[__egb__]

Did the Navy really have a choice at the time, though? Politically, I mean.

Yes, the Navy can select a higher bid as long as there is justification, and here the justification is long-term value and readiness…but a significant portion of the voting public is incapable of properly weighing long-term versus short-term effects.

All they’d understand—and they’d be helped along to this conclusion by plenty of politicians who just want to use the situation to score points—is, “The government paid twice as much for an aircraft carrier than it needed to!”

[IAmBroom]

The voting public never sees these costs.

They are sometimes told about it, tenth-hand, such as the fabled $10,000-hammer and the gold toilet seat.

Congress itself sees these costs, or more precisely, teams working for congressmembers see them. Congress members approve bills that are not lowest-cost when there is personal benefit for their careers: pork-barrel. It's very hard to justify not-lowest-cost without a pork-barrel angle.

[close04]

Maybe they even saw handing over to a provider all repair responsibilities as a major advantage. No need to have this capability in the crew with the associated logistics, and the accountability is also outsourced.

This comes at a cost but looking around at comparable outsourcing situations, everyone follows the same line of thinking. Sell my responsibility for (someone else’s) money.

[omniglottal]

Maybe they are an aircraft carrier that is deployed in places that no reasonable human can expect a service technician to visit, and this level of imbecility should generally be avoided.

[mistrial9]

nice way to blame "stupid public" for this internal Navy contract