Nelson testifies cost-plus contracts have been a “plague” on NASA

Re:Nelson testifies cost-plus contracts have been a “plague”... by rhacker on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @03:02PM (#31264495)

Let's say you're Lockheed and you have a 10B budget for X but you have a contract that lets you go over. What's to stop you from immediately placing 9B of that in rich pockets and trying to build the damn thing for 1B. After all there's no incentive to actually deliver for the 10B so asking for another 5B - bringing the total actual effort to 2B (see what I did there).

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Re:Nelson testifies cost-plus contracts have been a “plague”... by zardo on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @04:20PM (#31265324)

> What's to stop you from immediately placing 9B of that in rich pockets

The government accounting that goes along with the contract. They can waste money or do a bad job, but they can't just say they spent the money on executive bonuses.

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Re:Nelson testifies cost-plus contracts have been a “plague”... by tomrod on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @06:38PM (#31266788)

QA/acceptance requirements. But you are right that this game is hard to play.

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