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Title: The $5 Billion Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy's A-12 Stealth Bomber Program by James Perry Stevenson ISBN: 1-55750-777-5 Publisher: Naval Institute Press Pub. Date: September, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: How not to buy a weapon system
Comment: Mr. Stevenson does it again in his second book on the stpuid spending decisions that come from the Pentagon. In this book he covers the fraud, waste, mis-management, and general abuse of the laws and rules of both the Navy and the Nation in trying to buy a plane that even the Navy didn't want right away. This book talks about it all from the hatred of the various under secretary's of the project and how they tried to kill it. How the Navy went about skipping major milestones and reporting laws in the name of "National Security", how the USAF didn't want to share thier lessons learned in builiding the F-117A and B-2A under the same "National Security" banner (let alone they wanted to control all stealth projects) and finally after spending all of 5 billion US dollars and 10 yrs of development all that the American taxpayer had to gain from it was a non-working wooden mock up, thousands of thousands of sheets of memos and designs, and a bunch of bolts that did absoultely nothing. He uses this aqusition project as another attempt to show the world what is wrong with how the US buys its weapons systems. In this book you can pick up some more ideas as to how he thinks one should go about buying everything from thread to carriers and how the contracts should be written. When you read through the lines. There are numerous footnotes and a well stock biblograhpy so the reader can track down the source of a subject if then need to. This is a wonderful compainion to his previous book on the F-18 Horent.
Rating: 3
Summary: Decent Legal Overview of A-12 Debacle
Comment: This book is a good managerial/legal overview but lacks technical depth and any analysis of the human cost incurred by the A-12 cancellation debacle. It exhaustively details program management missteps and lays out the legal argument which favors the contractor assertion that the program (excuse me, contract) was terminated for convenience. However, the reader is left with the misleading impression that most engineering problems (and there were many) were resolved by the time of cancellation. However, in January 1991, there were many challenges ahead that drawing release tracking charts did not reflect. In the final analysis, Dick Cheney did the right thing the wrong way and thousands of workers were fired virtually overnight by companies that had mortgaged their futures trying to get a piece of the stealth pie; Mr. Stevenson got it mostly right.
Rating: 5
Summary: A "must read" book !
Comment: I was a test engineer for a sub-contractor on this "black hole" program . During my two year stay on the program , I certainly saw no "waste and fraud" nor did a good friend of mine at GD who was very closely associated with the program. For those two years we put in very long hours 6 to 7 days a week and had all of our "state of the art" test equipment up and running and certified ahead of schedule . The book tells it as it was , a program that was mis-managed by the Navy from the day the contract was signed . The airframe producers , General Dynamics and Mcdonnell Douglas , found their hands tied as they didn't get the support they were expecting from Northrop's "learning curve" on the B2 program . This coupled with the never ending design changes requested by the Navy brought on the inevitable cost over runs . This is a superbly written book by the author of "The Pentagon Paradox" , another "must read" book !
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Title: Foundations in Strategic Management by Jeffrey S. Harrison, Caron H. St. John, Caron H. St John ISBN: 0324070993 Publisher: South-Western College Pub Pub. Date: 07 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $42.95 |
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Title: The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet by James P. Stevenson ISBN: 1557507759 Publisher: United States Naval Inst. Pub. Date: October, 1993 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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Title: Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used (Second Edition) by Peter Block ISBN: 0787948039 Publisher: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer Pub. Date: 15 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $47.00 |
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Title: Managing Business Process Flows by Raví Anupindi, Sunil Chopra, Sudhakar D. Deshmukh, Jan A. Van Mieghem, Eitan Zemel, Jan Van Mieghem ISBN: 0139077758 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 12 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $69.00 |
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Title: Corporate Information Strategy and Management: Text and Cases by Lynda M Applegate, Robert D. Austin, F. Warren McFarlan, Lynda Applegate, Robert Austin ISBN: 0072456728 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Pub. Date: 11 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $136.00 |
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