"Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone."

Plutarch

Although it was unbeknown to Daedalus's management at the time, the government's preparatory work on the invisible airplane project had much in common with Project X. The government also had stretched the schedule, reorganized, increased the number of layers of management, and hired a consultant all to no avail. On the other hand, the government, having a great deal more experience than Daedalus at such expedients, moved to the next step almost automatically, a step which is based on the premise that if there is not enough production to support one contractor efficiently, it is then necessary to simultaneously place a second contractor into production so as to enhance competition and thereby increase efficiency. This is much akin to trying to leap deep chasms in two bounds. Nonetheless, this is exactly what the government's manager of this grim fairy tale elected to do. Somehow when the government sets out to put an end to problems, it usually does so by forming the firing squad by standing everyone in a circle. And industry's managers also decided to go for broke. As the saying among development contractors faced with second-source production competitions...