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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

#211

Post by tonyedgecombe »

fbelzile wrote: post #184
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…

Here in Canada, our air force takes out airworthy parts from planes, like emergency locator transmitter (ELT) batteries, before they're sent to museums. They have a stash of plane parts in a hangar somewhere for cases just like this.

During the Falklands war the RAF had to raid museum's planes for parts for their Vulcan bombers.

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

#212

Post by Mauricebranagh »

ecpottinger wrote: post #165
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…

The same was done the Canadian Avro Arrow plane, and the British Black Knight rocket. What happens once you join government, they take away your brains?

I remember a trip from school in the late 70's to Cranfield university and they had a TSR2 airframe sitting sadly at the back of one of the hangers.

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

#214

Post by throwanem »

rvba wrote: post #207
ecpottinger wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was done the Canadian Avro Arrow plane, and the British Black Knight rocket. What happens once you join government, they take away your brains?

Probably someone was bribed by KGB to do it.

Robert McNamara as a deep-cover KGB "illegal", there's an 80s espionage potboiler I'd love to read. I'm honestly a little surprised no one actually wrote it.

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

#215

Post by vertis »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #190
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…

It's also possible the government did get all the technical data and then lost it. It has to be somebody's job to archive and catalog that stuff, and the cost of archiving comes out of somebody's budget. The pressure to just toss old dusty paper files to cut costs can be enormous. It might have happened because "Joe Smith was the archivist and he retired 10 years ago and we needed the space." If the data was classifi…

Slightly off-topic:

A few years ago I wanted to renovate an apartment. I dutifully applied for the plans from the local council. Only to be told they no longer existed.

I had this, "Well then, it was always like that" moment.

Didn't end up knocking out the wall, for other reasons, but if the plans no longer existed who was to argue that it wasn't always like that.

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

#216

Post by Naga »

ecpottinger wrote: post #165
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…

The same was done the Canadian Avro Arrow plane, and the British Black Knight rocket. What happens once you join government, they take away your brains?

The Avro Arrow being destroyed is a meme in Canada, but there's a lot of questions at least in the historical community on whether that was a blessing in disguise. The state of the art was rapidly moving away from bombers coming over the North Pole (which an interceptor like the Avro Arrow) which would have rendered a fleet of Arrows expensive and useless.

That being said, it destroyed a large part of the Canadian aeronautical industry since Avro ceased operations soon after and the well trained workforce was scattered to the States. There's a long history of Canadian governments doing shortsighted things like killing industries and then paying out of the nose to try to restart the industry every generation/ See shipbuilding in Canada and how Canada can't build ships for its own navy now, despite being one of the largest shipbuilders in the world in the early 20th century.

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

#217

Post by imtringued »

giantrobot wrote: post #170
est31 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how NASA had to design completely new rocket engines for SLS because while they still had the plans for the Saturn-V rocket engines, back then plans weren't followed to such high accuracy as nowadays a 3D model would be followed. Each engine was custom tailored with small modifications here and there. The knowledge to custom tailor them was lost, so they went with designing new engines from scratch inst…

It reminds you of a thing that never happened? That's a neat trick. The SLS uses the RS-25 engines, the Space Shuttle Main Engines which are in no way an engine "designed from scratch". Additionally the F-1 engines were redesigned using more modern techniques around 2012 with the F-1B [0]. The SLS went with the RS-25s for a number of reasons. While the F-1s provide high thrust they're not as efficient. The RS-25s can…

The comment you are replying to is "lying by omission" (if you want to call it that) but the video talks about your point so the snarky tone puts you in a worse spotlight than the original comment.

Basically, someone created a F1 engine inspired design with modern manufacturing technology but ultimately it was never used.

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

#218

Post by csunbird »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #144
jandrese wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People assuming the worst mostly. US intelligence used to always overestimate Soviet capabilities too. Usually by a large margin. It’s a bit terrifying when you realize that the people at the top don’t know what they are doing either. Much of the world runs on guesswork and inertia. This is also true of most companies.

"It’s a bit terrifying when you realize that the people at the top don’t know what they are doing either. Much of the world runs on guesswork and inertia." In my early 20's this 'discovery' shocked me

Yeah, as an adult in late twenties, I am realizing this fact as well. Nobody has any idea on what they are doing, world is in chaos.

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

#219

Post by geomark »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #155
geomark wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As some siblings have commented, it's probably the failure to get back and document it. But the desire for job protection is not uncommon. I saw it when I worked on testing satellite power converters at a large aerospace company. There were procedures and paperwork for everything, but the test procedure for one series of power converters did not work. Only one technician knew how to actually test them. He led me thro…

So many problems could be solved by giving every adult $1,000,000 in a one-time, tax-free, no strings attached, lump sum. The technician refused to document the procedure because he was afraid of becoming replaceable. He was afraid of becoming replaceable because he was afraid of losing his job. He was afraid of losing his job because he would lose his sole source of income. Let's just give people free money already.

I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm. But I never know these days because a lot of people actually avocate things like this. After seeing what happens to most people after they receive a lot of free stuff, especially large sums of money, I would never advocate something like this. There's also the rather obvious issue about how it would be paid for but, again, there a lots of people who think you can just print money out of thin air forever and nothing will ever happen.

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

#220

Post by sandos »

I'm not surprised. I was recently tasked with a very simple change in a bootloader in an industrial product used in the nuclear industry. Part of the task was also to find the latest sourcecode that was actually compiled into the product. The last known changes was some 20+ years ago!

I, as a contractor, and an employee (who was the one who actually coded the last change!) spent more than a week trying to hunt down any leads to anyone who could know where the source could be found. In the end we gave up, we had no leads at all it turned out. The code was not developed in the same company, and not even those working peripherally with these things were still working in the company.

In the end, the 15 lines of assembly that was supposed to be reverted/removed was done, but the uncertainty of the C-code part of the bootloader and some evidence that the known code was in fact no the latest and greatest, the change was abandoned altogether and a workaround in another part used instead.

I reverted to binary comparisons of machine code, and I also suggested editing the actual machine code to avoid recompiling other parts of the code, but it wasn't a very popular option and I advised against it if there were a possible workaround.

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