Acquisition reform.

• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

* I just couldn't ignore an issue with Nathaniel Sledge's "Pentagon Procurement Reforms Face Slim Chance of Success," (Sept. 2012, p.16). I agree with his basic premise that improvements around the margins of the defense acquisition process will never compensate for an in-grown, entitled and broken procurement process.

But I disagree with the graph showing that Pentagon acquisition is out of control. It shows total acquisition costs from 2008 through 2011 with no data for 2009. After 2008, one year is lower and one year is higher--hardly a trend.

In fact, according to this graph, over the four years shown, there is only a 3.1 percent increase in total acquisitions--less than 1 percent per year and less than the rate of inflation. Hardly out of control.

I'm pretty sure that the Pentagon did not acquire over $1.5 trillion per year over that four year period when the 2011 federal budget was only $3.6 trillion, especially considering that the entire defense budget was only around $700 billion. In short, the graph uses "funny" numbers, and is deceptively presented.

Dave Clark

Los Lunas, NM

* In Nathaniel H. Sledge Jr.'s article, "Pentagon Procurement Reforms Face Slim Chance of Success," the author makes a good point, but it is not the only issue with defense procurement. I see two major issues: All proposal estimates are too low, and Defense Department procurement offices do not have staff experienced in manufacturing or estimating.

In my almost four decades in the defense-aerospace industry, I have participated in more than 700 proposals. I have been a reviewer, writer, estimator and manager.

As a proposal writer and estimator, I have developed cost-estimating models. In the spacecraft industry for some disciplines, my estimates are within 3 percent of the actual costs. As a cost estimator, I developed accurate estimates. In many cases, my manager or director would reduce my estimates by 10 to 15 percent and send the cost estimate up the management chain. At the top of the chain, an executive would cut most of the bid cost by another 10 to 15 percent after removing the contingency estimates that the proposed program manager would put in (usually...