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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#41

Post by chiph »

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis

One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to build. (the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic)

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#45

Post by danesparza »

jachee wrote: post #31
SirFatty wrote: post #10

Department of Defense... unless Congress changes the name.

Yeah… just in the use of those glorified nicknames tells me a lot about the author’s standpoints, and dictates the size of the grain of salt I take their opinions with.

He launched the "lean" movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank

So of course he's excited about this.

sigh

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#46

Post by ACCount37 »

fnord77 wrote: post #11

I feel uneasy about the govt taking the "move fast and break things" approach.

It's what Ukraine was forced to do, because the more traditional approaches failed them.

It's wiser to enact change before the next big war happens and the same exact failures pop up in the US MIC too.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#47

Post by stackskipton »

As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.

Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue.

Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#48

Post by enraged_camel »

andrewmutz wrote: post #20
giraffe_lady wrote: post #4

Embarrassing regurgitation of propaganda. This is basically the military DOGE. Are these systems dysfunctional in some ways, could well-intended sweeping reforms improve them? Sure, maybe, I don't know much about it. Is that what's happening here? No, this a way to get the existing functions out from under the oversight and constraints of acquisition laws to reduce friction for corruption and war profiteering. If you…

Steven Blank (the author) is a respected member of the startup community and is not partisan. He's been working with the defense department for 10 years (across both administrations) to modernize the way the military buys technology. His work to create the "hacking for defense" project to modernize things is not at all like DOGE and preceeds it by many years https://www.h4d.us/

>> Steven Blank (the author) is a respected member of the startup community and is not partisan.

Then why is he calling it Department of War when the official name is Department of Defense?

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#49

Post by ACCount37 »

NickC25 wrote: post #12
giraffe_lady wrote: post #4

Embarrassing regurgitation of propaganda. This is basically the military DOGE. Are these systems dysfunctional in some ways, could well-intended sweeping reforms improve them? Sure, maybe, I don't know much about it. Is that what's happening here? No, this a way to get the existing functions out from under the oversight and constraints of acquisition laws to reduce friction for corruption and war profiteering. If you…

It's also allowing for "good enough" solutions to enter the field of battle. Which is fucking frightening. We don't want "good enough", we want weapons that are fully capable and best-in-class. After all, that's why the Department's budget is nearly a trillion dollars a year. We aren't paying for good enough, we're paying for the best of the best of the best. We should first solve for why we've allowed massive scope…

Is an off the shelf FPV drone with a grenade strapped to it a "best in class" weapon?

No.

By now, its battlefield lethality exceeds that of small arms and artillery shells.

Take that as a lesson on "best in class" systems. The "best" system is often one that's barely "good enough", but can be manufactured at scale.

And, what can US manufacture at scale today? Oh.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#50

Post by Brybry »

fragmede wrote: post #21
pragmatic wrote: post #19

So fast forward five years and 50% of our war materials are produced in foreign countries? I can't help but believe this is going to weaken our war footing because the dumbest people in the room are behind it. Thirsty Pete does not inspire confidence in the Department of War Thunder. I mean on the surface it sounds good, but LEAN is why we had no PPE on hand during covid. In order to have off the shelf supplies we ar…

The lack of PPE manufacturing in the US after 2021 is a travesty that does not simplify to LEAN is why we didn't. Dismantling the pandemic response unit didn't help. Not replenishing a stockpile of masks that existed for that specific reason didn't help. A lack of tooling supply base didn't help, Straight up corruption; no bid government contracts going to friends of the administration with no. proven capability to d…

Which 3M PPE factory folded?

Cursory searching says in 2020 they created a new production line in Wisconsin and moved it to 3M Aberdeen.[1][2]

If you look on Google street view dates for the Aberdeen factory and compare 2019 to 2023 it had a big expansion that's still there.

The other major 3M PPE factory, 3M Valley, was expanded in 2024. [3]

Edit: For the curious, Honeywell did fire their pandemic mask factory workers, closed a pandemic mask factory, and then exited the PPE business entirely. [4][5][6]

[1] https://www.startribune.com/3m-says-it-s-on-track-with-n95-p...

[2] https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/coronavirus/us-policy...

[3] https://news.3m.com/2024-05-03-3M-expands-facility-in-Valley...

[4] https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/honeywell-manufactured-...

[5] https://www.wpri.com/business-news/honeywell-smithfield-faci...

[6] https://www.honeywell.com/us/en/press/2025/05/honeywell-comp...

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