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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

#131

Post by amluto »

Alupis wrote: post #93
themafia wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

> The US currently produces between 30,000-40,000 155mm artillery shells a month, but Ukraine (at peak) expended 10,000 per day[1].

Wars are incredibly expensive, and the US should not be producing weapons, in peacetime, at the rate they would be expended during an active war. What we should have the ability to rapidly scale production.

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

#132

Post by thereisnospork »

Retric wrote: post #94
Alupis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It didn’t take 20 years to make an airframe it took 20 years to do lots of research which eventually resulted in a wide range of systems and multiple very distinct airframes. Hell F-35B does vertical takeoff and still mostly uses the same systems as the other designs, that should tell you something.

It doesn't take 20 years to do that, it takes 20 years to do that and wade through the bureaucratic morass. The SR-71 went from initiation to deployment in under a decade, more than half a century ago. With the myriad of advancements in everything from engineering, computation, to business development/management practices, building new cutting edge planes is the sort of thing we should be getting better and quicker at.

Design iteration cycle-times should be decreasing due to CAD, experimental cycles-times reduced due to the proliferation of rapid-turn 5-axis CNC mills, experimental cycles reduced due to simulation, business processes streamlined due to advancements in JIT manufacturing and six-sigma/kaizen/etc, and so on and so forth. That this isn't occurring is a giant blinking red light that something is wrong, and that we are going to get our lunch eaten by someone who researches, designs, and manufactures with a modicum of competence. Ostensibly China.

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

#133

Post by stinkbeetle »

stackskipton wrote: post #47

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…

> Move fast [is] not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/air-force-blames-oxygen-depri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Andersen_Air_Force_Base_B...

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/2017/07/21/f-35b-helmets-ni...

(etc)

The reality is that developing bespoke solutions with bleeding edge technology is going to result in brand new jets crashing, no matter how much bureaucrats and processes slow down the process. Nothing can substitute for using it.

> Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.

Where "misuse of money" means money not being spent a manner convenient to those who wrote the rules. Which means starting illegal wars, cost-plus contracts, lies about WMDs, no-bid contracts, arms trafficking to dictatorships, pork barreling, and *nudge* *wink* 7 figure do-nothing "consulting" gigs for bureaucrats and generals after they leave the government. Nothing is going to solve that, but if you threw out the whole rule book and started again, it would require a monumental effort to do worse than things have been.

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

#134

Post by mikeyouse »

NickC25 wrote: post #16
giraffe_lady wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The metric of competence here is that he spends less time on his makeup on a daily basis than his boss.

I’m not certain that’s true. One of many absurdities buried by the avalanche of corruption and malfeasance: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hegseth-orders-makeup-studi...

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

#135

Post by jltsiren »

carabiner wrote: post #81
Alupis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's peacetime engineering. These things would be developed 10x faster during a hot war. Look at COVID vaccine in 10 months vs. 7 years normally.

Peacetime funding.

Experts generally expected that there would be effective COVID vaccines by the end of 2020, because vaccine development is not magic. There are several known approaches to creating vaccines, and it was reasonable to expect that some of them would work.

What set COVID vaccines apart was government commitment. Governments around the world bought large quantities of vaccines before it was known whether that particular vaccine would be effective. (Regulatory approval was also expedited, but that it business as usual during serious disease outbreaks.)

The equivalent with fighter jets would be the government committing to buy 200 fighter jets, with an option for many more, from everyone who made a good enough proposal. And paying for the first 200 in advance, even if it later turns out that the proposal was fundamentally flawed and the jets will not be delivered.

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

#136

Post by stinkbeetle »

stackskipton wrote: post #119
Alupis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Manufacturing in western countries was gutted by treasonous politicians bribed by corporations to do an end-run around the environmental laws, workplace regulations, and human rights that had been hard-won by the people over the previous 50-100 years, by allowing these abuses to continue elsewhere without even being required to pay commensurate tariffs or penalties.

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

#137

Post by yesco »

amluto wrote: post #131
Alupis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The US currently produces between 30,000-40,000 155mm artillery shells a month, but Ukraine (at peak) expended 10,000 per day[1]. Wars are incredibly expensive, and the US should not be producing weapons, in peacetime, at the rate they would be expended during an active war. What we should have the ability to rapidly scale production.

Weapons need to be replaced, even ones never used. To be capable of scaling production you need at least some degree of production constantly simmering in the background. Yet even then, there is a limit to how much you can scale up on demand.

The best and cheapest weapons are the ones never used, but making no weapons at all is the most expensive choice in the end.

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

#138

Post by lovich »

simonw wrote: post #109
lovich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s using partisan terminology like Department of War. Fairly certain he’s a partisan

Sadly if he called it the Department of Defense he would also be expressing a partisan preference. Even the name of that arm of the government is "partisan" right now.

At least that’s the legal name. And yea, kinda hard not to be partisan currently with everything being made partisan

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

#139

Post by beachy »

SparkBomb wrote: post #128
NickC25 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually "good enough" is often actually superior to "best-in-class" and "fully capable" because they are simpler to make and as a result you can make more of them . It is often better to have 1000 things that are "good enough" then 100 things that are "best-in-class".

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

- Stalin

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

#140

Post by trenchpilgrim »

amluto wrote: post #131
Alupis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The US currently produces between 30,000-40,000 155mm artillery shells a month, but Ukraine (at peak) expended 10,000 per day[1]. Wars are incredibly expensive, and the US should not be producing weapons, in peacetime, at the rate they would be expended during an active war. What we should have the ability to rapidly scale production.

> What we should have the ability to rapidly scale production.

How should the US make the manufacture of, say, the primers for artillery shells "rapidly scalable" in a way that is different from building a large stockpile? Be specific. Would you nationalize factories but leave them idle? You certainly won't have time to build or retool factories and staff them during a peer conflict. How would you present this to Congress vs. running those factories in peacetime as a jobs program?

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