I guess the DoD weapons acquisition is not as open ended as we thought

I posted a thread two days ago about Gates talking that we really can't afford these very expensive weapons systems


Yesterday both Malbus and the Marine Corps weighed in with their take:

Mabus pushes hard for acquisition reform
By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 5, 2010 18:20:54 EDT

In a sometimes passionate and even strident address, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Wednesday kept up the clarion call for a rigorous scrub of all service acquisition programs. He added energy efficiency to the imperatives to eliminate cost growth and reduce the price of production in programs.

“We have to re-examine everything we do. Nothing can be taken for granted,” he told a luncheon audience at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium in Washington.

“We have to continually make sure we have the right platforms to do the missions we have been given,” Mabus said. “And we have to have the capability to explain, defend and tell the American people why we need what we are asking them to pay for.”

~snip~

“Some of the contracts I’ve looked at have just been downright unfair to the customer: us,” he said, his voice rising. “When things go wrong, it shouldn’t be just up to the government to make things right.”

Without giving any specifics, Mabus cited a “really egregious” example in which a Navy supplier agreed to work around a contractual requirement that additional item orders were to be done only by traditional mail. Both the Navy and the contractor agreed, Mabus said, to handle additional orders by e-mail as a more efficient communications method.



I guess the Marine Corps didn't get the memo. From yesterday:


Marines chart a course for future landings
By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 5, 2010 9:52:10 EDT

The commandant has made it clear that Marines need to reclaim their role as “soldiers of the sea,” but he and other Marine officials are worried about more than rusty skills after nearly a decade spent fighting two land wars.

Future naval deployments will require a degree of creativity, they say, as new big-deck amphibious ships come on line without space for hovercrafts needed to bring Marines and their gear ashore, or for stowing the Corps’ bigger, beefier vehicles. Another big concern: There are fewer amphibs to go around.

This pending dilemma could force the Corps to change the way it configures its expeditionary units, sending Marines out on four amphibs instead of the traditional three, or force the Navy to alter the design of its LHA 8, a big-deck amphib that has yet to move beyond the conceptual phase. But Marine officials acknowledge there really are no clear answers just yet.

“Amphibs are a valuable commodity. They are a utility ship in high demand, and that demand outstrips capability,” said Col. Scott Walker, the Corps’ expeditionary policy branch head in the Plans, Policies and Operations division at the Pentagon. “It’s going to be a problem. We’re going to have to know what our priorities are and where we can accept risk. We’re going through those analyses right now to determine how we’re going to go out, what we’ll look like and what the will look like in the future.”

The next-generation of big deck amphibs, the America-class LHA 6 and the unnamed LHA 7, were designed without well decks to create what’s been dubbed a “Marine Corps aircraft carrier” built around the F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, a jump jet like the Corps’ AV-8B Harrier, and big-rotary wing aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey and the heavy-lift CH-53K Super Stallion.



unhappycamper comment to the Marine Corps: Gentlemen, you make want to rethink the $243 million dollar F-35s and the %100 million dollars Ospreys.

Good on Gates for being a turd in the Navy League punchbowl. That took guts. He's saying something that needs to be said.

The problem is, some people get hardons when they see big expensive ships, some replete with shrines where sailors can go to worship ex-presidents.