Doesn’t CAGW support competition?
Of course CAGW favors competition; the organization has been fighting waste and pork in the defense bill since it helped expose the $436 hammer and $640 toilet seat in the mid-1980s. But study after study has shown that funding an alternate engine won’t lower costs or improve military readiness in any way. The only ones who benefit are the alternate engine’s manufacturer and its friends in Congress, including Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who inserted the $439 million earmark into the Senate version of the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization Act. The process for the alternate engine is not the same as a free market. In this case, the government is footing the bill for the duplicative development and design costs as well as production and maintenance. Furthermore, proponents seem to forget that there was a competition to see who would provide the engine that concluded in 2001, and the Pratt & Whitney engine won. There is no
