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In reply to the discussion: Obama aide: We would have been impeached for spending $24M to upgrade Air Force One fridge [View all]DeminPennswoods
(15,246 posts)but there's no competition for items like these. There is just no economies of scale to be had that would interest any company other than than Boeing/OEM to make them. Even the OEMs don't want to hold tooling or inventory for future needs, then when DoD buys and holds such inventory, they get beat up by Congress for having "excess" inventory.
I don't think most people realize just how small military procurements are compared to commercial aircraft procurements. Aside from hardware like nuts, bolts, screws, etc, the quantities being ordered to support US aircraft range from a few to maybe a few hundreds or low thousands. It's not cost effective because of the low quantites and often unique requirements. This was my civil service career. I can assure you no one was deliberately negligent and we were certainly not non-responsive to expedite requests.