Take a look at the Puzzle Palace aka the Pentagon. There are people there who
have no concept of reality.

Next, take a look at the aquistion process. There are no procedures for asking
contractors to keep things simple.

When we first aquired the UH-60A the Sikorski reps and brochures said that the
helicopter had been designed with "maintenance in mind." Despite the pretty
pictures in the brochures and the friendly reps no one ever said that meant
they intended to make life easy for us. My favourite example was the pitch bias
actuator. The PBA was a little box about 8 inches long, 2 inches thick and 4
inches wide. The PBA was mounted in the middle of the mixing unit and was a
bear to replace. It was perpetually failing and was ultimately eliminated with
no noticable change in handling.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired