this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Boeing says it can’t make money with fixed-price contracts::"Rest assured we haven't signed any fixed-price development contracts, nor intend to."

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[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 87 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fuck you Boeing. You fuckers have stacked cash hand over fist for fucking decades milking the fucking government and the American people like goddamn cattle. The endless growth has to end. The endless greed has got to end.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 21 points 11 months ago

Flying Blind is a spectacular book, as much about the financial engineering that doomed GM and Boeing and many others took as their compass;, the safety and quality just the inevitable cost of cutting corners.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind-by-peter-robison/

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 58 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Jeez, if you can't make money off of defense industry contracts, you should probably just hang it up.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

They can, they just use cost-plus contracts so they make money no matter how far off schedule or budget they end up.

[–] lps2@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Doing work with government, I understand why - ten billion different stakeholders to wrangle, strained budgets (probably not as big of an issue in defense but rampant throughout the rest of gov't), lawmakers changing things mid-project that have a material effect on how the project is carried out, and endless redtape throughout the process. I don't propose FF for gov projects either because inevitably they violate our assumptions by not getting their shit in order which kills the timeline, adds a ton of overhead, and results in a change order anyway which then just starts the whole process of approvals all over again.

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I was under the impression that those sweetheart deals were getting hard to come by, but I don't work bids.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

There's still a few out there. Take Clear for example, the subscription line skipping service that works alongside TSA.

Somebody's palms got heavily greased to allow this company to thrive in the airport security space.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Admittedly, it was quite a while ago that I had anything to do with government contracting, so you could be right.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh, very good Worf. Eat any good books lately?

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I recently consumed a copy of Martok's Enchiridion of Klingon Fashion. It was tasteful.

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It sounds like Boeing is shit at forecasting. Maybe hire better analysts.

[–] w2qw@aussie.zone 4 points 11 months ago

That's the point

[–] silencioso@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago
[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Zombies? In my capitalism?

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Boeing released its third-quarter results on Wednesday, and there were promising numbers showing increasing revenues and narrowing losses as the multinational corporation continues its economic recovery.

This division, which includes missile production for the military and space activities such as satellites and the Starliner spacecraft, lost $1.7 billion during the first three quarters of this year.

Notably, the pair pinned the blame for performance by its defense and space division, referred to internally as BDS, on fixed-price contracts.

Boeing has been developing Starliner for more than a decade and is running six years behind its original goal of flying crew to the International Space Station for NASA in 2017.

As it has sought to compete with SpaceX on a purely fixed-price contract for crew transport, Boeing has reported more than $1 billion in losses to date and still has yet to fly its first astronaut mission.

After an issue was discovered with the soft links in Starliner's parachute design this summer, Boeing has had to work with Airborne to strengthen the main canopy suspension lines.


The original article contains 662 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago

I bet there are some other airplane makers that can.