Word: pentagon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Overruns and Cutbacks. The C-5A, at 728,000 Ibs. the world's largest aircraft, has been under intense scrutiny since a Pentagon cost analyst in January leaked reports of ballooning expenses. Rather grudgingly, the Air Force and other sources revealed that the procurement bill had climbed from an anticipated $3.5 billion for 115 of the planes to $4.4 billion for 120 of them. Congressional critics charge that the "overrun" resulted mostly from Lockheed's attempt to win the contract by making an unrealistically...
...Even if the full 120-plane run is completed, Lockheed stands to lose $285 million, according to Air Force estimates made public last week. Those estimates purposely tend to downplay the suspicions raised by C-5A foes, who had suggested that the Pentagon and Lockheed had been conspiring to ensure that the company came out of the contract with an ample profit. In any case, Lockheed disagrees with the Air Force loss figures; company spokesmen insist that on a full order, Lockheed can "at least break even...
...cancellation, however, was the Army's disbelief that a "satisfactory aircraft would be delivered." Rotor stability and control problems had shown up in tests of ten prototypes, one of which crashed. Some critics believe that the Cheyenne was a classic example of "brochuremanship"-the practice of selling the Pentagon on a new weapons system even before the contractor is reasonably certain that it can perform to specifications. Lockheed's Chairman Daniel Haughton protested last week that the Cheyenne's problems were "normal and to be expected in achieving a major technological step forward." He promised to fight...
...reason for the decline has been the Pentagon's increased emphasis on competition among defense suppliers. That-and the current controversy -stems from a buying system, introduced when Robert McNamara was Defense Secretary, called "total package procurement." Under "TPP," contractors must estimate total costs of a complex project years in advance, and they are supposed to keep quite close to that fixed-price target. TPP was designed to end the egregious overruns that had been fairly common under the older system of contracting for each step as it came along. This had encouraged contractors to make unrealistically low bids...
...equal numbers. A rule that prohibits the resort to force and violence on the university campus cannot possibly satisfy the moral revolutionaries. They would point out at once that other members of the university remain perfectly free to participate in legally accepted violence by giving advice to the Pentagon. Any rule that entailed automatic dismissal or severance for disruptive protest is bound to have unequal political consequences. For the moral revolutionaries and those who sympathize with them this inequity is likely to seem intolerable...