I do think J Wolfsbergers last
It's your adversarial attitude I'm responding to. Here's some free advice: Stay out of acquisition. If you ever go into the acquisition side with the attitude you've shown here, you will enjoy a self fulfilling prophecy. The only contractors who will want to work with you will be the ones who live down to your expectations.
Is fairly accurate both on the attitude perception side and especially the part about self-fulfilling prophecy.

As a contractor myself I have seen and experienced much of what each of you has mentioned but have to say that in general most of those who work for DOD do not approach everything from a "get everything you can" perspective. This from Ken

Well, I think both of you are correct. You are not
talking past each other but you are focusing, it seems to me, on different aspects and perhaps, as they say the truth is somewhere in between. The process is flawed, we all acknowledge, contributors to problems exist in all categories of persons involved, I think we all said one way or another -- so the problem is that we -- Whoa! I'm retarded, -- YOU are both victims of that flawed process and you're hacked off by it.

I'm not even a victim -- now -- and I'm hacked off. The problem existed back in my day but it has gotten significantly worse in the last few years. It is borderline criminal and it sure needs to be fixed -- for the sake of the contractors, the services and the nation.
absolutely hits the nail on the head.

The larger problem however is that there are problems on the military/ Civilian sides as well which more often than not create that survival of the fittest/ CYA requirement since either of the above on a whim can bring a whole lot of pain for very little purpose other than that they are not happy with some aspect of a given mission requirement or position.

Want to really see what kind of impact this can have look at the current Civilian hire move as defined by those who decided on it and taker a deeper look at how it is being implemented at the lower echelon's.

Long and short, Yes some things gotta change; point is make sure your looking at the entire cycle and all players involved before devolving into the easier bash the contractor only to find in the end that rather then getting things right for the future you instead ended up knocking them back to 6 years ago and have essentially ensured things will stay there for the next ten.

As to this last-

Perhaps it's just my youth and relative inexperience but are you saying that it's a bad thing for organizations which perform services for a customer to actually work hard to know what the client may require for the future and do their best to provide options when and if the time arrives that they are asked for it.

(PS IMHO any good general analyst can have at least a fair idea of what those requirements might be w/o necessarily having the "inside scoop" )

Quote Originally Posted by pjmunson View Post
"Companies that perform studies and analysis for organizations like TRADOC are usually small and specialized, and generally aren't involved on the acquisition side."

Details aside because my example in the post you were responding to is real, the company doing the study is not small, and while it has a specialized analytical branch, evidently, it is heavily involved on the acquisitions side. Again, rational business behavior. Major defense contractors have the influence and economies of scale to operate more efficiently in all modes of defense contracting, plus when they branch out into analysis, they're helping their own cause out. While it may not be direct influence, as I do not know the ethical and legal obligations of fencing off such a study from the other branches of the company, they are at a minimum gaining insight into where DoD is looking for change and can clue their other branches to look for marketable activities there.
IF on the other hand your simply saying there are those who stack the deck then OK;Exactly how do you differentiate between the former (mentioned above) and the latter. (your apparent concern)