Page 234 - MY STORY

This directive from senior management was followed by

assigning my old boss, G. as head of the proposal effort,
and separate from the Phantom Works. I was not a happy
camper – I did not think this would be a winner for a lot of

reasons!

Several months later, within about three months of

submitting our proposal for the Design Definition Phase
to the JASSM Program Office, my Phantom Works
management asked me to “take a look at JASSM and tell

us what you think.” The program had stuck dutifully to
what corporate leadership had instructed them to do, in

spite of the fact that those senior managers had moved on
or retired.

The program team tried desperately to make the JASSM a

SLAM derivative, but this was just was not going to work.
The only thing that was common to SLAM at this point in

time was the engine. Everything else had changed! The
team's design, under G, would not meet the DoD
customer requirements in many, many ways.

My response to my management’s inquiry was, “This dog
don’t hunt!” When they asked me what I thought should

happen at this stage of our design study, I asked for