Last year, downtime posed a problem for 18%f respondents, with losses typically ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions.

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He will be succeeded in the F-35 job by Lorraine Martin, a similarly cerebral problem solver who has served as F-35 deputy program manager and previously headed other Lockheed aircraft efforts.

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The problem is that, as F Scott Fitzgerald might have said, the top one per cent are different from you and me.

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The problem is--assuming the F-35 sees the light of day in a timely manner--that this aircraft simply doesn't do the job in air-to-air combat that the F-22 does, nor does it have the F22's ability to penetrate sophisticated defenses.

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Cost overruns as they affect continued allied support for procurement of the F-35 comprise another problem the firm must resolve.

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That the problem with GM and Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ) are those greedy unions.

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The problem of cost overruns lies not so much in the F-22 itself as in the entire government procurement and development process, an area that badly needs reform.

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Then, the best technocrats, who could move easily between public and private sector, applying the same top-down problem-solving skills to both, were people such as Robert McNamara, recruited as defence secretary by John F.

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