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>At my last place of employment (admittedly defense oriented), a typical
>product development life cycle is somewhere in the region of 5 years. This
>is then followed by an in-service life of 25+ years, during which time full
>support _must_ be guaranteed.
This problem is NOT limited to the armed forces. Consider an electronically
controlled power station. (Aren't they all nowadays?) The specs called for
proven equipment. It took two years to award the contract and five years to
build the beast.
It had a design life of 30 years.
It was supplied with 15 years of critical spares. (Don't ask me what
happened after the 15 years were up. By that time I'd emigrated to Canada.)
David (idiot boy) Ibbetson
Fantastic First Footing
Spiffing Saturnalia
Merry Christmas
Happy Hanukah
Yummy Yule
1995