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10.5" x 8". ... Read more

Product Description
In April 1990 the U.S. Navy's A-12--a replacement aircraft forthe outdated A-6 Intruder--had the support of the Secretary of Defensebefore Congress. Nine months later Secretary Cheney cancelled theA-12, making it the largest weapons program ever terminated by thePentagon and the first cancelled for default with the Pentagon makingdemands that the contractors return the money already paid them. Tenyears later, questions remain unanswered and lessons are still to belearned.

With access to a wealth of government and contractor documents andmore than a hundred players at all levels of involvement, JamesStevenson takes readers into the once-forbidden world of "specialaccess" programs to examine the demise of the A-12, charging that thedocuments exposed fraudulent and even illegal activity. He faults thenavy not just for mismanagement but for ignoring the statutes andregulations that require Congress to appropriate money before enteringinto contracts. Rather than a single big mistake, he finds the A-12'spath from honor to derision to be littered with hundreds of mistakesand attempts to right wrongs or cover them up. In recounting theevents that eventually led to the Stealth bomber's cancellation,Stevenson cites countless examples of the mismatch between perceptionand reality experienced by navy program managers, the defensedepartment, Congress, and the contractors. In the process of tellingthe story, he takes on the entire defense acquisition process and itsresponsibility for the program that cost American taxpayers over $5billion yet produced not a single airplane for their defense. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Accurate and scary,if somewhat incomplete
I was an analyist with the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the A-12 program life.As such, I knew most of the personalities in this book. Mr. Stevenson's presentation is accurate and correct, as to the best of my recollection. It is a great read, and truly astounding that such an important and expensive program was mananaged with such incompetance and blatant disrespect for the law.If you're not outraged at the Pentagon's procurement apparatus at the end of this book, check your pulse.

What I did feel was missing, was a telling of general euphoria, arrogance, and excitement that defined the Pentagon during the Regan adminstrations.Money flowed like water and every service -- not just the Navy or the Air Force -- rushed to the trough.Black programs, especially stealth, proliferated wildely, and all this was just considered "normal".Of course there were billions of dollars being wasted on programs such as the A-12, but then everybody was doing it! I wish a bit more of the popular attitudes of the times had been addressed to provide context.

How not to buy a weapon system
Mr. Stevenson does it again in his second book on the stpuid spending decisions that come from the Pentagon. In this book he covers the fraud, waste, mis-management, and general abuse of the laws and rules of both the Navy and the Nation in trying to buy a plane that even the Navy didn't want right away. This book talks about it all from the hatred of the various under secretary's of the project and how they tried to kill it. How the Navy went about skipping major milestones and reporting laws in the name of "National Security", how the USAF didn't want to share thier lessons learned in builiding the F-117A and B-2A under the same "National Security" banner (let alone they wanted to control all stealth projects) and finally after spending all of 5 billion US dollars and 10 yrs of development all that the American taxpayer had to gain from it was a non-working wooden mock up, thousands of thousands of sheets of memos and designs, and a bunch of bolts that did absoultely nothing. He uses this aqusition project as another attempt to show the world what is wrong with how the US buys its weapons systems. In this book you can pick up some more ideas as to how he thinks one should go about buying everything from thread to carriers and how the contracts should be written. When you read through the lines. There are numerous footnotes and a well stock biblograhpy so the reader can track down the source of a subject if then need to. This is a wonderful compainion to his previous book on the F-18 Horent.

Decent Legal Overview of A-12 Debacle
This book is a good managerial/legal overview but lacks technical depth and any analysis of the human cost incurred by the A-12 cancellation debacle.It exhaustively details program management missteps and lays out the legal argument which favors the contractor assertion that the program (excuse me, contract) was terminated for convenience.However, the reader is left with the misleading impression that most engineering problems (and there were many) were resolved by the time of cancellation.However, in January 1991, there were many challenges ahead that drawing release tracking charts did not reflect.In the final analysis, Dick Cheney did the right thing the wrong way and thousands of workers were fired virtually overnight by companies that had mortgaged their futures trying to get a piece of the stealth pie; Mr. Stevenson got it mostly right.

A "must read" book !
I was a test engineer for a sub-contractor on this "black hole" program . During my two year stay on the program , I certainly saw no "waste and fraud" nor did a good friend of mine at GD who was very closely associated with the program. For those two years we put in very long hours 6 to 7 days a week and had all of our "state of the art" test equipment up and running and certified ahead of schedule . The book tells it as it was , a program that was mis-managed by the Navy from the day the contract was signed . The airframe producers , General Dynamics and Mcdonnell Douglas, found their hands tied as they didn't get the support they were expecting from Northrop's "learning curve" on the B2 program . This coupled with the never ending design changes requested by the Navy brought on the inevitable cost over runs . This is asuperbly written book by the author of "The Pentagon Paradox" , another "must read" book !

Not the last word on the subject - I hope
The A-12 program is probably the single most expensive cancellation in the history of US defense acquisition. The US taxpayer ended up shelling out about $5 billion dollars and got.....nothing. (That would have bought over seven million of those $700 hammers you've heard about!) Mr. Stevenson takes a look at the origins of the program in the earliest research in "stealth" technology, how the Navy illegally started the program without Congressional funding, the lack of oversight of contractor performance, and the totally heinous behavior of the Secretary of Defense, who in April 1990 told Congress that "the program appears to be reasonably well-handled at this point" and six months later cancelled the program in such a manner that the prime contractors, McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics, were able to win in court over $2 billion in costs PLUS $400 million in legal fees.

I worked at McAir during the period covered by this book. I watched about 6,000 hard-working engineers and technicians get laid off in a single week, and I had to do the work of three peoople after those layoffs, so yes, I'm pretty bitter about the whole thing. But anyone who pays taxes ought to be bitter about the totally irresponsible (and yes, illegal) way the program was conceived, awarded, managed, and terminated.

My only complaint is that the book covers only the top-level decision-making. You won't find any "lessons learned" on program management or personal stories of the fraud, waste, and abuse that went on. Oh, yes, in spite of assertions to the contrary, McDonnell and GD BOTH cooked the books and overspent WILDLY on travel, overtime, and facilities (although the description of GD's Building 500 [page 196] is a nice appetizer for the KIND of waste that I saw SO VERY MUCH of.) Still, this is the first time the story has been brought to the attention of the general public, and it's one that is more relevant than ever today. "Black" programs make up increasingly large percentages of the defense budget and it is nearly impossible for Congress to see just exactly what is being done with that money. Highly recommended reading. ... Read more