence? By taxing small energy producers and not allowing drilling pretty much anywhere in the US. We cannot wait for cars that run on Unicorn farts or some other magical energy like you want to. Electric cars, when 50 million people plug in their cars drawing power from a neglected energy grid that is mostly coal fired plants what happens then, brown outs, black outs? Did you know their is a coal fired plant, nuclear plant, natural gas plant, hydroelectric dam, etc. at the end of your light socket? Or when you flick a switch a light bulb just magically turns on!!

Welfare does something for people? Keep them dependent on big brother government. We don’t want to keep scientists or engineers employed let’s have more people on welfare. Government assistance should be a safety net not a hammock.

Improving Healthcare outcomes? What does that even mean, is the Obama White House website permanently on your computer and you just quote verbatim?

Educating kids? The US spends the most per pupil on education and has some of the worst results in the industrialized world but you want to throw more money at it? When a weapon system doesn’t work you say waste of money but a failing education system “that needs more money”

While I support a person’s right to go on any website and comment I really have to wonder why you go to defense related websites you obviously have no idea about defense issues.

For fiscal year 2010 the federal government is spending (including the stimulas)over SEVEN times as much on non-defense as on defense and yet you just sit back and say more, more, more, gimme, gimme, gimme.

It is not always welfare for poor people versus welfare for war profiteers.

What is bad about the stimulus?

Do you know how many infrastructure projects are funded in the stimulus? Any work on energy independence? Educating kids? Improving health care outcomes?

The stimulus is doing things that deliver the “public goods” as the economists say, national infrastructure, among other things.

Why is it always war machine that does nothing for the US compared welfare?

There are other things to do with the money.

The F-22 failed KPP’s that is an F grade anywhere else. It flies by politics, were it not for the politics the lack technical performance would demand it be canned.

Not only does the F-22 waste the airplanes but all the talent going into it should have done better for the nation.

Where did the US get the $787 billion for the recent stimulas? Where did it get the $1 trillion to buy back gov. bonds to increase the money supply? Where did they get the extra $500 billion the non-defense budget increased in FY10?

If your kids were getting d-minuses? With you as a parent I am sure they ARE getting D-minuses!

After 39 years in work 4 of 10 F-22 are grounded at their flying units.

Good thing those are not providing for the common defense.

DensityDuck,

There isn’t enough money to buy all that stuff. There is more already bought than anything other than the jobs can justify. See above, just one example of shoddy outcomes.

ReconTeam/BobbyMike,

At least you didn’t say “ditto”.

The MICC is in charge of about 3% too much of the GDP. See above.

My opinion.

8% of GDP, where will the US get the money?

If my kids were getting Dminuses in school would I send them to Harvard?

There are far too many retired officers and Sr. NCOs who are now contractors getting direct access to see decision makers and then selling them on their new widget…which amazingly then becomes a requirement even though it doesn’t appear in the ICD, CDD or CPD.

The decision makers are too weak to tell them to get lost…mostly because they know in a few years they’ll be the ones trying to sell company X’s widget.

*****

NHRonin: Bingo. The typical requirements process these days goes: 1) Aerospace Corp tells customer they should want something. 2) Contractor spends two months of fifty-hour workweeks writing the actual requirements statements. 3) Aerospace Corp tells us that it’s all wrong and that we have to rewrite 95% of what we did.

Note that nowhere in this process does the actual CUSTOMER appear…

I love all those who claim the defense industry or the “evil” military industrial complex is in charge of the country. Don’t you think we would be spending slightly more on defense that we are. Don’t you think they could have told Obama to give them some of the $787 billion stimulas for weapons. Would Sec. Gates have had that press conference yesterday, wouldn’t the evil industry have stopped him. Grow up or wake up people.

That’s where the biggest problem lies and that needs to be fixed before they over react and lay additional reviews and rules on the program managers.

If DoD were run for the industry, then TSAT would have been awarded back in 2004, we’d be building six AEHF and twelve WGS (along with nine MUOS), we’d by flying leased KC-767 tankers, we’d have 500 F-22 and 800 F-35 AND all of FCS…I don’t understand how you can look at the past ten years of defense acquisitions and claim that “DoD is run for the industry”.

Did you even READ my post?

I SAID THAT YOUNG WAS WRONG THAT THE ACQUISITION SYSTEM IS NOT BROKEN!!!

AND I SAID THAT MUCH OF WHAT IS WRONG IS OUTSIDE THE CONTROL OF ACQUISITION.

The pentagon is broken.

The management of war migrated across the river to Capitol Hill. It went from soldiers, engineers and writted contracting officers running the arsenals to a profit making sector of the economy. With one customer. That being congress.

The shift means that DoD is run for the industry not the other way around.

Old tale: When John Vessey was offered Sec Def, he replied I’d rather run it from ‘this side of the river’.

I suppose this is why Eisenhower warned of the influences of the military industrial complex.

I also agree with his point about “excessive application of government certification standards”. MUOS nearly doubled in cost from the original proposal, because the original proposal was “don’t re-certify from commercial standards”, and they got all the way to PDR before the customer changed their mind…

Young is (has been) basically clueless. Like most of the senior folk in the pentagon acquiring stuff.

His stances are juvenile.

He does not say that requirements changes result from: the acquisition system not understanding the users’ need in the first place, the users’ needs may not have been stated in time to spend the money (see budget process), or the contractor asked for relief from specifications and charged more. Also requirements changes occur from “selling” off the shelf and finding the thing don’t work.

Sometimes an Airbus just don’t do the job!

The budget factor implies DoD should buy the whole lot at once, which is ridiculous given the requirements fiasco.

If you had the pleasure to read his weekly missiles you could relate to the humor of the above.

It is insane to plan to fight WW II over and over again and maintain an industry for it.

I’d be more inclined to believe Young if he’d tell us how the admittedly poor “national enterprise” performance issues are being corrected now that it IS his watch.

Or are we going to get only “we inherited these problems” diversions?