[Premium-Rx] Re: FCC Radio Gear

[Larry Gadallah]

Hello Premium-RX:

I can't resist adding my 2 cents worth into this admittedly OT thread:

It is not at all surprising that government agencies everywhere are
moving to more consumer-grade, COTS (commercial off the shelf)
equipment when you consider where all of the receivers we lust after
came from: The Cold War and the Military-Industrial complex.

They are of a time when schedules and budgets were irrelevant. I do
have some first hand experience with this, having worked on a large
NATO software contract that had been running for about 8 years when I
joined the project. On my one trip to Brussels to the NATO
bureaucracy, I saw an entire building full of workers who were doing
nothing but "managing" contracts like the one I was on. I briefly met
some NATO military people who were on their way to Bosnia, and they
said that they no longer had the time or the budgets to wait for
custom-built military systems anymore.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, military and government
contracts too often turn out to be a huge boondoggle for the
contractor. It also makes sense to admit that this couldn't continue
forever, although the events of 9/11 and afterwards have provided a
new set of boondoggles :-). Even so, I have read in a few places where
even the US military is now using far more COTS equipment than ever
before.

I don't have the figures in my head, but if your country was spending
4-5% of GDP on defense during the cold war, you could afford to
purchase Collins/W-J/Harris at >$10K per box (along with $800 toilet
seat lids). Now, when you are expected to spend only 1-1.5% of GDP,
you just don't have the funds anymore and you buy the nicest ICOM and
Yaesu gear you can afford.

73,
-- 
Larry Gadallah, VE6VQ
Sammamish, WA
lgadallah AT gmail DOT com