The shameful waste and delay which characterise the sorry history of equipment procurement should never have been tolerated.
One that drew widespread criticism was that the organization, which had an approved budget in 2010 of almost $45 million, had overpaid an equipment procurement contract by $650,000.
The usual suspects blamed for the hospital's failure included corruption in the Andhra Pradesh Medical Services and Infrastructure Development Corporation (A.P.M.S.I.D.C), the state government's equipment procurement agency, and lack of funding.
The National Audit Office reported financial irregularities at the Red Cross on June 26, including that it had overpaid an equipment procurement contract by $650,000.
But beneath the report on defence equipment procurement lies a much bigger question: who exactly is running defence and security policy in this country, and on what criteria.
The Ministry of Defence claims that it recognises that the world has changed and that a new approach is required to defence equipment, procurement and support.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president had opted for an overhaul of the equipment procurement process – rather than an end to it – because some of the material transferred had proved useful.
They expect next month's report from a "national defence panel" to reinforce their view that both the QDR and the task-force were too timid.The QDR assumed that defence budgets will not rise beyond their current level ($268 billion in fiscal 1998) but argued that, in order to replace ageing equipment, procurement funds should rise from about $45 billion a year to $60 billion.
Certainly there are themes here that have been echoed in the UK for quite some time - more joined-up government in the approach to security, better intelligence fusion, a root and branch reform of defence equipment procurement, to name but three.
"We're sharing our plans at a more detailed level with our top 10 or so suppliers to help them focus on areas where we think they have the most opportunities," said Paul A. Lacouture, president of the group that oversees most equipment procurement for Verizon.
