Re: Joint Strike Fighter

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <3BE43CDC.F6B1EE30@acm.org>, Jeffrey Carter says...
>While I usually hesitate to ascribe to malice what may be due to
>incompetence, this effect is so widespread that I have to wonder. I note
>that only established large defense contractors can successfully bid on
>large defense contracts, and those contractors have many decades of
>experience with the government's understanding of software quality and
>its reaction to cost and schedule overruns. The contractors exist to
>make money, and the contracts are usually arranged so that the longer
>the contract takes, the more money the contractor makes. It may even be

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. Making short-sighted budget decisions or whipping engineering are useful
ways to convice the contracting agency that positive steps are being taken, and
thus the end is in sight, if only a bit more money is provided.

This is sort of a long-winded way of saying that it is in fact stupidity at work
here. But its a sort of systemic stupidity that one could reasonably mistake
with malice.

What this has to do with Ada, I don't know. I suspect that's just a different
manifestation of stupidity (or more accurately, ignorance).

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