Comments on: Annals of Homeland Security: Crony Capitalism, Nuclear Terror and the “Advanced Spectroscopic Portal”

By: me

me — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:13:58 +0000

While there are dozens of reasons to be concerned regarding the spending of Homeland Security moneys, you should be very careful publishing a document like this. As you blame industry and government for misleading the public, this article shows very little investigative energy or depth, throwing a few irrelevant facts into a self-rightous tyrade that is more misleading than anything you attempt to illuminate.

Many in the industry close to what is going on use google identify articles on key programs to keep track of where things are going. So, writers need to understand that when they throw a temper tantrum that would normally raise interest in a bar full of people that happen to be underinformed, stringing a few facts together can seem like a decent argument and raise some concensus.

As one who is far from an advocate of the topics here, I will point out that this article makes absolute no relevant point. While your premise may be true, it is most certainly NOT for any of the reasons you illuminate. For instance, the ASP tests you mention were NEVER intended to be an objective test of these products. It was a RELATIVE test to downselect from 10 to 3 contestants and the objective was to give everyone a chance to tune and demonstrate the best their products could achieve. The intention being a thorough WORKING understanding of how these technologies performed.

Someone in DNDO made the drastic mistake of letting these test results be misinterpreted as a blind test and of course the process and results could not withstand scrutiny that would be applied to tests of an absolute standard of performance.

Do some homework, call some people, make a real effort to understand…

By: HR

HR — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:36:33 +0000

Well, we USans are a lost cause. Nothing but a herd of fools would stand by idly in the face of such nonsense … yet we have been actively supporting the national security state by consistently electing the monsters who promote it, to “congress” and the “executive” since the end of the last phase of the Twentieth Century World War. And now, we, particularly the yuppie scum among us, live by the mantra, “I have nothing to fear if I’ve done nothing wrong. My leaders were installed by god’s will to protect me.” A sorry damned lot, who get exactly the government they deserve. Good riddance to the whole pathetic species.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:00:47 +0000

Not impressed.

First, how difficult is it to throw together analysis on the “services” Raytheon provides by listing the 6 businesses that comprise their company? Bravo, anybody can find the same information on the cover page of their website. Perhaps you could have found some information on Homeland Security work they have done, which would have been applicable to your article. But then.. you would have run the risk of making them appear valauble.

Also, what’s the justification for including the Alliant ID/IQ contract in your article. It’s not clear that ASP was awarded under that contract… I can’t find any mention of it with regard to ASP…

Finally, you either don’t understand the Alliant ID/IQ contract, or hope to intentionally mis-lead your reader by making it appear Raytheon could take home $50B over the next 10 years.

FYI: ID/IQ (indefinite delivery, indefinte quantity) contracts allow the government to compete each “task” separately (the $50B could be split into many small increments). Also, Raytheon is not the only awardee, there are at least a dozen (I understand up to 30), significant competitors for each task.
The point of an ID/IQ contract is to hold an initial competition to narrow the field, then you only have to go through the top-tier contenders each time you need something done (instead of every shmoe who wants to work for the government). It’s a method to reduce the bureaucracy, steamline the procurement process, and SAVE MONEY, something I’m sure you’d be pleased to hear.

Cheers,