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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

#211

Post by kryogen1c »

We had... the cheap version of procurement? I mean... that's just fucking not true.

My ship threw tools and parts overboard before pulling into a long shipyard overhaul because they knew they would get more.

I knew shipyard workers who got told to come to work and do nothing so they could mark billable hours (worker gets paid, contract is making money on the workers hourly, so who loses? Not counting the dipshit American taxpayer, of course)

New equipment installed with copy and pasted filters, except new equipment has 100x flowrate so filters last weeks instead of years.

Whole system overhauls descoped from the shipyard maintenance plan so the ship could be delivered "early" and bonuses paid.

Cheney and Halliburton?

Stories too numerous to mention. Only someone who's never seen this up close could think we're doing the cost efficient, safe thing.

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

#212

Post by metaphor »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #185
Hizonner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought the executive had the power to rename existing departments and map landmarks. That's why we got "DOGE" disgused under the USDS and the "Gulf of America". If that's not legal, I'll do my best to act shocked.

[flagged]

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

#213

Post by mcswell »

noir_lord wrote: post #7
sebmellen wrote: post #3

Out of all of the hires of this new administration, Hegseth is the most surprisingly competent.

> Out of all of the hires of this new administration, Hegseth is the most surprisingly competent. He is indeed the worlds tallest midget.

I gotta remember that one!

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

#214

Post by HWR_14 »

marssaxman wrote: post #199
waste_monk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, simply open up the sales of tanks to the civilian market. That's a joke, of course, but even if they were demilitarised variants there'd probably still be a market for it.

There definitely is a market for such vehicles: http://www.exarmyvehicles.com/offer/tracked-vehicles/tanks https://mortarinvestments.eu/ArmouredVehicles https://miltrade.com/pages/military-vehicles-for-sale-in-eur... https://tanksales.co.uk/sales/ Ten or fifteen years back, I had an ambition to buy such a vehicle and drive it around at Burning Man. I eventually settled for a deuce-and-a-half, which caused enough stru…

What was frustrating about it? From time to time your exact plan sounded appealing to me.

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

#216

Post by mcswell »

Not sure, but to me this sounds a lot like the song from Paint your Wagon. (I was thinking that it came from The Way the West was Won, which would be more ironic.)

Where am I goin'? I don't know! Where am I headin'? I ain't certain! All I know is I am on my way.

When will I be there? I don't know. When will I get there? I ain't certain. All that I know is I am on my way.

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

#217

Post by canucker2016 »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #170
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…

Back in the day, Lockheed could move very quickly. The P-38 went from proposal to working prototype between February 1937 and January 1939. But there was a cost. Test pilots died The top American fighter pilot of WW2, Richard Bong was killed test piloting the Lockheed P80 jet fighter.

Kelly Johnson, head of Lockheed's Skunk Works, worked on the P-38 (as well as U-2, Blackbird, and the F-117A).

He had a list of rules for managing the design of aircraft. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly....

There's an unwritten 15th rule (from the above-mentioned webpage):

   "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

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

#218

Post by cm2012 »

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…

The F35 is the most in demand military plane in the world for the price. They spent 20 years iterating on it and its now the best plane for the cost with its capabilities.

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

#219

Post by eggsome »

Retric wrote: post #149
thereisnospork wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The SR-71 had a strait forward mission well suited to a specialized airframe, and again you’re focusing on the airframe. Just the software for the helmet alone provides a huge technical advantage that has little to do with how the aircraft is manufactured other than having the appropriate sensors, communication systems, and computing power. Yet through all that bureaucracy what would normally be 3 different airframes…

To be fair the F22 would have been closer to the F35 in price if the number produced were larger so that the R&D was spread over a larger number of airframes. Such a pretty plane.

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

#220

Post by scuff3d »

celloductor wrote: post #182

‘Two organizations ought to be very concerned – China and the defense prime contractors.’ the department was not built with a single country as their focus, and their target will come and go with the times. would have read the whole article the blatant bias is off putting.

> It’s big, bold and brave and long overdue.

I quit reading at this point. Figured I could find something not so full of braindead nonsense.

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