1) The U.S. Department of Defense has a long history of sponsoring projects that have questionable usefulness. If you were assigned as a member of a project review team for a defense project, what criteria would you insist such a project has in order to be supported? In other words, what are the bare essentials needed to support such a project?
2) Why, in your opinion, is there such a long history of defense projects overshooting their budgets or failing some critical performance metrics? (Consider other project cases in this text, including the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle discussed in Chapter 5.)
3) “The mystery is not that the Zumwalt was cancelled. The mystery is why it took so long for it to be cancelled.” Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?
4) Google “criticisms of the Littoral Combat Ship” and identify some of the problems that critics have listed. In light of these problems, why do you think the Navy has pressed ahead with the development of the LCS?