Re: Joint Strike Fighter

["Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net>]

Rex Reges wrote:
> 
> 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.

I hardly consider it "socking the Government" to charge them for the
time and resources required to accommodate their changing requirements. 
If the customer asked for a price to provide capability X, and after
accepting that bid change their requirements to X' + Y, and there's a
cost increase involved--well, who else is supposed to pay for it?  And
if they initially order 1000 widgets in the first year's production run,
then stretch that out to 250 widgets across four years, of course
there's going to be a per-widget cost increase.  Again, is the
manufacturer supposed to just eat that difference, because their
customer (and Congress) have a fixation on short-term costs?

> 
> 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!

If it's not until the end of the program that the government discovers
there are significant unfulfilled requirements, then the government's
contract manager(s) should be canned.  This is incompetence nearly on
the level of malfeasance.  Even if the contractor insists "trust us,
we'll meet the requirements and you don't need all that expensive
oversight", the contract manager would be a fool to just say, "Yup,
okay!"  Good, proven contractors may have earned the priviledge of
"light" oversight, but never none!

In almost 20 years of software development, I've never been involved
with a project that would blithely fail to meet the project's
requirements and be indifferent to such an occurrence.  From projects of
a few millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, when there were cost
and requirements problems, we made sure the customer knew about it and
jointly hammered out a new plan.  Sometimes requirements were dropped or
modified, sometimes the company ate the difference, and yes, sometimes
the government expended more funds.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com