Re: How many different processors do you use?

[Marin David Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

Lew Pitcher wrote:
> 
> Could not the "Defense Contractor" billing mindset also figure into this?
> Since Ada was/is the required language for DOD work, it might suffer from
> the same inflationary pricing that introduced multi-hundred dollar toilet seats
> to the DOD.
> 

This is a bit of a myth. The legendary $400 hammers come not from
unscrupulous defense contractors, but rather as a consequence of the
DoD's own accounting rules. Say you contract with the DoD to deliver 25
M1 Abrahms tanks. In the contract will be certain things besides the
tanks themselves. Service manuals, test equipment, maintenance kits
(complete with hammers! :-) training, support, etc. A whole laundry list
of line items. Now, you have your developmental costs (engineering) and
your manufacturing costs. The hammer may have been manufactured or
purchased at a cost of $5.00, but the accounting rules say you have to
distribute that huge engineering cost across all of the deliverables. So
$5.00 in cost plus markup *plus* development cost for the whole package
equals $400. It makes for interesting TV with Mike Wallace on 60
Minutes, or for Senators to pontificate on in front of the cameras, but
it is a huge distortion of the truth, bordering on calumny.

Trust me. We in the defense contracting business are *not* driving
around in limos and sucking up gravy on $600 coffee pots and such. We
get squeezed every bit as hard as our commercial counterparts -
sometimes even harder because we have one and only one customer who, if
he doesn't like the price and takes a hike, we're out of work.

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
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