Kevin Parkin has an interesting post on post-graduate education for blue brass. This is a problem not just for procurement and program management in general, but for strategic military vision for space.

Rand

I watched (I was awake in a stupid hotel room) some of the testimony from the head of NOAA, Ron Sega, and Northrup-G. Bart Gordon drilled down to the heart of the matter when he related that in documents delivered (late I might add) to him, it was related that Northrup had sent a letter to NOAA on March 1, 2005 stating that if certain programmatic decisions were not made by May 25, and others by August 1, that the programs "options" would be considerably narrowed and that the cost of the program would be signficantly increased. Gordon then asked why NOAA, DoD, and NASA (the triumverate management team as it was called) had not even met to discuss the issues related in the letter until August 14, 2005! The lame response was that they were investigating the issues and did not have the proper understanding until that time.

In the testimony the testifiers could not even come to an agreement on how bad the overrun was going to be. I was actually shocked when the Northrup division president said that the critical sensor from Raytheon was only at the breadboard level, several years after the contract was awarded. Even more interesting was an article on the subject that I read somewhere that stated that Raytheon had actually FIRED the entire team working on the instrument and had went out and hired a new team to build the instrument. It is really weird that this instrument, which is nothing more than a spectral radiometer derived from the AVHRR instrument flown on airplanes by NASA (Hello Mike Eastwood) would be so darn hard to build.

It is clear that there are huge problems in all USAF procurement and this is only the tip of the iceberg that has gone public. There are related problems on TSAT, A-EHF, Space Based Radar, SBIRS, and virtually every single space procurement effort by the USG.

All of these problems come down to a simple root cause, the implementation by both the government and the contractor world of the 10,000 monkees at a typwriter method of engineering. This is NOT to dis the engineers working on these programs but the philosophy is that if you have a validated engineering PROCESS then the individuals that make up the process are pretty much simply cogs in a great wheel that grind out a quality product. Nothing is futher from the truth!!

We simply must return to the concept of meritocracy in aerospace engineering or we will continue to be doomed to this same lack of progress. This bears on the Vision for Space Exploration in that this same management style is alive and well for the CEV, CLV, and the HLLV. How are we going to get back to the Moon, on time, and on buget, with this methodology? Not going to happen. This is Mike Griffin's greatest challange in implementing his plan, no matter what the other problems might be.

Dennis

Dennis, I agree, with some caveats. I am at the Naval Postgraduate school, this very quarter taking a required course called "Architecting Space Systems,' The professor leading it is a former Navy space guy who worked at NRL on the Interim Propulsion Model for ISS. The whole tenor of the course is that space engineering is like some kind of process design that starts with requirements, then works from there. The requirements process involves a massive meeting of all 'participants,' who then through a voting system and various blind consensus methods (somewhat like a papal election) 'derive' mission requirements. Yet, whenever we (the students) point out that historically, particularly recently, the process yields nothing but massive overruns and slippage in cost, schedule, performance, the professor's continual response is that it's because the process works--it's just not done correctly. Apparently, ever. This sticks in my craw because it's so similar to what you hear leftists say --'communism works, it just hasn't been done right, yet...'

It's completely obvious that most the time those making 'requirements' just don't get the idea of 'tradeoff,' as if because they are following a 'requirements process,' therefore the requirements they invent will by definition reasonable or acheivable within invented budget.

To me it all stems from the 2 lies that 1. cost can be an independant variable and 2. the future of technology and technology development can be usefulkly predicted.

By the way, I believe the instrument you're talking about at Raytheon is more similar to AVIRIS than AVHRR, which already flies on NOAA's current generation of polar orbiting satellites.

AVIRIS, which flies out of Moffet field, is notoriously finicky and has taken years of tweaking to get right, so it's no mean feat to move up to a satellite. But that's just the point--it was taken as a 'already working' sensor when it was actually a stretch capability for the community at large--this is a consistent problem in space acquisition.

cuddihy

I was going from my memory of the testimony and writing on the subject. From the context, it is a spectral radiometer with a lot of narrowband filters across the Visible and IR spectrum. A great instrument but with that kind of bandpass I am not surprised that they are having problems with it.

As for your postgrad experience, geez louise.

I was on a plane to LA today (Hey Rand) and had a retired chef as a rowmate. After talking to him we both came up with a great analogy. Take two chef's, one a great world renowned chef that has constantly proven his ability to create great dishes. He writes a cookbook based upon his recipies. Joe or Jane doe picks up the cookbook, uses the recipies exactly how they are written down in the book. Joe or Jane then goes up against the great chef on a program like the iron chef. Who will win?

Another analogy. Bear Bryant (great football coach from Alabama) dies and leaves his playbook on a desk where it accidentally gets tossed in the trash. Years later the playbook is found by another coach from a small college. What happens when this coach uses this playbook?

You simply cannot put judgement into a book and there is no substitute for experience, knowlege, and a feel for what works along with a healthy dose of genious and teamwork. Bolocknor would have you believe that the process will produce a good product simply because the process, cookbook, playbook, came down to us from the champions.

Dennis

Dennis,
Great analogies! You're right, I can't think of another field where successful execution of difficult tasks is assumed to be doable by anyone who 'understands the process.'