"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 07:07:19 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:


But Bath was a civilian company, wasn't it?

Yes, and that's part of the point. It's a civilian operation using
civilians to build military equipment.

Most of the above responds to the statement "Once upon a time,
there
were Army Arsenals, and Navy Yards, where the work got done."

--
Ed Huntress

The "up or out" policy is a primary reason why the military can't
maintain the highly skilled technical workforce to operate an
armory:
http://www.g2mil.com/let.htm
"This produces a paranoid officer corps skilled at avoiding blame
and evading problems as they focus their attention on the limited
number chairs for when the music stops and selection board
convenes."

-jsw

A corollary problem was that the career demand to rotate through
command positions meant that officers temporarily assigned to
procurement (buying stuff) slots were novices in the extreme legal and
technical complexity of writing government contracts and evaluating
contractors' bids, and the probability that they could deliver.

I had to keep my RFQs and purchase orders below $5000 to avoid
humongous scrutiny and red tape.

Mitre assisted them on the more technically complex projects, as did
this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense...ion_University
"... for providing the Department of Defense Acquisition, Technology
and Logistics workforce with a professional career path..."

as opposed to having to leave acquisition and command troops to
qualify for promotion.