I ordered one thing (a rubber drive belt) from a supplier called MarVac Electronics - cost with shipping was $14.19. Not too bad.
But yesterday and today, my inbox has received spam from a different supplier called Onlinecomponents.com. Coincidence? Maybe. But what I found shocking was the prices this new supplier was charging - have a look:
$438.17 for a switch (but special price for me, marked down from $460, thanks guys!).
Note that it lists the switch by “Military Part Number”. Does that mean this is like those $600 toilet seats
that the military supposedly pays for because money is no object when it’s taxes? Seems I’ve been reading about that one for decades.
It would be disrespectful to those risking their lives to defend our freedom if we spared any expense in getting these built right. Can you imagine the potential consequences if something is on when it should be off, or off when it should be on?
Note that the switch in question is specified to be qualified in compliance with MIL-S-83731. This isn’t just some paperwork or being on an “Approved Vendor” list; it actually means that the vendor has take units of their initial production through the qualification testing listed in Table II, and then redo it every three years per the “Group C Inspection” criteria in 4.7.2, perform the lot inspection per 4.7.1 and Table III, and if any units in a lot fail inspection, potentially scrap the entire lot, all on top of meeting the material and design specifications retaining documentation thereof to be provided upon request or delivery of components. All of this comes at a significant cost both in terms of labor and systems for retention (and in pre-digital cert days, actual warehouse storage of physical documents).
Is this worth it? I’m currently working on a program where a contractor opted to use a commercial off the shelf (COTS) component rather than to buy something that was specified to meet their specific application in the hope that it would pass their system-level qualification and flight acceptance tests. As a result, this CrapOTS component has failed repeatedly, had to be modified in efforts to make it work, and will fly with some risk, all at enormous labor effort of the unexpected testing and ‘fixes’, and with a delay to the overall program. Even if a purpose-spec’d part cost five times what this component did it would have been a bargain by comparison.
This is not to say that there are not overspecified components in military use where a commercial option would do, or that there isn’t significant graft in the Department of Defense acquisition process (albeit more at the higher level rather than by individual component vendors) but there is often a good reason that these switches cost more than the stuff you get in a bin at Eagle Electronics, especially where they are being used in mission-critical or highly stressing environments.
Do tell, Stranger! Or on second thought, you probably can’t, your project no doubt being highly classified. But I must say, your link to a WaPo article, which you tagged “Myth of the $600 toilet seat”, hardly debunks any myths, or rather it informs us that those seats were only worth 544.78 (which an embarrassed Lockheed, withering under public scrutiny, was forced to refund the difference to); still, the one I got at Ace Hardware for $21.95 seemed quite functional although in fairness I don’t live in a sub-hunter jet and my toilet is not subjected to low atmospheric pressures or rapid changes in inertial forces that such a seat must anticipate and be designed for.
But since we’re talking about switches here, I’d guess a very carefully machined and assembled switch of any kind, even one with gold contacts, ought to come in for a lot less than $438.17 per, switch technology having been refined to a point a century ago where there’s not a lot of room for improvement I should think.
Now, you throw out a cautionary tale of a contractor who decided that an unspecified off-the-rack thingy would work as well, and paid the price. But since you aren’t saying what the thingy is, your attempt to suggest that overpriced switches and privy seats can always be justified seems shaky. (Throwing in the child’s word “crap” to describe the common product, the one most of us depend on, tells us all we need to know about your own bias.)
As your article points out, it ain’t so much that Lockheed is charging oompty-oomp dollars for some common piece of gear, it’s the question of why Lockheed is involved at all in making/selling it. As for switches, the $438.17 one in question is made by Honeywell and bless their soul but I bet they would sell me (not affiliated with the military) the exact same switch or one just as good without Navy-standard mounting threads for considerably less.
Go back and read the article for comprehension instead of just pulling out prices. The “toilet seat” is actually an enclosure that is specifically designed to fit the P3 Orion aircraft, not a plastic seat you can pick up “at Ace Hardware for $21.95”:
The Navy calls the item a “toilet cover assembly,” and Lockheed-California Co. concluded after a recent review that it was only modestly overpriced.
Lockheed, which makes the plastic-and-fiberglass cases for toilets on P3 Orion submarine-hunting planes, said the housings should cost $554.78, not the $640.09 it had charged.
The enclosure was “overpriced” compared to a competitive bid, but not by a factor of 32, nor was it something that could be purchased from your local hardware store or from McMaster-Carr.
Again, reread what I wrote and at least skim the specification that I linked. The bulk of the cost isn’t in the physical construction of the switch but in all of the qualification and lot acceptance testing, documentation, and scrappage for non-conforming items. If this were a switch for a kitchen appliance it would certainly be grossly overspecified and overpriced, but on an aircraft where a failed switch may compromise the functionality or safety of the vehicle in flight, the cost is rightly judged to be worthwhile.
My “bias”, as you refer to it, comes from actual knowledge and experience versus just reading about some allegedly overpriced “toilet seat” and obtusely making big yucks over it absent any context. I’ve been through the cycle of “Let’s just use COTS components everywhere to save big money!” and have seen where that approach, used injudiciously, has ended up costing far more than it would have ostensibly saved if the components in question had actually functioned as advertised.
Which, again, is not to say that there isn’t graft and overcharging in the defense industry, and indeed, entire programs that do not meet a strategic need or provide a useable system despite billions of dollars of investment. I am for certain not going to default to a defense of Lockheed, a contractor so adept at the “out of scope” game that they once forced the government to give them a second contract at substantial markup to build a guidance system that wasn’t specifically defined as being part of a multistage precision guided target. But the supposed “$600 toilet seat” is really an example of a journalist not doing the work to understand what the item is and the cost involved in making it, and the urban legend train rolling onward endlessly propagating a misapprehension.
If you design systems for the military, and you finally get to the point where your system “works,” you still have a lot of work to do.
As mentioned by @Stranger_On_A_Train, hardware used for military systems tends to be costly, and for (usually) good reason. It has to go through a lot of testing in order to be qualified for use. And not just functional testing… it has to go through environmental testing in accordance with MIL-STD-810. Tests include mechanical shock and random vibration, exposure to salt fog, humidity, temperature cycling, and temperature shock. It may also need to pass a dozen electrical tests. These tests are very costly to perform. And if it fails one of the tests, the hardware may need to be redesigned, which drives up the cost even further. And once it passes all the tests, there’s the documentation that needs to be delivered.
Suffice to say that, unlike a lot of commercial hardware, the military has an extremely low tolerance for failures. They want the system to work, period, even when subjected to years of vibration, temperature cycling, solar radiation, and humidity, and it is willing to pay good money for such a system.
If you think MIL-STD-810 (general environments) testing is harsh, check out SMC-S-016, MIL-STD-202H, MIL-DTL-901E, DOD-E-83578, MIL-STD-461, and the various range safety standards for aircraft and rocket launch vehicles. All of this has to be extensively documented with test records, analyses, test discrepancy root cause and corrective action, test item rework and recertification records, et cetera. And not just to jump through some random bureaucratic hurdles (mostly) but because prior experience and industry standard practices have shown that this is what is necessary to achieve adequate reliability in highly capable, mission critical systems like aircraft, ships, launch vehicles and spacecraft, et cetera.
Every time I see a new contractor claiming that they are going to cut costs by buying COTS items across the board, a cringe because I know they are going to have a steep learning curve ahead. Even when it is reasonable to consider using a commercial component versus milspec or space-rated, there is additional testing and inspection that needs to be done because your hardware bin components are just too variable and/or prone to counterfeit to be reliable in an application where failure of a critical component can result in deaths of a crew or inability to complete an expensive or crucial function.
[Mild Rant]The government is also at fault here. Some government program managers are under pressure to “cut costs.” If a program manager can show they have “cut costs,” they will get awards, accolades, promotions, and photo ops with Important People™. Of course, the cost-cutting “solution” will be eventually proven to not work. But no one cares, because the only thing that matters is the awards, accolades, promotions, and photo ops with Important People™.[/Mild Rant]
