UK Privatizes Military Flight Training!

[Lesforan]

Well, there was nothing wrong with hiring Von Steuben. The Constitution hadn't been written at the time.

[Charlestonguy]

All ships built for the US Navy are contracted out to private firms. Here is one example.
"On 27 March 1794, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794, which provided for building the US Navy its first new ships: the frigates Chesapeake, Congress, Constellation, Constitution, President, and United States. Constellation was the first to be commissioned.
Constellation was built at Harris Creek Shipyard in Baltimore's Fells Point according to a design by Joshua Humphreys and launched on 7 September 1797, just as the United States entered the Quasi-War with France."

Even today GD Electric Boat Division continues to build submarines. And getting back on topic Lockheed, one of the few contractors left building jets, now working on the F-22, F-35 and some of the parts for other types. These are but a few of the major players that have supported the US Government from the days before the Revolution till now. Many smaller firms and even individuals have provided contracting services for over 200 years.

[kennylibben]

Lockheed was aiding the US government before the revolution?


Name on real company that's been helping the government since the Revolution - and the name of a shipyard doesn't count.

PS - I'm not arguing with you about subcontracting, just arguing about the companies!

[Charlestonguy]

Humm
well I was talking about today in the second paragraph, I guess you missed the break.

Now to your question.
And the finial answer is .....drum roll.......SPRINGFIELD ARMORY 1777-1968

"Springfield" was established to manufacture cartridges and gun carriages for the American Revolution."
"With the destruction of Harper's Ferry during the Civil War, the Springfield Armory became the only federal manufacturing point for small arms until the 20th century."
"For almost two centuries the hilltop overlooking the Connecticut River had been an important place for the development and manufacture of arms for the American soldier. The facility evolved from a place where skilled craftsmen built, piece by piece, one musket at a time, into a center pioneering in mass-production techniques, and finally into an institute famous for its research and development."

[Jack Ray]

There is no question that the US Military has relied on the private sector for its materiel needs since the beginning. From there to contracting flight training is a very long stretch. To me this business is analagous to contracting out marching training to the Nike shoe company.

Jack

[Werner]

Maybe the reverse analog of nationalizing the health care industry?

[Charlestonguy]

There is no question that the US Military has relied on the private sector for its materiel needs since the beginning. From there to contracting flight training is a very long stretch. To me this business is analagous to contracting out marching training to the Nike shoe company.

Jack

Jack
Who writes the Technical Orders for new equipment? Answer�the contractors. Who must be consulted before a change is made to a Technical Order? Yep you guessed it the contractor. The people who design and build systems have the expertise to develop new hardware or in some cases software when the need arises.
What happens when you pay a contractor for services, the money is taxed as income, and returned to the local economy as GNP revenue. In other words the money is recycled to the local community helping those businesses in an indirect way.
I know there are times when contractors have abused the system. I know that funds have been spent in unethical and sometimes unlawful ways. And for that reason, for one contractor having all the major contracts is not conducive to good business practices. Just like awarding non-bidding contracts to favored companies if not unlawful at least is unethical. Having a single source is just like having one branch of Government, no checks, no balances and no restraints. BAD for everyone.

[chuck]

To confound those who are too idiotic to qualify their statements before proclaiming the superiority of private industry, in the naval field, whenever there is demand for large war-time expansion, it is usually the private yards and contractors that were the most corrupt and inefficient, and it is usually the naval yards that were the best organized, efficient and clean. One see this again and again from Napoleonic war, to the Civil war, to now.

The general lesson seems to be private industry does seem to have some native superiority in motivation. But the motivation can only be successfully tapped to serve the public good when the overall system is stable, and there have been a long time for well developed public oversight to evolve so the private industry can be astutely and comprehensively regulated. When all means of cheating and corruption are choked off, I have no doubt private enterprise possesses a competitive advantage in the avenues that remain.

But when situation is in flux, and no time has been available to develop well thought out system of regulating private enterprise and choking off avenues of corruption, the private enterprise, uncoerced, or insufficiently coerced by the state, is usually animated more by quick profit through cheating the public, rather than to serve the public. Furthermore, such corruption, if allowed to fester, does not eventually self-regulated, and required external governmental and regulational interference to stabilize.

While it is true that over-regulation makes the industry more unresponsive, it is also true that de-regulation is often only accomplished through the generosities of unsavory allies. Many, if not most, of those in the government and policy circles arguing for deregulation are really motivated primarily by the desired to receive kickbacks from private industry dying to exploit avenues of corruption that would be unchoked by deregulation rather than by any well-informed and enlightened desire to provide avenues for increased competition and responsiveness. Industry will not self-regulate with the goal to serve the public good. What is more is private industry, at least American form of publicly traded, share holder driven private industry, will not even self-regulate with the goal of serving the long-term good of the industry itself, and would be content to corrupt itself to the maximum degree possible at the first opportunity, and thereby prompting the maximum response, instead of corrupting itself a little less, so as to be able to remain corrupt longer before there is a response. Witness how the energy industry manage to railroad itself into re-regulation through its to-hell-with-tomorrow style of corruption when first deregulated. To argue that they would is to not understand exact why private industry does in fact work when they are regulated from outside.

When one keeps in mind the behavior and the motivation of private industry, and look at the conditions and restraints under which their talents can be tapped for the public good, one shudders at the thought that the state would relinquish its role as the dominant purveyors of violence and coercion in a nation to any private contractor.

[Werner]

To confound those who are too idiotic to qualify their statements before proclaiming the superiority of private industry, in the naval field, whenever there is demand for large war-time expansion, it is usually the private yards and contractors that were the most corrupt and inefficient, and it is usually the naval yards that were the best organized, efficient and clean. One see this again and again from Napoleonic war, to the Civil war, to now.

Actually, I believe the Navy Yard construction contracts were let to provide an "honest comparison" to see how bad private industry was abusing the contractor relationship at the very beginning of our Navy.

One of the darkest chapters of the "New Navy" of the 1880s is the construction and modernization of the leftover ships of the old Navy. Like other areas today, several shipyards seem to have been arranged to take as much money as possible. Delivery of anything was incidental to the graft. Some of the designs were so poor as to be dangerous simply floating, or made of grossly defective or overweight materials.

While it might not be necessary to reopen Philadelphia and Brooklyn Navy Yards to provide a reference of efficiency, the average voter can see he is not getting fair value for his tax dollar. Perhaps it is time to permit overseas yards and suppliers to participate in the process.

One of the great improvements of the late 20th Century was the adoption of commercial off the shelf parts. While this was a great idea, the immense inertia of military programs means that when the ship is ready for these parts, in many cases they are no longer available at reasonable prices. One of the major components of NASA spacecraft, for example, is the Intel i80386-20 CPU, which was a satisfactory PC processor in the mid to late 1980s, but hopelessly obsolete in the day of the AMD-64 and it's Intel competitor. Situations like this abound through the military, and require an immense streamlining process of procurement and assembly to solve.