Really, Ken?.....followed by three links
Yeah really.
1. You apparently don't understand what PBL is. It's
not "maintenance of the aircraft." You also apparently don't understand the C-17's history, especially it's early history. "Forty and no more" was the government's mantra in those early years.
2. The first C-17 was delivered back in 1993. That's just over 22 years ago. Boeing (then MDC) signed the first sustainment contract not much later. Your links all date to within the past 6 years or so. It was the
first several years of the program that cost Boeing plenty, not the
last several years. Boeing had to write off those losses, just as it wrote of the losses for building the first two dozen (or more) C-17s. It was much later that Boeing began making money.
3. From your first cited article:
Under a well-structured five-year agreement, the contractor makes a small profit or loses money in the first two years. The supply chain is still not mature and investments must be made. The payoff for the contractor occurs in the last two years, when profit can exceed 20% even as the overall cost per flight hour to sustain the aircraft declines. Such profit *margins for government work can appear *excessive. In the case of the C-17 it was not "well structured" because it was a brand new concept, and it took WAY more than "two years" to "mature the supply chain." So Boeing took lots of losses. Then, when Boeing was finally in a position to make some profits, the government declared the profit margins were "excessive" even though such margins were required to compensate for the past years of operating at a loss.