Problems with the ground system would have "put current GPS military and civilian capabilities at risk."
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Pentagon pulls the plug on one of the military’s most troubled space programs
- Thread starter JournalBot
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RTX Corporation is obliged to give us that money back, since they failed to deliver a working product, right? … Right?
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We should all keep this speech handy. Ike was definitely a prescient President.
View: https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y?si=wTBs1sDu6zmC6nzF
View: https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y?si=wTBs1sDu6zmC6nzF
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So, RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, will have to change name again to make everyone forget about this new failure?
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For a moment I thought this ARS article might be about Golden Dome but I guess it’s a few years too early. Not nearly enough money has been spent yet.
“Pentagon pulls the plug on one of the military’s most troubled space programs”
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Since the product was "delivered" last year, and the Space Force "accepted" it, despite the remaning problems, the RTX program manager and lawyers are no doubt breathing a huge sigh of relief. I imagine that puts RTX on pretty firm legal ground for a "no refunds" policy.
I think it's reasonable to ask some pretty pointed questions of the procurement team who wrote the contracts and acceptance criteria that made it possible for a non-functional system to be signed off as "delivered".
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"Delivered" would mean a payment milestone (probably the biggest of the milestones).
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And getting paid multiple billions to not deliver. Hey congress? I could fail to deliver for half that amount!
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Nearly 40 years ago I worked in the air defense community, and we had to deal with then Raytheon's inability to deliver as promised and on time software. It would seem that RTX has not learned anything because no one held them accountable. RTX now owns Pratt & Whitney, if I was running the Pentagon, I would find another source for my engines which means GE for the most part. In the airline industry there are more choices.
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millitary-industrial (congressional) complex. Guess who writes the checks.
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Sounds like the system itself worked but they had issues integrating it with other relevant systems. Perhaps the design request was flawed. If I order a car to my specifications then find out it wont fit in the garage thats not the mfg's fault.
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just so we're clear about this:
- raytheon gets a $3.7 billion contract in 2010, scheduled for delivery in 2016
- raytheon delivers a pile of dogshit to the pentagon in 2025, having received $8 billion in total.
- that's 9 years late, 15 years instead of 6
- and at more than double the price
- and then the pentagon has to throw it all away.
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Get me $100MM and I will get 6 engineers together than can have this system running at design parameters in 2 years.
The more money and the more people and the more time allotted translates to shitty execution, I have seen it in different shades of gray a couple of dozen times in the last 25 years in my software career.
The more money and the more people and the more time allotted translates to shitty execution, I have seen it in different shades of gray a couple of dozen times in the last 25 years in my software career.
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I am encouraged that the government was able to terminate a program. I will leave it to others to debate if the program was worthy of our money or not.
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Nice work GAO. Does anybody who's actually familiar with software development seriously think a “persistently high software development defect rate" is a cause?? It's a symptom. If only somebody had an incentive to dig deeper... but it sure wouldn't be RTX or the Air Force, so I won't hold my breath.
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I'm sure it's not quite that simple but it is absolutely flabbergasting how they managed to fail this hard. Well, that's what I would say, except I know what old guard defense contractors are willing to pay software engineers, so the results are somewhat to be expected.
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OptimusP83
Ars Praefectus
1/2? Are you trying to fleece the American Public?! I can deliver that same results at 1/3 the cost!
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Less it was terminated and more that the government accepted delivery 10 years late after paying over twice the original price then decided it was a pile of crap and trashed it. And no Air Force Generals were punished in the process for dereliction of duty or civilian Project Managers fired for failure to properly supervise the project.
Kudos to Mr. Duffey for ignoring the sunk cost and admitting the project's outright failure.
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Because it was way too late as the money was already spent. The time to stop this was in 2016 when they missed the first deadline. Or any of the 2000 chances since then the Air Force and Space Force had to cancel.
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Worked on GPS-OCX for 6 months in the late 'teens. Background - over 20 years in aerospace software development. The system integrated the historical code in 4 different programming languages (fortunately, I was fluent in all 4) as well as the new stuff. 3 months into my escapade there, TPTB decided that we should all migrate to the Agile approach to development with almost no training. But the USAF loved the idea. Our morning scrum took over an hour with over 40 people in the room.
TPTB decided that one of the most important changes to embrace Agile was to re-org the seating arrangements. Previously the software people were in groups of 4, movable walls, backs to each other and we all had storage space above on the walls. But no, Agile means groups of 4 in a very large room (seating about 100 or more) in an open space with the computer monitors in the center, and we're all basically facing each other over the monitors. One person sneezed and all 4 of us got sick.
At the meeting when this was announced, someone in the back of the room sent a little piece of paper around with the words "deck chairs again". Plus all the computer had to be replaced because they were not made in the US.
Know who was the USAF general in charge of all this during this period? Hyten. Look him up.
When I left, knowing my background, the security officer was surprised I lasted as long as I did.
Want to know where $XX billions went? I appreciate that paycheck for 6 months.
TPTB decided that one of the most important changes to embrace Agile was to re-org the seating arrangements. Previously the software people were in groups of 4, movable walls, backs to each other and we all had storage space above on the walls. But no, Agile means groups of 4 in a very large room (seating about 100 or more) in an open space with the computer monitors in the center, and we're all basically facing each other over the monitors. One person sneezed and all 4 of us got sick.
At the meeting when this was announced, someone in the back of the room sent a little piece of paper around with the words "deck chairs again". Plus all the computer had to be replaced because they were not made in the US.
Know who was the USAF general in charge of all this during this period? Hyten. Look him up.
When I left, knowing my background, the security officer was surprised I lasted as long as I did.
Want to know where $XX billions went? I appreciate that paycheck for 6 months.
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And they will never get another new contract with the government ever again, right? … right?
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Tell me you've only done trivial work without saying the words.
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What debate? It never worked, it wasn’t going to work and it cost twice as much as expected, is a decade late and is going to be thrown away.
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Tell me you’ve never delivered a project on time without saying it.
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Boy, the hits just keep coming, eh? Even the president is able to see their performance:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tr...ent-contracts-over-stock-buybacks-2026-01-07/
RTX/Raytheon is the biggest defense company in the world, and they act like it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tr...ent-contracts-over-stock-buybacks-2026-01-07/
RTX/Raytheon is the biggest defense company in the world, and they act like it.
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Having done some Defense Dept adjascent work myself, I am not at all surprised. I have no doubt that RTX does not shoulder ALL the blame here. The Government is an absolutely horrible client to work for and with.
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I've noticed a recurring issue where we've built systems so complex, we can't reliably improve on, or even maintain them. FAA NextGen is another example.
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if I cant deliver to a client I've to give them back all advance money and pay a fine too probably, so raytheon will give back those 6 billions, righ? (/s...)
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The problem isn't so much that the systems are so complex. The problem is that the documentation is poor to non-existent and no-one has bothered to actually write down the exact use cases on what software needs to do. There's decades of legacy and lessons learned in that code that is just patch on patch on patch on cludge on hack on fix on patch. The only realistic fix is to replace the systems bit by bit, building on replacing specific functions one at a time. But the problem is that such a thing then can't really work because you need the entirety of the thing to function in one go. And replacing everything in one go is just not a realistic proposition.
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Not so fast!
We already have one bid for $4bn, so I don't think your $3bn is credible.
Plus, given "requirement creep and change requests" (and a couple of corporate positions for retiring acquisition executives) we all know it's going to cost $8bn... which conveniently makes acquisition executives look so much more important
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Out of those 6 you'll have 1 that gets to work on code that the requirements change for on a weekly basis given ADHD nature of acquisition programs.
One will be the PM who has to live with the customer along with your Chief Engineer (you think they get to do engineering - ha! Customer pitches a fit if they don't have them constantly meeting with them). You'll have a dedicated financial person tracking charges. Let's say they double up as the program planner. If you're lucky they'll declare it an Agile program so that you don't have to plan the entire thing out on a week by week basis from day 1. You only to do it 2 months at a time. Your Earned Value will still be waterfall based (completely against the tenets of Agile). Then you'll have a security person. Let's say you have a unicorn and they are an ISSM/ISSO and physical security person. Other roles you'll be required to have is system admin, configuration control, quality control, independent tester.
To be clear - these roles are NOT up to you. So one year in you have nothing to show for it because your requirements bear no resemblance to what they did a year ago. Sure the core interface didn't change because it already existed, instead the operator features and other elements that the Space Force wants it to talk to all change. Assuming that you code to the interface spec and it works out of the box LMAO - they're always open to interpretation.
The reality of US government acquisitions - is that the entire acquisition process is throughly broken.
EDIT: Missing words
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