via FedBuzz...
The Army wants to delay the start of its armored multi-purpose vehicle program by one year and raise its development costs by several hundred million dollars,according to Defense News.You can call this a face saving move. This program is as dead as disco.
The Army wants to buy 2,097 AMPVs over 13 years costing roughly $1.8 million apiece. The new draft request for proposals released Tuesday does not include an average unit manufacturing cost, unlike the March draft. The Army will now plan to award a five-year contract in May 2014 to one contractor that will manufacture 29 vehicles for government testing. This will be followed by a three-year low-rate initial production contract starting in 2020.
Now I ask you, what's more important, a long-overdue improved fighting vehicle for the Army, or continuing and increasing profits for Lockheed-Martin which produces the crappy under-performing overpriced late-delivered F-35. Last week, the company raised its quarterly dividend by 16% to $1.33 a share which gave Lockheed's president something to be proud of.
ReplyDelete"We're proud to deliver to our shareholders the 11th consecutive annual double-digit increase of the Lockheed Martin quarterly dividend rate," said CEO and President Marillyn Hewson in a press release.
Ms. Hewson squeezed by on $11,390,322 last year, when executive compensation at L-M rose 18.5%. (Compare that with the military limited to one percent, not at the 1.8% index.)
http://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensation.action?t=LMT
To be fair, I have wondered for some time now if the Army is capable of project-managing anything more complex than an MRAP.
ReplyDelete