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I'm struggling to find it now, but there's a saying attributed to some well known military figure (paraphrasing slightly): There are two stages to any defence

I'm struggling to find it now, but there's a saying attributed to some well known military figure (paraphrasing slightly): There are two stages to any defence procurement project - too soon to tell, and too late to stop. EDIT: Found it. A Ernest Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald's First Law: "There are only two phases of a program. The first is 'It's too early to tell.' The second: 'It's too late to stop.'

katastic 9y ago
That's great! My intuition was telling me that was a big loop hole but it's great to hear a real insider / authority speak it so eloquently. Here's an article I just found about him... from 1987. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/23/a-ernest-fitzgerald-analyst-who-knows-the-price-of-exposing-cost-overruns/be4bdff7-a375-410f-acce-927fa44312bd/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/02/23/a... Where it says he's been the most hated man in the Air Force for two decades. So, this guy was/has basically been telling us how things are since the late 60's. And we still haven't learned a thing / integrated this into our public common sense / knowledge. (Like how >90% of people know not to mess with the inside of electronics without experience, or how most people think the government/banks/big-oil/etc is corrupt. That's community knowledge.)