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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

#221

Post by Spooky23 »

themafia wrote: post #79
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…

> 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 American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us.

That’s a problem easily solved.

We have the menace of the Red Maple Leaf people to the north, and perhaps a buffer zone south of the Rio Grand would stave off the caravans, give Texans some breathing room, and make more room for real Americans. Remember, the anti-Christ may show up at any time.

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

#222

Post by dgunay »

Y-bar wrote: post #144
chiph wrote: post #41

> 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…

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies? Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

Is it a MAGA thing, or is it just a Palmer Luckey thing?

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

#223

Post by SpicyUme »

mauvehaus wrote: post #154
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Con…

> Would you nationalize factories but leave them idle? Yes. Historically, these would be the national armories, Navy Yards, and Air Force plants. You know, Springfield Armory (of .30-06 Springfield fame, now a museum), Watertown Arsenal (now a fucking Home Depot, among other things), Charlestown Navy Yard(Boston, now largely a museum), Philadelphia Navy Yard (redeveloped? not my area), Air Force Plant 42 (near LA, st…

Better to keep things running at a low level than fully idle I'd think. Even if the outputs are consumed by testing, development, or even just stockpiled. Lots of things can get lost by not making parts for a while, including the knowledge involved in troubleshooting or replacing parts.

Of course then people would complain about all the money wasted not utilizing the equipment/space enough.

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

#225

Post by sapphicsnail »

ACCount37 wrote: post #46
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.

Does anyone believe these changes are being made for some sort of pragmatic reason? I feel like I'm insane. This administration is doing so many grifts how does anyone take what they say at face value anymore?

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

#226

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #186
Loughla wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's garbage and also illegal. He probably won't get what he deserves since nature will likely get to him first at this rate. Hut there will be a reckoning one day when this alls shifts. I think that's the most likely scenario, but I'm open to two others: - this escalates and we enter Civil War. How things play out from there is unimaginable since there's so many other attack vectors in a civil war with a super power…

Something being illegal only has a meaning if somebody prosecutes it and has the power to stop it. With the DOJ head’s main qualification being loyal to the president there is nothing that will be done.

My other concern is that Congress will spend the next few decades prosecuting, investigating and impeaching each other without doing anything useful for the country. I thought impeaching Trump while knowing that it would never succeed was a big distraction and basically show business. I would like to see much more focus on actual problems of citizens. Trump being in prison won’t improve my life.

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

#229

Post by mpyne »

Alupis wrote: post #72
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 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…

> Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies. By the time these technologies are fielded, a whole generation of employees have retired and leadership has turned over multiple times.

Conversely, the Navy's first SSBN went start to finish in something like 4 years.

And unlike the F-35, which could easily have been an evolution of the existing F-22 design, the Navy had to develop 4 major new pieces of technology, simultaneously, and get them all integrated and working.

1. A reduced-size nuclear warhead (the missile would need to fit inside the submarine for any of this to matter) 2. A way to launch the nuclear missile while submerged 3. A way to reliably provide the nuclear missile with its initial navigation fix at launch 4. A way to fuel the nuclear missile with a safe-enough propellant to be usable on a submerged submarine without significant risk to the crew

The USAF's Century series of fighters were turned around quick. So was the B-52.

Having been involved in defense innovation efforts during my time in uniform, I cannot overemphasize how much the existing acquisition system is counter-productive to the nation's defense, despite 10+ years of earnest efforts dating back to before Trump's first term.

Most of the aspects to it are well-intentioned and all, but as they say the purpose of the system is what it does, and what America's defense acquisition system does is burn up tax dollars just to get us a warmed-over version of something grandma and granddad's generation cooked up during the Cold War.

Its turned into a death spiral because as these programs get more onerous the cost goes up, and who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to just let people go off on a $1B effort with less oversight?

Until it's even possible to deliver things cheaply through the DAS (or WAS or whatever it will be now) we'll never be able to tackle the rest of the improvements. I look forward to reviewing the upcoming changes but Hegseth isn't the first one to push on this, it's a huge rat's nest of problems.

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