According to Aviation Week, the Pentagon is planning to boost the number of contract overseers in the Defense Contract Management Agency to by 8%, from 9000 to 9720. Wow.
The entire defense budget is around $500 billion. At least half of that ought to be things that are not contract, like pay for the troops. So we have 9720 bean counters slowing work on maybe $250 billion worth of contracts. Each bean counter only has $25 million worth of contracts to "oversee" (hinder is a better word). With fighter planes going for $100 million each, that yields four bean counters per aircraft produced.
Used to work in the aerospace/defense business. The huge building had two floors. On the ground floor was the productive stuff, engineering, manufacturing shops, drafting, the stockroom and so on. Upstairs, using just as much floor space, and more people, were the bean counters who complied with the oceans of gov'ment paperwork. For every productive person on the program, Raytheon had one non productive bean counter.
We would get a lot more defense for the buck if we dropped the paperwork and got on with the job.
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