Originally Posted by
kbrockman
Defense departments in most parts of the world are run like old school European style state companies (postal services, public transport and archaic airlines) whereby nobody is ultimately responsible for the fiascos achieved and the state willingly ponies up the checks.
Now now, let's be careful with the generalisations here. It's much the same in the private sector. Sure, if a project fails you'll see people being "held responsible" and let go - but invariably it's never the people at or near the top (who made the mistake in the first place) to whom that happens.
Originally Posted by
tornadoken
Do you remember a We're Backing Britain campaign in the 1960s, targetting private cars. A consequence was Austin Allegro, Morris Marina and the death of the UK mass-market car.
While it makes for an entertaining story, the above isn't true. For one thing, in the '60s and well into the '70s, even foreign-owned marques like Ford and Vauxhall were still designing and building models specifically for the UK market - it wasn't until the late '70s that they started shipping their German designs over.
What happened to BMC (later British Leyland) was that the consortium was pulled together without rationalising the number of managers. Consequently, every management head felt he had to stick his oar in lest he and his staff be considered surplus to requirements.
To illustrate the point, I give you Harris Mann's original 1968 concept drawing for the Austin Allegro:
Rather different from the end product, is it not?
Lest you think BAE Systems an aberration, it's worth remembering that US "defense" contractors are p***ing away sums that boggle the mind routinely - but because the budget is considered sacrosanct in Congress, they will never be called on it in the same way.