Robert Gates gives a farewell address

Gates, the out going defense secretary made a few remarks, reported upon
here
He bemoaned the Pentagon procurement system but without offering either an explanation of what is wrong with it, let alone how to fix it. This is unfortunate, so I will attempt to lay out the real procurement problem, gold plating.
Gold plating is the tendency to specify the platforms be equipped every new gadget imaginable, kinda like ordering a new car fully loaded. Take an example from ancient history, the C-5 transport plane. This design goes back to the 1960's. At base, the C-5 was to be the biggest transport that could fly using then new and much more powerful jet engines. It had double the engine power of the contemporary C-141 which yielded a whale of a plane. Flying cargo, including big cargo, to and from real airports (ones with concrete runways) it would have been a very useful machine to have.
It was the first transport aircraft big enough to actually get off the ground carrying a real Army tank, not a light weight "airborne" tank, but a main battle tank, the M1 Abrams. The Army was overjoyed, and began to have visions of future air assaults. The paratroops jump in, capture some bean patch behind enemy lines, then the C-5's swoop in and unload the tanks. Presto, you have a real armored division operating at some strategic spot with complete tactical surprise. Trouble is, landing a whale of an airplane, with a 50 ton tank inside it, on dirt runway doesn't really work. The wheels sink in and the whale is stuck, and blocking the runway. Nothing, not even a tank, is going to tow a stuck C-5 anywhere. It might tear the nose gear off, but it won't move the C-5. Or die hard enemy defenders drop a mortar round on the C-5 as it's unloading and again you have the runway blocked with a blazing and unmovable whale.
To support the "land on dirt runway" requirement, the C-5 was equipped with a fantastic landing gear of 28 wheels. Truly ingenious design solved the problem of retracting this forest of wheels. To go with the 28 wheels, it needed 28 disc brakes, 28 anti skid sensors and an anti skid control box smart enough to figure out which wheel[s] needed less brake pressure and which needed more. I watched a C-5 land at Altus AFB back in the '70's. Touchdown was smooth, followed by flying rubber as some tires blew. At debriefing the aircrew said "Fairly normal landing, we only blew three tires". Antiskid had managed to lock up some of the wheels, and sliding the locked tires along the concrete runway wore right thru the tread.
Then came the requirement for "truck bed loading height", which means having the cargo deck at the height of an ordinary Army truck so cargo pallets could slide off the C-5 onto a truck, no forklift required. Sounds benign. Trouble is, after you get a huge plane that low to the ground, you cannot rotate for takeoff because the tail scrapes on the runway. To solve this problem, the fantastic landing gear was redesigned to "kneel", lowering the entire C-5 to the ground, and then later, jacking the whole plane up high enough to take off.
Then they added a "Maintenance Data Computer" which didn't do much, an unnecessary nose loading door to go with the tail loading door, and a bunch of other stuff that I no longer remember at this remove in time.
Now the C-5 had all the stuff everyone wanted in it. But adding stuff made the plane heavy, heavier than the specification allowed. Lockheed was driven to incredible lengths to trim the weight down to meet spec. This included making the brake rotors (all 28 of them) out of beryllium. Beryllium costs more than gold. When everything else failed, Lockheed made the aluminum skin thinner. This would have fateful consequences later in the C-5's life.
The contract was "firm fixed fee" for a an initial production run (Run A) of 52 C-5's. Lockheed lost barrels of money on each plane it built. When it came time for a contract for the next 52 airplanes (Run B) Lockheed held out for a price that let them earn a little money on each plane. That price was stiff. So stiff that one Air Force general said "I'll haul the troops in gooney birds before I pay that kind of money". His view prevailed, there was no Run B. The 52 C-5's of Run A were all there ever were. They are still flying.
Lessons that should have been learned. Don't specify things that aren't absolutely necessary to accomplish the primary mission. The C-5 was good at moving vast amounts of stuff to and from real airports. Spec'ing in dirt field operation and truck bed loading turned a good airplane into a hangar queen, and sent the cost thru the roof.
These lessons probably have not been learned to this day.

Why it's nice to get home from a trip

Reason 1. A good night's sleep, with cool breeze flowing thru the open window and no roar of city buses or warbling beeping car alarms. Sleeping in DC or Brooklyn is hot and airless, you are wet with sweat in the morning. Before air conditioning, Washington DC was considered a hardship post by diplomats. I agree with that.

Reason 2. The grass was on the warpath. I cut it just before I left, but given a week unmowed it was 6 inches tall. Give it another couple of days and it would have been too tall for the mower. May is grass growing month.

Reason 3. Aid and succor to Stupid Beast. I left the cat with a niece to Cat's dismay. Niece had a 2 year old, a newborn, two strange humans and a beagle. Cat was demoted from being The Cat to just another pet. Plus she is a very conservative cat, disliking pick up's, laps, riding in cars, and new people. Faced with a household of picker uppers, petters, and strangers was a trial. She lost weight, going from a tubby 20 pounds down to a shapely 16 pounds.
Cat was overjoyed to get back to the regular house, the familiar rugs and furniture. She started purring immediately and remained grateful for all of two hours after coming home.

The Night of the Living Car Alarms

Spent the night in Brooklyn, on the way home to God's Country. It was warm, (actually it was damn hot) we had the windows open, hoping for a breath of air. All night long it went, beep beep beep, dong, dong, dong, one damn car alarm after another. No sooner than one would shut up, the next would go off. Loud and louder. Pain in the tail.

Mufflers for city buses

Been staying at daughter's place in DC, right off 14th St. It's noisy from the traffic. The cars are quiet, with only a slight hiss from the tires. The city buses are humungously loud, all from engine exhaust noise that a decent muffler would silence. Your car needs a decent muffler to get an inspection sticker. Cities would be pleasanter places if the inspectors got as tough on the buses as they are on private motor vehicles.

Rand Paul Takes 2nd place in NH.

Read the headline here. This is true but somewhat misleading. Mitt Romney was first with 32% and Paul had only 9 percent. A more honest headline might have been "Romney increases lead in GOP primary."
Could it be the writer is pro Rand Paul?

More museum pieces

The Smithsonian has a huge hanger full of airplanes out at Dulles Airport. All the stuff that won't fit in down at the mall is packed in here. They have a space shuttle, an SR 71, the first Boeing 707, a P38 Lightening, a P40 Warhawk, an F105 Thunderchief, a couple of Migs, a SPAD, a super Constellation, a Boeing 307, and some incredible German planes from WWII. There are nearly 200 planes inside the place. If you are a plane buff you have to see this one.
They have a really strange German fighter with two engines, one in the nose and one in the tail. Each engine had 2000 hp, so the plane was pretty hot for a piston engined job. I'd read about that one, but never seen one, apparently the Smithsonian has the only one to survive WWII.
They also had a F35, the brand new joint strike fighter that is so new it isn't even in squadron service yet. Plane becomes a museum piece before it becomes operational.

Museum pieces

We (son and I) did the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The air conditioning is nice. They had a lot of neat old things like antique vacuum cleaners, early electric motors and generators, steam engines, cars. No planes, those are all over at Air and Space. The curators must be on a super greenie tear. No lights in a lot of cases making it impossible to see the stuff in the case and/or read the tags. Surely the US of A can afford the electricity to light museum cases.
The curators also have a bit of trouble writing tags. They have a groovy old telescope hanging from the ceiling. It's all polished hardwood and brass, about 15 feet long. The tag talks about Maria somebody-or-other famous woman astronomer who used this gadget at Vassar and is credited with discovering a comet. Didn't bother to say if the telescope was a reflector or a refractor, how big the mirror or lens was, how it was aimed and tracked, whether it could do photography. We learned a lot about lady astronomer Dr. Maria somebody-or-other of Vasser but little about the telescope hanging from the ceiling. Maybe they should have had her hanging from the ceiling, properly stuffed of course.
Then it can make you feel old. In the electric gadget display they had a pair of electric socks. I can remember when my father gave my mother just such a set of battery powered socks. In the GM sponsored automobile display they had some classics, including our old family car, an '88 Dodge Caravan. 22 year old son commented that it made him feel old to see the family car in a museum.