From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,707ffbf6ec9d1855 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!sn-xit-15!sn-xit-09!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Love Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: SBIRS, Ada and Ignorance Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:01:57 -0000 Organization: Message-ID: <20051223110200413-0600@news.airmail.net> User-Agent: Halime (MacOSX)/1.0rc2b MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20051222102521644-0600@news.airmail.net> <20051222152554655-0600@news.airmail.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-15" X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6988 Date: 2005-12-23T17:01:57+00:00 List-Id: In wrote: > Since my name (creatively spelled, but I think Robert meant me) came > up in the discussion below, I will research the matter and see if I > can get an email off to the right people from my DoD account. Yes, it was your name I was mangling. > > I'll probably get myself in trouble, but it won't be the first time. > > As to the term "bozo," none of the USAF people involved deserve this > appellation. They > are simply reacting to the ignorance about Ada that seems to prevail > throughout the larger software community. My experience with the > USAF decision-makers is that they are doing their best to make > responsible decisions on behalf of the National Defense. They are > being misinformed by contractors whose self-interest sometimes > preempts what ought to be their better judgement. At the level of the Secretary and Undersecretary I expect them to be far removed from direct knowledge of the progject but somebody dropped the ball. I expect it is in the USAF Project office. Those managers have an oversight responsilbity and since it involves billions of tax payer dollars and national defense it is a task that should not just rely on the contractors information. Did this project have a V&V contractor? I'll have to look. I do note that Secretary Wynne has previously worked for LockMart, the prime contractor for SBIRS. It may be that he is too cosy with his old employers but I doubt it. It should be noted that the USAF has several big ticket satellite programs all well over budget and years behind schedule. T-Sat, Space Based Radar and others join SBIRS as projects in trouble. Most of them are due to sensor problems and general poor management. Some should be more like R&D programs that operational projects. Since the Secretary has brought up software as an issue on this satellite I want to know what was the real cause of the problem. I can't believe Ada is a cause in its own right. Was it compiler/tool problems? Was it a bad software architecture? Was there a valid set of requirements that were stable?