Faster procurement: The Army Way

Flashback to the early 1980s, when this pilot fish is a U.S. Army lieutenant responsible for training soldiers in electronic countermeasures -- in simple terms, jamming enemy radio signals.

"Our mission was to teach various Army personnel how to use some very high-powered HF and VHF radio jammers that ran off 400Hz power," says fish. "Our 'facilities' consisted of several old buildings that were located just down a short hill from the senior non-commissioned officers' family housing area."

Unfortunately, those jammers run off a pair of World-War-Two-era devices that convert regular 60Hz electricity to 400Hz. And the converters -- which have been endlessly repaired over the decades -- have just failed again, with a new class of dozens of students set to arrive in a few weeks.

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