Craving grilled cheese. Just called room service, they hung up on me.
Aug-20-2014 07:08
citric_acid
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: May 2004
Location: Montana
quote:
Originally posted by Psyshell
I'm worried that the US arms manufacturing industry might become a bit too profitable!
It was really profitable about 10 years ago, but not anymore. After all the contracts were canceled early and 4 years later reopened for everyone to rebid on, profit decreased substantially. Businesses had been out of work for too long and were quick to take the first thing they could, to insure they got it they quoted well under what should have been. i know of many parts that have contracts that barely cover cost. It also decreased profit because the DoD did not buy remaining inventory when canceling contracts and if that company did not win the contract when bidding was reopened they have to physically destroy every item. Thats a lot of money lost.
I know with some contracts if you make 1 reject in manufacturing to cover the cost you must make 10 good parts... i would say thats far from profitable.
There was quite the battle between FN and Colt when FN won a contract colt had held for 15 years.
The DoD is getting smart also, they keep extending these low price contracts and demanding more inventory so they wont have to open it back up for bidding which would result in a higher price paid.
Last edited by citric_acid on Aug-20-2014 at 07:45
Aug-20-2014 07:40
Joss Weatherby
Banned
Registered: May 2008
Location: The Pacific Northwest, of course
Essentially the US arms industry is a poorly implemented government jobs program with no sustainable or most of the time even tangible return on the investment. The reason the Navy is getting new LCSs which are giant pieces of shit that no one really wants and doesn't really fit our current threat analysis (and certainly not our future one either) is because it creates jobs in the deep south. The same goes for the new version of the Abrams, the US Army already has a shit ton of M1A2s that were upgraded with TUSK and CROWS during Iraq but now congress has implemented plan to build a bunch of even more improved Abrams, which the Army doesn't even want or need.
There are some programs that are legitimate boons to both defense and jobs (like keeping the Air Force tanker replacement program, which is needed and serves a wide array of our allies, in the US and awarding it to Boeing not Airbus), but a lot of them are just a way to basically provide welfare through jobs with out looking like a lefty to your constituents (god forbid that money be spent employing people to engineer new bridges, build them, and fix the rest of our crumbling infrastructure).
