On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:02:24 -0500, Gig 601XL Builder
wrote:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:


Well, I would assume the military looked at the mission fist, a fact
that's often lost in the shouting and roaring that goes on in a case
like this. Presumably the 'Bus had some advantages in an actual
operational situation. No point buying a machine that's going to let you
down. I don't know that htis had anything to do with anything for sure,
but they don't buy toys like this without looking into these sorts of
things.

Here's where you might be wrong Bertie. The US Military has a long
history of buying hardware for political not strategic or tactical reasons.

It's called "maintaining the industrial base." My guess is if Boeing and MacDac
were still separate companies and had submitted separate entries, EADs probably
wouldn't have stood a chance. But the military prefers to keep a bit of
competition going, for obvious reasons.

It's not unique to government contracts. I knew a company planning on deploying
a new civilian space system that used large subcontracts to entice concessions
from various world governments. The problem was, the cost of the hardware
obtained this way was about double that of the low bidder. Maybe worth it to
the company, but its own engineers kept getting hammered by management because
they couldn't get the per-vehicle cost of the satellites down to the level
management needed to make the system viable....

Ron Wanttaja