Despite the veterans and others who work for companies like Oshkosh, some insane liberals like Byron Skinner will rant and insult them for being part of some non-existence military-industrial complex plot to overthrow Obama.

No lover of the Clintons here. sorry Steve, either Bill or Hillary. Never voted for Clinton and disapproved of most of what he did as President. I find it quite appropriate hat he was “adopted” by the Bush family.

In fact one could put up a good argument that Clinton was a better Republican President then either of the Bushs.

Being a Liberal I would have to say that the last Liberal President we had, was Richard Nixon. Before you go into fits of laughter and convulsions Steve, look at Nixon’s records of domestic and foreign policy achievements. Watergate and the Southern strategy and his bungling of the Vietnam War were also part of Nixon and History will rightfully hold him accountable, but under Nixon a workable Welfare Program for Urban America, he called it “Revenue Sharing” to fool the simple minded knuckle heads in the Republican Party, was put in effect, only to be scuttled by Reagan, Nixon filled out the LBJ Great Society, promoted the use of food stamps and nutrition aid to the poor, expanded Medicare, finished ingratiating primary and secondary education, and a lot of other stuff that his name has yet to be attached to.

On foreign policy he opened up China to the west, he deal with the Soviet Union at the height of its power, he pushed Europe toward the EU to name just the big thing he did.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

A trust you rememeber it was Bill Clinton’s adminstration that first awarded FMTV to S&S. So blame Bill and his crew for starting this in the first place, or otherwise congratulate George W. for opening it up to competition. You can’t have your cake and eat it!.

This doesn’t appear to be a T&M job but a Design and Build contract since from the limited information the Oshkosh product was different from what either BAE or Navistar was offering.

In that case the selection almost by definition is purely suggestive, on the part of the Government and the lowest bid doesn’t have to be considered if the customer determines that one of the products is clearly superior for any reason to the others.

The statement by Andrew Wright above may have been heard loud and clear and the Army had QA in mind as well as design and time to construct.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

Often the Government will specify a component, such as most likely in this case the power plant. The Army might want a commercial engine that has a proven record and will have parts availability for many years. In that case most likely they will say in the project manual “Government Provides”.

The “…source selection…” might mean that the contractor after the bid is awarded might make a change of equal or better for a part/parts. This is permitted with the approval of the project manager, who is the controlling agent for the Government.

The reason can be to reduce cost, the Government will expect a credit of course, or to use a better suited part then the part specified by the Government, or what is requested is no longer available, this often happens with the lag time in biding a project, or there is a technological revision in the alternate part that was unknown at the time the project manual was written that is better suited to the project.

Playing around with the above can create a lot of change orders and additional profits.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

One project involving replacement of a very old airborne system display that I remember had a price “goal” of the new cost of the obsolete display (It was state of the art in it’s time, and thus was not cheap to begin with.
The winning bidder submitted a bid (and won) based upon modification and upgrade of a system they built for another branch on the military. The system met minimum specs (more or less)
The system favored by military engineering and logistics cost about 25% more, and was fully upgradeable as technology changed. It did not win, based on cost, and the supposed “risk” since it was a totally new design, using “off the shelf” assemblies and components.

The end result was that the winning vendor’s unit had a power supply that had a high failure rate, causing additional delay and expense, and eventually re design and replacement of the power supply. The system favored by military engineering and logistics would have been of less cost, higher reliability and capability when everything was said and done.

An example is obtaining radiation hardened electronic components. The same technology and production resources are used to produce “high volume” consumer parts. It is not cost effective for a Mfr. to shut down a high volume line, and set it up to make a few hundred mil spec radiation hardened devices for the military, let alone the fact that the production facilities are virtually all overseas. To actually have this done, the military may pay very large setup fees, as well as compensating the Mfr. for the loss of revenue that occurred as a result of shutting down the high volume production.
Retired Loggie

I’ve seen T&M (time and materials) contracts for things that should be fixed price, and fixed price that should be T&M.

Retired Loggie, among other things.

On the other hand, when there is a large difference in price, something is usually wrong.