Getting away from Benalla..............
Some people here are close to the issues, some are way off the mark.
To apend blame here is pointless, most have moved on............
To investigate the policies and protocols that allowed the poor decisions is what is needed to assist in those poor decisions never happening again, or in the real world being minimised to an acceptable level. From where I sit that learning is in place now to a certain extent, which is good news.
There are a squillion reasons why this happened. There was a whole pile of holes in the cheese lining up, from ADF, DMO, Kaman, CSC etc that would have made Nias look small.............(no disrespect to what happened there).
The comments saying that the aircraft are "airworthy" and "ready to go and have been for years" are way off the mark, as is the comment on converting output from the ADC into digital. That is spin from Kaman, it always need at least 3 ADC's for a start. That issue, isn't even a pimple on other issues that were, (as a result of an evolving airworthiness environment) going to have a far greater affect on the operation of the aircraft.
Airworthiness, operational capability and risk management have never before been used to the extent that they were in this decision to cancel the program. Not for $150 Mil or even triple that, were we ever going to get a capability close to what we wanted, with any acceptable level of risk..............period.
Thank god it is gone. Money in this cancellation should never have been a player. But as a taxpayer I am angry at the waste as well, move on and learn and vow never to let it happen again.
Better to feel bad over lost dollars than more lost personnel............
