When I was selling computer software, the sale was never final until the customer had performed his own acceptance testing. That's normal. You try to do acceptance testing on any major purchase you make. You don't rely on the seller to do the testing; his interest is in closing the sale. Yet, here's a comment from the Army Chief of Staff, General Raymond Odierno, "Do we need to take a review of our testing requirements? Sometimes we have tests that are done by the private industry and yet we redo the tests because we have to meet certain regulations and requirements. And I think those are areas that we could look at that could reduce those costs significantly." He is willing to accept the tests of the contractor.
In a comprehensive, somewhat technical article, Dina Rasor explains why this is a stupid comment. We're going to see lots more, as the Pentagon fights the upcoming budget cuts.
Obviously, I know nothing about weapons systems. However, I was really struck reading that one major test for the M-1 tank was to travel 97 miles without a serious failure of the engine, power train or transmission. That is not a typo. Can you believe - go less than 100 miles before a major failure and that considered success? Would you also believe that the tank crapped out after 34 miles? Didn't the tanks of WWII travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles to get the job done?
No comments:
Post a Comment