Open trackbacks! Now, if I could just get comments working…if you have one, email it until I can get the background issues cleared up. I’m sure I can kludge it in when I get it….

So, post your work here!

Sea stories?? Yes…it will be here in a few hours…busy day here…it also will be in the “Australian” theme of the previous two weeks….UPDATE: Here is the promised story

I had a Royal Australian Naval Officer, LCDR Kim Bailey-Jones, as my project officer for the PERRY Class FFG Combat Direction Systems computer program. This was a standing exchange billet, as the RAN had 4 FFGs in their fleet and cost shared in the maintenance and upgrades for the program.

Money was getting tight in the 1994-95 time frame for the military in general, and we regularly received calls from the main program sponsor, Program executive Officer – Theater Air Defense (PEO-TAD) to recall funds from the authorized “SEATASK.” On most occasions, I was asked to respond with how to we might absorb a $1.1M cut (for an overall funding line of $11M) for the various PEO-TAD projects covered. LCDR Jones sat down and sharpened his pencil and typing effort in a spreadsheet, so as to make his point in the upcoming Quarterly Progress Review to our TAD sponsors.

As we were gathered in the large command auditorium, and it was LCDR Jone’s turn to review his project’s status. He got to his budgeting slide and said: “If you can’t give me this much, then just cancel the program and save the money (which was several million).” Of course, he has pre-briefed the “bombshell” up the chain of command and had approval to say such a thing.

Bottom line, the expertise required to safely and responsibly maintain the program needed 4 discrete fields of expertise, and his bottom line funding line represented the barest of funds to keep those four people on staff for such work. Well, the PEO Rep, an Engineering Duty Captain certainly was taken back, but, when Kim made his case, his logic was infallible and there really wasn’t much to be said, but just to note the amount of funding that must remain in place if the FFG-7 Class was to stay at sea.

Oh, I had a Canadian Armed Force officer on staff, too….