Watching Build It Bigger’s Battle Machines episode, I was reminded of a troubling thing: American “defense contractors” and their subcontractors who have little to no experience and bid on projects that come down to life or death for our soldiers in combat … and call themselves capitalists and patriots.
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I cannot comment on today’s “defense contractors”, but I was part of that world for a number of years. At that time the lack of experience with the hardware procured was with the government, not the providers. There were high level reviews by experienced people in the military, but day-to-day oversight was primarily by young, newly hired civil servants.
The situation was similar on Apollo, except that nobody had any experience and everybody knew it, resulting in increased vigilance by both the buyer and the provider.
If a procurement is properly run only qualified organizations will be supplying – AND buying.
Not saying the government knows what it’s doing either, and, yes, the government’s initial bs detector is asking the contractor and subcontractors whether they’ve done this kind of work before. But, just like anyone with a hammer and a truck became a Katrina rebuilding contractor at the end of 2005 because the government and citizens were strapped, I’ve seen inexperienced companies try to bid on projects knowing fully well they don’t have the required capabilities. Again, not just limited to DoD.