what does one have to do with the other?
Contracting Officers are largely inexperienced and incompetent. Program Managers are risk adverse to a point of stagnation. Captains and Majors don’t learn how to do anything any more because they now just assign tasks to their contractors.
However, we are going to solve all of these problems by turning all of the contractors into government civilian union members. Yesiree.
Part of the problem with the Air Force acquisitions program, from the perspective that I saw, was that officers were put in the Program Management slot for one year before being moved on to a different post.
What this means is that if you have a developmental system project that is scheduled to last more than one year, you will likely see at least three different government PM’s, each needing to add his little bit to the project to make sure he gets a good review. Each little bit may push an entire redesign in your project. Eventually that eats a hole in the budget, and the Air Force is then required to either kill the project, or find money somewhere to cover the shortfall.
It is much better to work with civilian Program Managers like the Army and Navy uses.