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You sub contract out hardware assemblies (and software) when you start feeling market pressure and your cost has grown to be competitive. Then you find, as a p

You sub contract out hardware assemblies (and software) when you start feeling market pressure and your cost has grown to be competitive. Then you find, as a prime contractor, that you are still responsible for the product. You still have to maintain expertise. And, to keep the vendors in line you have to be able to at least threaten to bring the work back in house. All of this greatly reduces the cost advantage. Now days, the concept is "only sub out work that is done better than you can do; where better includes technical performance".

coredog64 5y ago
What I think many people fail to recognize is that all aircraft vendors outsource quite a bit and have for a long time. Neither Boeing nor Airbus make the avionics. They buy them on spec from Honeywell or Smiths. Back when I was a DS9 working in the ASL, we’d sometimes use a full software stack to try something out with pilots and airlines. But the result was a spec that went to Honeywell for implementation. And then when we got their output, we’d put those hardware boxes into our engineering sims and see if everything matched up.