Royal Navy awards test contract

September 3, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Contract Awards, England, QinetiQ, S&T, SETA, development program 

The British Ministry of Defence and Royal Navy awarded QinetiQ a contract to provide test and ship design support. QinetiQ used to be the part of the British military providing test services they are contracting to get access to facilities they built and used for several decades. This fifteen year, $300 M contract will allow ship and submarine models to be tested in QinetiQ’s tanks.

See Telegraph.uk.com for more on this contract.

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Marines buy new transports

July 19, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Contract Awards, Hawker Beechcraft, Military Aviation, U.S. Marine Corps, commercial aviation, logistics, production program 

The USMC awarded a contract to Hawker Beechcraft for 6 new transport aircraft. See a story here. These will replace older UC-12 aircraft also made by Hawker Beechcraft that have been in service for a few decades. These will most likely be used for personnel transport in more benign environments. The Army has been working to buy larger tactical transports through the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program but are struggling with the USAF on requirements and quantities.

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Congress states the obvious

April 29, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Congress, Department of Defense, Federal Budget Process, development program, production program 

In response to this GAO report a while back Congress had some hearings to bash DoD acquisition programs. The article is here. The title is a little unfair in that “wastes” is a strong word. Few programs are terminated or canceled outright and those that do usually have some technology spill over. Developing, testing and producing major weapon and IT systems is hard. The system often does underestimate time and costs at the beginning, but it takes only one failed test to blow a schedule and millions of dollars. This is especially true of missile systems where your test assets are expensive enough and get expended in the test. Software development is often much more complicated and costly then originally thought, even though DoD has several decades of experience in this kind of matters. That doesn’t mean there is not room for improvement, but the only way to severely reduce time and money is to allow only incremental steps in capability. It is the never ending paradigm of weapon acquisition.

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