[HN Gopher] DoD Increases Efforts to Bring Small Businesses into...
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DoD Increases Efforts to Bring Small Businesses into Defense
Industrial Base
Author : jdmark
Score : 11 points
Date : 2023-05-14 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.defense.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.defense.gov)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Won't succeed.
|
| Risk averse purchasers always tend towards buying from big
| business.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| This is just a farming exercise for existing primes to either
| take you on and absorb you or steal your IP and crush you.
|
| So many of the _small_ business and other protected status
| contracts end up with shell companies and do a dis-service to the
| intent of the programs. "
|
| Instead we need to break up primes and manage contract needs more
| realistically.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Yeah, it's an open secret that apex is just a way for the
| primes to squeeze out another drop from their current
| suppliers. Who themselves are basically stuck with the prime
| they're servicing because of the surreal[1] business and
| product requirements.
|
| The IIP is, so far as I can tell, just plain exploitive. A good
| way to hire techs for 15 bucks an hour. But I haven't been
| under them directly.
|
| I am gonna switch hats here, which is weird, because I am
| almost always on the side of suppliers and maintainers in this
| frickin' monkey farm. But devil's advocate. You might ask
| yourself, "what kind of small supplier is going to sign up for
| some cockamamie requirement that forces them to change all
| their business systems for a single customer?" The answer to
| that question is, "a desperate one", and maybe sometimes
| following that, "a supplier that maybe isn't really that good".
| Porque no los dos?
|
| I'm specifically thinking of a anti-IED-thing that got
| attention around 2005. Some poor Marine started buying this off
| the shelf widget to save his and his buddies' lives. A big
| prime got wind of this, screamed and yelled, and immediately
| sourced their version of this thing from some supplier who
| turned out to be a Turkish-Russian-Singapore manufacturer. The
| DoD slapped the Prime playfully on their taint, then the prime
| turned right around and literally BOXED THE RUSSIAN BOX INSIDE
| THEIR BOX. Ship it! I swear I am not kidding. And yeah, it
| didn't work either. Meanwhile the original widget maker had
| gone on to other things - something to do with cell tech, I
| think. Good call.
|
| Another small supplier, right around the same time frame, again
| bought directly by desperate Marines, this time it lasted for
| maybe a few months before a prime went up the Hill and cried
| hard enough for it to get pulled out of the line. The supplier
| got hoovered up for some cash. Well, very neat tool, right? Now
| it's got some capital to grow! Do you know how that tool's
| doing today, after making the prime well in excess of a billion
| dollars? It's EXACTLY THE SAME. The prime bought this cool
| doodad, and then they sat on it for nigh-on twenty years,
| sucking down that cash, still selling the same box of parts
| kludged up by hacker kids twenty years ago. Now with a few
| extra semi trucks of paperwork.
|
| Anyway. The ones that go the distance with the primes maybe are
| not the creme de la creme, is what I'm saying. If you're lucky
| you'll get a tiny crew of burnout cases and retirees. If you're
| unlucky you get the Matrioshka Box of ITAR Violations and 20
| year old software bugs. And if you're REALLY unlucky the prime
| buys you and you get to watch your product die slow from a
| prime latched onto its arteries.
|
| [1] I'm not sure I can describe some of these requirements
| without sounding like a crazy person to those outside the
| industry. Stuff like switching your entire ERP - for s single
| contract - a single _five year_ contract. Anyway, crazy. So let
| 's leave it there: folks who are inside, you know what I'm
| saying; folks outside, take my word for it, it's absolutely
| crazy.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I definitely see the shell company problem, eg some tiny
| company that only exists to check a box and pass through the
| contract to a big prime...but what would you propose here? A
| two or three person company is going to be crushed by the DoD.
| Just think what it takes to get, say, FedRAMP approved or write
| up your STIGs or to get the magic FIPS certification. The
| asymmetry between DoD and a smallco is so vast that I feel the
| latter has no choice but to seek a big brother who can act as
| prime. But I agree, that is very risky for the smallco.
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