Bottom line, (IMHO) Why do we need to reinvent the wheel. Buy more of the same design and call the fleet upgraded. Why go thru the R&D cycle, and perhaps get an inferior product (whitness the Osprey fiasco).
I say:
It isn’t that simple. The drop in procurement devastated the defense manufacturing infrastructure. I worked in the defense electronics area for about 20 years, starting at the beginning of the Reagan defense boom. When first George HW Bush and then the Clintons slashed procurement, the industry was hard hit. Firms who built cheaper communications components were helped by the wireless boom. Those who built both commercial and military switched over to all commercial. Many firms sold or dropped their military lines (the cost of maintaining a MIL-Spec quality system not being worth the small returns from the lower volume) and of course many firms who specialized in state of the art MIL-quality components were gobbled up or went out of business altogether. Our company sold and moved the designs and product line to another state. Unfortunately, since the new owners didn’t retain the existing staff, they found that they were often unable to meet the same specifications. Our highly skilled assembly staff (soldering components 20/1000ths of an inch square under a microscope) and technicians and engineers almost all found jobs in other industries. This didn’t happen in the electronics area alone, its just the area I’m familiar with.
The Air force bought large quantities of spares of the key components we supplied for the countermeasure systems of the F-15E and the B-1B, among others, but I’m sure the shelf life on these are running out, and it would be difficult even today find a supplier to meet the specs we met.
Unless large runs are involved, you also end up with a lot of $900 hammer stories. If you ever heard the details of that story, as I recall, the custom spark-resistant hammer had been bought at a competitive price when originally procured in some huge quantity. When the DOD ordered up a few more, they were faced with legitimate tooling costs that increased the cost to $900 per.
With a new design, you do have the R&D costs, but you can engineer it using what is available now, and don’t have to pay exorbitant prices to tool up for old designs.
Just my 2 cents
Well said. Agree 100 percent, coming from a DE background.
The “$900 hammer” scenario will look cheap soon (actually now) because of supplier contraction starting appx. 1990.