I’ve been reading about the government report just released about the now-defunct Boeing tanker-leasing deal; the report’s conclusion is that about a zillion rules were broken in order to give Boeing a big handout. No particular surprises there.
But one thing I found interesting was an email quoted, in which some senior official frankly admitted it was a handout, comparing the deal to a '70s-era program in which the Air Force didn’t really need the planes, but bought some just to help the supplier out/line the supplier’s pockets. But the articles I read (none of which I can find right now, blast it, or I’d link) were pretty coy about what program that was.
Anybody out there have any idea which airplane program this refers to?
I think I head something about that about the time the poo was hitting the fan. I don’t remember any of the details except that at times the military has bought equipment just so the manufacturer wouldn’t have to lay off or reassign the workers, engineers, and designers. Apparently the military thought it was worth it (in terms of cost, quality, or speed-to-market time) to keep the production lines open so that the companies wouldn’t have to reassemble teams that would necessarily have less experience, especially if they needed those products in a hurry.
It could have been General Dynamics. The boondoggles in the F-111 program were legion. Something like this could well have been done to keep the company viable during the transition from the F-111 to the F-16. There were all kinds of issues with converting older F-111A airframes to FB-111 specs and building new FB-111 airframes at the same time. It would definitely be an area of interest in trying to find further information about the situation described in the OP. General Dynamics also had limited activity in commercial aviation when competitors like Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell-Douglas had lots of commerical business to help keep them viable.
My first thought was that it was the Air Force version of the Lockheed L-1011. Lockheed was about as down and out as an aviation manufacturer could be at that point. They’d taken a beating on the SR-71 and didn’t have anything new in the pipeline.