via Forbes...
The tortured path of the Pentagon’s biggest weapon program is beginning to look like a case study in poor management. The problem isn’t the F-35 fighter, which is making steady progress towards becoming the best tactical aircraft ever built. The problem is a federal acquisition culture that has grown so risk-averse it no longer cares about long-term consequences.That bureaucratic myopia will be in abundant display next month, when the Department of Defense releases updated cost estimates for the fighter program. The estimates will reveal a modest increase in the cost of each plane, and Pentagon policymakers will repeat for the umpteenth time all of the heroic steps they have taken to rein in a wayward contractor. But don’t expect them to take any responsibility for the cost increases because, after all, they’re the good guys.If you follow the F-35 program closely, which almost nobody outside the Pentagon does, a different narrative emerges. It is the story of what happens to major technology programs in a balkanized, distracted political system when there is no urgent danger to push them forward. Bureaucratic and personal agendas fill the vacuum once occupied by the threat, and so programs seldom stay on track — leaving the nation unprepared when the next big threat appears.Maybe you’re incredulous that the real reason the F-35 program has become so controversial is government behavior. After all, I advise many of the companies involved in the program so I’m not objective, right? Fair enough. I’ll abandon generalities and provide concrete examples of what the Pentagon has done wrong (the examples aren’t hard to find). Here are six ways that the military acquisition system makes a bargain seem unafforbable.
Wow. Read the whole thing but....Thompson NAILS it on all points.
I absolutely love it.
Somewhere I can see him sitting in his office feet on his desk, drinking a shot of whatever it is he drinks, pulling a long drag off his favorite cigar thinking boy, this is almost as good as me being able to walk up to one of those SMART ASS Aviation Writers and saying....
Loren Thompson is paid directly by LM through his company Source Associates. When he's writing anything on the F-35, and he's on the record as saying he won't anything unless he's being paid, it really shouldn't be taken as anything other than a press release by LM.
ReplyDeleteFrankly I don't think he "nailed it" and stating it's all the governments fault is simply misleading. There is no question JPO was very poorly managed for years but LM's management is a case study in mismanagement.
The notion that the aircraft is in fact not expensive and it's merely DOD inflating costs is just ridiculous. The history of this program is continued cost increases, delays, and poor management.
JPO has it's act together now with Venlet who has forced a slow down of the program. LM is still saying the program should be accelerated. One of them is full of shit and my money is not on Thompson and LM.
i disagree.
ReplyDeleteyou're wrong.
i'm right.
and so is Dr. Thompson.
No worries that's fine. It might be worth considering, however, that LM and Adm Venlet at JPO have some rather divergent opinions regarding the status of the program and that if Thompson and LM are correct then Adm Venlet is wrong.
ReplyDeleteIn any case the facts will become clear over the next few years of the program so we'll see what happens.