[grandinj]

It was muuuch cheaper that way.

Because adding in repair stuff requires the supplier to provide documentation, frequently training, a parts manifest, guaranteed 10-20 year availability of spares, and probably about 50 other requirements I don't know about.

All of which add up to a rather large contract cost increase.

Possibly this boondoggle will result in the military putting in more reasonable "right to repair" terms in the contract, rather than insisting on the gold-plated thing I mention above, but more likely it will simply result in more cost overruns.

[wosined]

I have a feeling that they still need to guarantee availability of spares if they fix it themselves, do they not? They still have to create documentation for their engineers, do they not?

[grandinj]

If you repair it yourself, you have more flexibility in terms of replacing spares with newer items i.e. replacing a whole module when it a part of that module becomes hard to come by.

Internal documentation ..... hmmmm.... LOL.... Often not, word of mouth is the rule.

If there is internal documentation, it's generally pretty rough. Getting it to the point where you can hand it to external parties is a lot of work.

[DrScientist]

Or is it because nobody wants to assume responsibility?

Let's say what you really want is to be able to fix simple stuff ( replace easily replaceable parts ), and get the experts in for tricky stuff. However the contractor, who now isn't fully responsible to changes to the system, now insists that you take the full risk of your repairs ( perhaps even saying they will void any warranty if you touch the oven/lift ).

Then faced with that nobody is brave enough to say - heck fine - we will take that responsibility.

And so because the lawyers were prepared to take that risk, the people on the boat are infantilised by contract.