Wasteful Defense Spending Is a Clear and Present Danger

[Ken White]

a competitive fly/shoot/drive/steam off trial of prototypes and then run competitive bids to build the selected design -- as I've been saying for over 40 years -- not that anyone listened...

That negates a requirement for excessive technical detail in specifications, the factor that increases the cost and the difficulty in spec writing.

[Valin]

Thanks for the link. I think.

The thing that really irks me is that those yo-yos in Congress, the institution who is responsible for much of this -- acknowledging that services do tend to drive out the really sharp techies who can translate things for those senior but unversed (and that I certainly wouldn't want to be an acquisition guy...) -- will get on their high horse in a fraction of a second over any kerfluffle in the process they created...

The terrible thing is that it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

And what about this suprises you?

[Entropy]

a competitive fly/shoot/drive/steam off trial of prototypes and then run competitive bids to build the selected design -- as I've been saying for over 40 years -- not that anyone listened...

That negates a requirement for excessive technical detail in specifications, the factor that increases the cost and the difficulty in spec writing.

I agree, but that only works when one is building prototypes with mature technology. You couldn't, for example, have a bunch of contractors build a complete FCS prototype for competition - it would bankrupt them.

This points to what is, IMO, the biggest problem with procurement - that it is joined to the hip with R&D. We essentially sign-on to buy capabilities that have yet to be invented and then are shocked to discover inventing those capabilities takes orders-of-magnitude more time and money than originally estimated, nevermind the that the services like to constantly amend requirements, further driving up the cost.

Naturally the contractors and the services (and Congress) are happy to underestimate the costs and difficulty of creating technology from scratch for one program. So ISTM the best thing we could do is put a wall between R&D and procurement so that procurement money is only spend on mature technology and R&D money is only spent on R&D. This would also allow our R&D effort to be more efficient and effective since it won't be tied to one program.

I'm not very optimistic that such changes will ever happen, but ever since my wife agreed to marry me I'm of the mind that anything is possible

[Ken White]

I agree, but that only works when one is building prototypes with mature technology. You couldn't, for example, have a bunch of contractors build a complete FCS prototype for competition - it would bankrupt them.

I will however, forego commenting on FCS.

The idea will not work for techno leaps, however, DARPA unconstrained by DoD bureaucracy and service parochiality seems to do that pretty well...

I'm not very optimistic that such changes will ever happen, but ever since my wife agreed to marry me I'm of the mind that anything is possible

I resemble that remark...