Pentagon Rewarding Defense Firms With Massive Fees Regardless Of Performance...

Washington Post Charles R. Babcock April 16, 2006 at 10:23 PM

In late February 2004, the Army announced that it was canceling plans to build a radar-evading helicopter called the Comanche, a project that was nearly three years behind schedule and more than $3.5 billion over budget. Those problems, however, didn't stop an Army panel a few weeks later from granting the Boeing Co.-Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. partnership running the program a $33.9 million "award fee" for their work on the helicopter, part of more than $200 million in such fees paid to the partnership over four years.

Award fees are meant in theory to motivate defense contractors with extra money for performance. But a recent Government Accountability Office study found that the fees are often paid regardless of whether a project is on schedule and within its budget.

Instead of encouraging efficiency, the GAO found, award-fee payments have become routine in some major weapons contracts, built into company expectations and paid almost as a matter of course.

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Whistleblowers Allege Quality-Control Problems At Boeing; Poorly Made Airplane Parts “Shoved Or Hammered Into Place”...

Washington Post Florence Graves and Sara Kehaulani Goo April 16, 2006 at 10:14 PM

Whether questionable parts ended up in hundreds of Boeing 737s is the subject of a bitter dispute between the aerospace company and Prewitt and two other whistle-blowers. The two sides also have enormously different views on what that could mean for the safety of the jets.

The whistle-blower lawsuit is in U.S. District Court in Wichita. No matter how it is resolved, it has exposed gaps in the way government regulators investigated the alleged problems in aircraft manufacturing, according to documents and interviews.

Boeing said that the lawsuit is without merit and that there is no safety issue. Even if faulty parts landed on the assembly line, the company said, none could have slipped through Boeing's controls and gotten into the jetliners. The whistle-blowers "are not intimately familiar with Boeing's quality management system," said Cindy Wall, a company spokeswoman. "Our planes are safe."

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