Word: contractor
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Nathan Higginbotham, manager of corporate planning for Government programs at McDonnell Douglas, prime contractor for the F18, agrees that part of the reason costs climb is "the inability of both the military and the manufacturers to fix a design and then stay with it." Richard Wollensack of Itek Corp., a high-tech optics company, argues that advanced capability is what gives the U.S. its military muscle. Says he: "If you know that the other guy's tank sights are good up to six miles, you certainly are going to try to design yours so that they're good...
This damn-the-cost loyalty to developing weapons is one of the main reasons that they are so hard to scuttle. In the age of technology, one path to acquiring shoulder stars is nurturing a system to fruition. Upward-bound officers often find themselves allied with contractors in an effort to convince the Pentagon and others that their project should be built. The temptation is to underestimate costs at the beginning. Admits Army Under Secretary James Ambrose: "It almost seems an institutional phenomenon that projects start with gross underestimates by both Government and the contractor...
American drilling activity has already leveled off in the Williston Basin of Montana and the Dakotas and the Austin Chalk of central south Texas. Chesley Pruett, a drilling contractor operating out of El Dorado, Ark., said recently, "Last year at this time I had my rigs booked up six months in advance. Now the work is coming in well by well...
Nolan Bushnell, 39 last week, is the inventor of Pong, a kind of electronic Ping Pong that was the first successful coin-operated video game. The son of a Clearfield, Utah, cement contractor, Bushnell had a passion for amateur radio as a boy (call letters: W7DUK). That led to his first business: repairing radios, television sets and washing machines. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah in 1968. While there, he toyed with computers. He came up with Pong in 1971 and started selling the coin-operated game...
...Douglas, Defense Department officials insisted last week that their choice of the Lockheed C-5N, which still must be approved by President Reagan, did not violate the competitive bidding process. Secretary of the Air Force Verne Orr advised McDonnell Douglas last August that, although it had been named prime contractor for the C-17, the military had made no actual commitment to build the airplane. McDonnell Douglas can look forward to a consolation prize. The Pentagon is expected to order 44 McDonnell Douglas KC-10A military tankers, which the company sells to the Government at $49 million apiece...