Re: Joint Strike Fighter

[Rex Reges <Rex.R.Reges@boeing.com>]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> For a while back when I worked for LMCO, the philosophy I heard floating around
> was "Price to win, work to cost." This basicly meant that the only real
> consideration in a bid was if it was low enough to win the contract. You will
> then essentially have engineering work until the money runs out and either the
> project is delivered, or you can no longer convince the agency to cough up more
> money. 

For military contracts, the more common scenario is 
that the project is replanned due to shifting politics 
or global events. Once the contract is won, then you
sock the Government for big bucks to accomadate constantly 
shifting requirements, changing project funding profiles,
etc. It's all cost plus.

In the worst-case scenario, a project may come to an
end and the Government's audit (FCA/PCA) discoveres that
a bunch of requirements haven't been met and a bunch
of work hasn't been completed. The big shots in the 
Pentagon aren't going to take a fall, so they accept
things as delivered. When I worked for the Government,
I would have been happy to get 50% of what the contract
asked for!

What about Ada? Like the Macintosh, Beta VCRs and the
Vax, Ada's superiority is admired by those in the 
know. That matters squat to management who want to 
earn that multi-million dollar bonus that the Government
offered the JSF winner for being staffed up upon
Contract Award. If you need several hundred programmers 
tomorrow because you heard rumors (in Business Week) that
you've won, then you take whatever you can get.

I doubt that one could get several hundred Ada programmers
in a pinch.  I couldn't hire six experienced Ada 
contractors in six months! And try to get them to move
to some tornado infested place like Oklahoma City (who knows
what Fort Worth holds). Of course we could train C++
programmers. So we pay $75/hour for their time and send them
to training too! And if you do, then you have inexperienced 
Ada programmers. It's not like Ada inhibits people from
doing stupid things (like creating a C interpreter in
Ada to get out of writing everything in Ada).  

What to do? I'm scrounging the junk heaps for a thrown
out Vax to connect to my Mac so I can make Beta videos
of Digital's fantastic Ada83 compiler at work:)

Rex Reges