Posted on 10/01/2010 12:07:36 AM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Edited on 10/01/2010 4:04:48 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Supreme Court is getting involved in the longstanding dispute between the Pentagon and two contractors contesting the government's demand for $3 billion over the Navy's ill-fated A-12 Avenger attack plane.
The justices on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from the Boeing Co. and General Dynamics Corp., the main contractors on a $4.8 billion project that the Pentagon, then headed by Richard Cheney, canceled in 1991.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
ping
It will interesting how this Supreme Court deals with this one.
“…the military was planning to buy 850 A-12s…”
With the amount of money this government wastes, how about 850 F-22s and we will call it even; Frack the F-35 and its pussy bitchaucrat following. If you want to sell the F-35 as a foreign interim all-about fighter is fine; yet make more advanced F-22s! While I know each version of a plane leads to the next; more advanced F-22s would be hard to match under any condition for the next 20 years; and it’s here today. Oh, unless the government is looking for its continued failure by not getting them.
At the heart of the A-12 legal action are the questions of (a) who caused the delays and cost overruns, and (b) who was minding the store when all of this happened. The issue before SCOTUS may or may not be pertinent to those discussions. Obfuscation, and all that. That's all this was about, not which fighter aircraft we should be buying in 2010.
“…Not every story about military airplanes needs a diatribe…”
True, my point was regarding the issue of cost comparison on what is a benefit vs. tangible waste. At one end of the spectrum we are told this costs too much or that is not needed or something else is a better bang for the buck. Because of political corruption the supposed A-12 super plane was going to be an order of 850 units, yet several proven alternatives have been better choices from the beginning. How is it the government now is in dispute over something they authorized as costing too much. Then turn around and withhold vital information regarding the details on the what, where, when and why’s to prove costs claiming state secrets. If the state controls or owns the supposed secrets then they paid for what they received. If they are disputing the additional payments or now saying they are being charged too much for what they contracted and received…this is wrong. Cost increases are just part of doing this type of technology. If these Bitchaucrats want to make that argument then Congress and these decision-makers have been over paid for the work they do and in fact have not produced at the contracted level for what they have extracted from the citizenry and should return 40% of all their pay and benefits for the last 16 years. Just think about all the trillions spent in the last two years; several billion means nothing in perspective when so much has been wasted by this Government for their political convenience.
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Thank you for replying. We’re on the same page in this regard.
You don’t ACTUALLY know anything about the A-12 disaster, do you?
Do you know?
Some…and enough.
One of Boeing/GD’s arguments is that when they got the contract for the A-12, they expected stealth technology from the DOD, and that Lockheed and Northrop took the position that, even though DOD was the customer that ordered and paid for the F-117 and B-2 programs, THEY owned the technology and wouldn’t allow DOD to give the knowledge to competing companies. So McD/GD had to essentially start from scratch, neither having any stealth experience, which made costs shoot up and added huge delays.
I’m quite surprised DOD didn’t tell Lockheed and Northrop to go pound sand. They did the work, but in my view, if the DOD starts the program, and pays for it, then DOD owns everything about it.
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