Analysis: NSA Intel System Over Budget (SAIC)

[Barrett808]

Analysis: NSA Intel System Over Budget
According to public records Trailblazer may already be costing the taxpayer twice what was originally expected.
by Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent

Trailblazer - the National Security Agency's premiere intelligence-modernization project - is several hundred million dollars over budget and months behind schedule, the director of the organization has told Congress.

"The cost was greater than anticipated in the tune, I would say, in hundreds of millions," said Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing last week.

"I would say that we underestimated the costs by, I would say, a couple to several hundred million, in terms of the costs."

...

Details of the highly classified Trailblazer program are few. Neither NSA nor the Senate Intelligence Committee will reveal exactly how large the cost overrun is, the total budget for the project or when it was supposed to be completed.

However, according to public records Trailblazer may already be costing the taxpayer twice what was originally expected.

NSA awarded several small contracts in 2001 of $10 million and $50 million to government contractors who were hired to help NSA define exactly what Trailblazer would do and how it would do it.

In 2002 a team led by Science SAIC won the first large contract of $280 million for 26 months to build a technology demonstration platform. Hayden indicated to the committee that the program already costs $200 million to $300 million more than that.

(more)

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-comms-05q.html

[xchrom]

1. ''a couple to several hundred million''

accurate much?

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2. Barrett808

Per DU copyright rules
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[Barrett808]

3. Roger Dodger. n/t