Multi-Year Amphibious Ship Buy
30th September 2024
The supposed savings is estimated at $1B. In the aggregate, that sounds impressive. A billion dollars! Wow! However, across four ships that’s just $250M savings per ship. That’s not nothing but it’s not a miraculous savings, by any means. More importantly, you know those savings will never materialize. With 100% certainty, the ships will come in over budget and behind schedule with a litany of excuses like supply chain disruptions, parts shortages, design modifications, and all the other usual suspects. There won’t be any savings. The absolute best case is that the ‘savings’ (let’s be optimistic and assume there will be actual savings) will slightly reduce the magnitude of the inevitable cost overruns. Again, better than nothing but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we’re actually going to save money.