Jet Doc, would like to better understand your perspective. It’s just counter to my experience and it reflects the crux of the broader acquisition problems within the DoD in my opinion. While the defense market is more of a monopsony it is anything but homogeneous and discrete. Consequently the dynamics of innovation and progress remain and managed programs that ignore the art of design/development and the human element get lost.
When I referenced the improvement we saw with the F110 I was comparing it to the -220 which was of common vintage. Similarly, the IPE’s (F110-129, F100-229) were technologically comparable. While I’d really enjoy getting into a discussion on UFCs, BUCs, DEECs, DECs, SECs and other technical aspects of the motors as well as the programmatics, suffice it to say that with the second source the cycle of improvement sped up, took much greater leaps, and yielded a much higher return on investment than what we’d seen previously.