We don’t need more weapons. We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda.
The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
111–120 of 527 posts
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#112As 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…
The F-35 was Lockheed's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSF has roots going back to 1996. The X-35 first flew in 2000. The F-35 first flew in 2006, and didn't enter service until 2015(!!). That's nearly 20 years to develop a single airframe. Yes, it's the most sophisticated airframe to date, but 20 years is not trivial. The F-35 had many issues during trials and early deployment - some are excusable fo…
Most of time, this delay is in peacetime, it makes sense to do a ton of testing, wait until testing results then go to full production. Your primary concern is not spending a ton of money and not getting a bunch of people killed. It's basically waterfall in fighter development.
Wartime is more agile, you quickly close the loop but downside is sometimes does not work and when it does not work, there might be a people cost. US has done it with fighters before, F-4U Corsair was disaster initially in carrier landings and killed some pilots in training. However, this was considered acceptable cost to get what was clearly very capable fighter out there.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#113As 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…
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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But what's the limit, especially when there is no sign "the next big war" is imminent or big? If we assume that we'll have a Ukraine-like scenario, then we might as well start with nationalizing industries like US steel, snatching "untrustworthy" residents to put them into internment camps, start rationing how much food people can eat, and... Heyyyyy waitaminute...
If you listen to generals and admirals for the past few years, much of the US military force alignments and procurements have been around fighting on islands in the Pacific...
This is why the US Marines don't have tanks anymore.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does. https://www.war.gov/
Bad news. Trump and Hegseth do not have the authority to rename the Department of Defense, no matter what they put on a Web site. That requires an act of Congress, which hasn't happened. And probably won't, because even if they could convince Congress to do it, that would require them to ask ... and their whole modus operandi is based around pretending to have authority they don't have. Calling it the Department of W…
The ada.gov website has a banner that reads, "Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated."
Trump is the king.
Edit: To be clear, I think it's complete and utter garbage. I'm assuming people think I think it's a good thing? It's not a good thing. At all.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#116We don’t need more weapons. We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda.
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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#117As 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…
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I mean the US has a long history of killing people due to bad designs and cut corners. Everyone says cut safety for cost until 50 people die in a death trap.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#118As 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…
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> …and they're about to ban windowless bedrooms which will make office-to-housing conversions impossible.
Where is this not banned?
And it’s not like offices don’t have windows or you can’t cut them. The ban on windowless bedrooms is supposed to prevent renting out a utility closet as a “rustic studio”.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline. They decided to make one airframe in three variants for three different branches. They were trying to spend money they didn't have and thought this corner cutting would save it. > Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field next-generation military technologies. It's the funding. The American appetite for new…
The problem clearly is, once a need is identified - it can be costly or ruinous to wait 20+ years to realize the solution. The DoW is clearly signaling they want the "Need -> Solution" loop tightened, significantly, sacrificing cost for timeliness. That puts the US on good footing, ready to face peer and near-peer, next-generation warfare. If Ukraine has taught us anything, it's off-the-shelf - ready today - weapons…
Sure because we decided to gut manufacturing in this country. It was deliberate decision made not by DoD following Federal Acquisition rules but by beancounters who didn't want to spend money on keeping manufacturing alive. Since we don't have civilian manufacturing base in this country and military does not want to buy a ton of artillery shells just for them to go idle, here we are.
Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
#120We don’t need more weapons. We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda.
> We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda.
Granting for the sake of argument the (gravely-unrealistic) premise, we have to "skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is" — the father of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, a.k.a. The Great One.