THe Guardian speaks the truth (and obvious)

May 13, 2008 by Dagpotter
Filed under: Acquisitions, Commentary, Congress, Contract Awards, Federal Budget Process, Protest 

A nice article in the UK’s The Guardian paper, here, discusses how the trend in the US defense industry is mergers & acquisitions and protests. This as the article points out is a product of fewer, bigger contracts. Much of the increased defense budgets of the last 8 years have gone to personnel, operations and maintenance, and the reset of existing equipment. Very few large procurements have been ordered, in fact, many of the large programs are winding down such as the C-17 and F-22. The Navy also is buying less ships as they get more and more expensive and the DDG-51 class transitions to the LCS and a new destroyer. In the Clinton years you saw the same process but that was due to the decrease in budgets from the Reagan years leading to less work requiring less companies. Protests were common as there was only so much work to go around. Now it is the same in that once a contract is awarded there is little hope for another one for several years. Whether these trends accelerate with a new administration or not we will have to wait and see until Feb, 2009. It may be like in 1992 there will be two budgets submitted to Congress. One on time by the outgoing President and then an update in the summer.

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