Thanks. I'm glad you've read the comments, because that will save me a lot of time and, frankly, heartache.
This program is going to cost a quarter of a trillion dollars. People should realize that it is financially incapable of being done the way we're doing it. Just about every tenet of proper procurement has been squandered, neglected and not followed, and the weight has gone up by 44%.
The statement of requirements, rather than being finalized within the department, was left to industry to decide what they wanted to do. The government abdicated its accountability to the private sector—that ISI, Irving Shipbuilding Inc., make all the decisions. What else can we expect when the prices continue to escalate when we don't have oversight? This isn't complicated. When you abandon basic principles of accountability and transparency, you get the kind of disaster we're in.
No one seems to be reacting to the full life-cycle cost. We have about $240 billion, over 30 years, to buy and maintain stuff. This one project is larger than all of what is needed for the army, navy and air force. People should be absolutely up in arms about this, but people are still talking about whether it's $60 billion or $56 billion or $77 billion, without understanding that it represents only 30% of the costs.
I have explained this. There is no way, in my mind, that this will ever be done. Someone is going to wake up and understand that it can't be done.
What I have recommended, notwithstanding the huge overspending in costs, is to do three this way, and then do the right process the right way, including competing a shipyard, for the other 12. Your costs will be cut between one half and one third of the current costs, and there's ample evidence to support that.