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The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

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Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#131

Post by freedomben »

I was active duty Air Force in the mid 00s, and we had a tropospheric scatter terminal called the TRC-170 where the entire manual was reverse engineered. Air Force Technical Manuals aren't the most riveting of documents to read, but man that one was painful. The technology is badass though, and still useful even half a century later!

The story (which I have no idea if is actually true, but it was widely repeated), was that the engineer who built it in the 60s didn't get paid the full amount that he thought he was owed, so he destroyed the technical manual as a middle-finger to the Air Force.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#132

Post by 908B64B197 »

dmurray wrote: post #3

Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its par…

> If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its parts were made and machine replicas if needed?

I suppose they could always call the engineers at Boeing or Lockheed who designed it in the first place. Like getting tech support for your Huawei networking equipment, just use the Cisco guide! [0]

[0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#133

Post by dpierce9 »

dwheeler wrote: post #116

I can't be certain, but I suspect the real problem was that the original contract was signed without requiring the technical data rights and/or delivery of the technical data. This is a common mistake made by the DoD, and can lead to extraordinarily high costs later. Just look at the notice: "The deliverables will include all technical data related to the heat exchanger disassembly, all technical data related to the…

Definitely a real live possibility. It could also just be lost. Probably physical copies, tons of turnover over many years and sites. This seems less likely but there is a perverse incentive not to admit it is lost unless required by law.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#134

Post by aftbit »

"This engineering effort is to reverse engineer the core of the B‐2 Load Heat Exchangers, develop disassembly process to remove defective cores, develop a stacking, vacuum brazing, and welding process to manufacture new heat exchanger cores and to develop a welding process to install the new cores on existing B‐2 Load Heat Exchangers. The requirement includes reverse-engineering the re‐core process for the B‐2 Load Heat Exchangers. The B‐2 Load Heat Exchanger (NSN 1660‐01‐350‐8209FW) uses air and Ethylene Glycol Water (EGW) liquid to produce cold air for the cooling system."

They need to change some plugged up radiators. Good to see that old bombers and old trucks have the same problems.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#135

Post by s1artibartfast »

jaxx75 wrote: post #78
MattGaiser wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very interested in reading case studies where a company both does documentation well and does not get bogged down in vast amounts of paperwork. As yes, plenty of fixes for things are not written down anywhere.

If you haven't read it, you'd probably enjoy (and anyone interested in process) The Toyota Way by Liker.

Unfortunately, every company that I have been at that has tried to implant the Toyota Way just bolted additional processes onto their legacy ones, adding complexity.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#136

Post by h0l0cube »

dwheeler wrote: post #116

I can't be certain, but I suspect the real problem was that the original contract was signed without requiring the technical data rights and/or delivery of the technical data. This is a common mistake made by the DoD, and can lead to extraordinarily high costs later. Just look at the notice: "The deliverables will include all technical data related to the heat exchanger disassembly, all technical data related to the…

> The government program manager (PM) is under a lot of pressure to "get it cheaper"

And let me guess, the 'pressure' comes from government decision makers that live in a perpetual revolving door with industry?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#137

Post by [deleted] »

dwheeler wrote: post #116

I can't be certain, but I suspect the real problem was that the original contract was signed without requiring the technical data rights and/or delivery of the technical data. This is a common mistake made by the DoD, and can lead to extraordinarily high costs later. Just look at the notice: "The deliverables will include all technical data related to the heat exchanger disassembly, all technical data related to the…

[deleted]

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#138

Post by Rebelgecko »

Everyone once in a while you'll see a story in the news like "Congress budgets $x million to keep open a factory that builds 20 tanks a year even though we don't need more tanks"

Even though there's definitely a pork aspect, there is also actual value in being able to keep that sort of business continuity and institutional knowledge alive.

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#139

Post by booi »

alliao wrote: post #126
b-mmxx wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the following: “In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were…

China didn't steal a copy did they? Ah got the dates wrong.

That would be great because then you could just order the parts on Alibaba

Re: The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

#140

Post by m463 »

b-mmxx wrote: post #122
dwheeler wrote: post #116

I can't be certain, but I suspect the real problem was that the original contract was signed without requiring the technical data rights and/or delivery of the technical data. This is a common mistake made by the DoD, and can lead to extraordinarily high costs later. Just look at the notice: "The deliverables will include all technical data related to the heat exchanger disassembly, all technical data related to the…

This reminds me of the following: “In my view, shared by many blue-suiters, this marvelous airplane should still be operational but, alas, that was not to be. One of the most depressing moments in the history of the Skunk Works occurred on February 5, 1970, when we received a telegram from the Pentagon ordering us to destroy all the tooling for the Blackbird. All the molds, jigs, and forty thousand detail tools were…

My heart hurts reading that.

I felt something similar walking through Weird Stuff Warehouse and seeing old SGI workstations that I used to covet sitting on shelves for a pittance. Even if you bought them, you probably didn't have a 13w3 monitor or software to get them up. and now weird stuff is gone itself.

It's that "it's gone and can't come back" feeling.

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