Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Lockheed joins Boeing... in Dropping Out!

Lockheed joins Boeing in dropping out of anti-ship missile contest a step that could put it ahead or years behind in the anti-ship missile race, especially when it comes to deciding on a supersonic capability...

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Phil

Sounds like the Navy wants a missile that you just shoot and it works not a gold brick networked boondoggle that will end up a decade behind schedule and enter service about the time their intended launch platform exits service. It would appear the Norwegians have a missile designed already that will just need a few tweaks to make it work for us. Navy is learning from the F35 , Littoral combat ship ,and the new carrier series , and has decided that since they will never work as promised , the pilots have to turn off the network feed to their super duper helmets to see to fight , ships don't work ,networks are hackable that they don't want all the info and gadgets after all as they just impede the ability to fight. As it stands now Lockheed has sold the Pentagon a pile of garbage and the Navy will not have a viable next generation aircraft and will have to start over from scratch. The Navy is in deep trouble right now with all their new systems not working due to concurrent design and build programs they used to develop all the stuff that was supposed to come on line in the last few years. The littoral combat ships are disasters that spend most of their time in maintenance cycles and half the design features don't work. The George Washington may never enter full service and end up as an extraordinarily expensive test bed to find fixes for the ship family. If they don't fix the elevator and catapult design yesterday the next carrier that is half built now will be useless too.

So basically as a taxpayer I'm still getting dry p hucked!!

Having dealt with government contract work I would say most likely that should read, "The Navy's specifications and constant scope changes have resulted in massive cost overruns and delays resulting in systems that will not meet the envisioned requirements but being built to the letter of the specs"

Most engineering firms are good at designing to a clients spec. The problem is when the client says we want this, only change this, well change this as well, no we really don't want that, why didn't you follow our spec (you directed us to deviate from the spec) why aren't you done yet, why did it cost so much..........

Not going to be able rape the government for cost over runs on this Presidents watch maybe influenced their decisions?

We're years behind other nations in the construction of so called over the horizon long range supersonic anti-ship missiles. If they don't get it together soon maybe Boeing and Lockheed dropping out and letting others take over is a good thing...

Phil

Guilty. But, of course, the contractor is never at fault.... All of their staff are the best in the business.

Yep, that certainly occurs, which is typically because A) there are a whole new group around that weren't there when the contract was being written B) those writing the contract don't know what they don't know till you get deck plate people there that are administering the contract and ask 'WTF are we doing this' and lastly, from the time the contract was written, to the time construction begins can be, and is often, YEARS later. Lots of sheit changes in those years.

If you could whip up a RFP, award and begin construction on a multi billion dollar contract in say 2 weeks, things would be a little different.

From someone who's 'been there, done that'!

I understand the reasons why, and no doubt the larger the project the further removed the different entities are from one another and the greater the delays in funding.

I was just trying to enlighten the ignorant (silly me) who haven't been on either side of the table as to why it seems contractors are "ripping off the government". If you want to know why projects go the way they go its because the government drives projects into the toilet and the contractors follow those directions to a T and charging for every mile of the journey (as they should).

I'm glad that my involvement with government contract work was minimal. Government oversight makes it seem like the government's primary intent is to set the contractor up for failure.

Some staff is good, some staff only get hired on huge projects when the pool of talented staff is taken. God help you if the engineering staff is from India and the managers from the middle east.

I was involved in a contract with what was essentially a government agency once. (They claim in big letters on the front page of their website that they were a private company, not a government agency, but the mere fact that they considered that necessary will show you how practically indistinguishable from a government agency they are.)

They hired my company because my company had a stellar reputation for low-cost, high-quality, blazing-fast work, and we have that reputation because of the processes, procedures, motivations, and disciplines we have learned to work under. They needed some stuff done by a completely immovable deadline, and they needed it to work, so they hired us.

Then they immediately began telling us how we would have to do our work, what tools we were allowed to use, and what conditions we would be required to live under: namely, the same methods and tools and conditions that existed in the agency itself that made it impossible for them to get done the job they were hiring us for.

First, we should have known better than to try working for a government agency, but we didn't. Second, when they tried to impose on us the same conditions that made their own people piss-poor at developing software, we should have given them a stark ultimatum, but we didn't. (Money was too good, I suspect, although I have no direct knowledge.) Instead, we clung to the project clear through to its utterly predictable crash-and-burn failure, and then took all the blame for it. (That's one of the main purposes of a consulting company: to take the blame.) So that was a bit of a smudge on our li'l ol' reputation, but at least we got the money, I suppose.

It seemed to me that that ought to have been an irrefutable lesson to my company about working for government agencies, but now I hear we're negotiating a project with a state Department of Taxation.

Sheesh.

I don't believe that is the case, not in the least, but an experience or two can lead a person to that belief. In the end, given a responsible KO, willing Program Managers and intelligent/realistic subject matter experts, there is nothing more they would prefer than for the contractor to succeed.