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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

#241

Post by stinkbeetle »

ethbr1 wrote: post #236
stinkbeetle wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was gutted by what I said it was gutted by. The price of labor I include in workplace regulations but I could have called it out on its own too. If corporations could not have moved operations offshore to exploit workers and the environment in other countries for lower cost, then they would not have. They were permitted to. Where the old "labor costs did killed it" canard really falls over is when you look at…

> Mining, farming, forestry, fishing, things like that. Traditionally a lot of those industries have had high labor input costs too. They miraculously didn't all fall over like manufacturing though. Mining has been dropping since the 80s [0]. Farming, forestry, fishing are estimated to decline by 3% in the next 10 years [1]. After having fallen from ~50% of the US population in 1870 already. It's cheaper to do things…

> Mining has been dropping since the 80s [0].

> Farming, forestry, fishing are estimated to decline by 3% in the next 10 years [1]. After having fallen from ~50% of the US population in 1870 already.

You're linking to employment. Like manufacturing, these industries have been significantly automated and mechanized. So yes they have been employing fewer people. Corporations can't move the land and minerals and oil and gas offshore though, so those industries have not been killed. The cost of labor didn't kill them. That's despite all these minerals and petrochemicals and farmland available all around the global south too.

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

#242

Post by astrange »

nradov wrote: post #181
astrange wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Bullshit. Check the municipal fire code in any major US city. There are explicit requirements around using Windows for egress and fire rescue.

Windows above the first few floors. See the thread. You'd have to break into them, since they aren't required to be openable.

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

#243

Post by mmooss »

p_l wrote: post #143
Retric wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

F-35B was added to JSF to ensure Lockheed (who had been working on exactly that since 1980s even to the point of licensing designs from USSR ) was the only company that could win the contract.

What evidence is there of that?

And without the F-35B, what would be flown by the US Marines, and by most other countries' aircraft carriers, all of which require vertical take-off and landing?

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

#244

Post by senkora »

pjdesno wrote: post #239

The mere fact that the title says "Department of War" is a raging red flag...

Do you mean a red flag for the quality of the article, or for the actions of the department? "Department of War" is currently a real name for the department:

> On September 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing "Department of War" and "secretary of war" as secondary titles to the main titles of "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense." The terms must be accommodated by federal agencies and are permitted in executive branch communications, ceremonial settings, and non-statutory documents. However, only an act of Congress can legally and formally change the department's name and secretary's title, so "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense" remain legally official.[10][11] Trump described his rebranding as an effort to project a stronger and more bellicose name and said the "defense" names were "woke".[12]

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

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

#245

Post by mythrwy »

credit_guy wrote: post #180
carabiner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not a guarantee. We look at WW2 and think that what happened then will happen at any other time. But in WW1 the US had to borrow rifles from France. WW1 was a total disgrace as far as the US military industrial complex was concerned. I know I'm committing a bit of a sin, today marks the 107th anniversary of the end of WW1 and that end was possible because of the US involvement. But, uncharacteristically for t…

They borrowed (or rented for $1 for the duration of the war) binoculars from US citizens for WWI. Then returned them after the war was over. Patriotic people sent them in.

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

#246

Post by mmooss »

potato3732842 wrote: post #196
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…

As everyone with functioning eyeballs and more memory than a goldfish who has hung around a large organization more than a year knows, you quickly run out of blood to write in and start writing in "well that could've been worse if the starts had aligned, let's write a rule about it". I used to work for a defense contractor. My former coworkers are probably cheering right now.

The contractors cheer because there are fewer limitations on poor quality products, project management, and fraud.

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

#247

Post by mmooss »

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.

It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people.

One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc.

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

#248

Post by mmooss »

dgoodell wrote: post #104

I think we use the same PPBE process at NASA. Many of the systems and procedures that NASA uses are are defense-derived. If it's anything like what we do, then it's a total mess and we mostly just go through the motions with it, knowing it doesn't actually reflect reality and it's kind of a waste of time for everybody. However, it's risky to assume that scrapping a crappy system will result in things being better. Th…

NASA turns out amazing results, and to the point of DoD's goals, the most amazing technology in human history. So the system 'works'.

Is there a non-crappy system for managing projects and organizations that large?

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

#249

Post by dboreham »

mmooss wrote: post #243
p_l wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-35B was added to JSF to ensure Lockheed (who had been working on exactly that since 1980s even to the point of licensing designs from USSR ) was the only company that could win the contract.

What evidence is there of that? And without the F-35B, what would be flown by the US Marines, and by most other countries' aircraft carriers, all of which require vertical take-off and landing?

Harrier 2.0

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

#250

Post by mmooss »

thatguymike wrote: post #14

Based on this article alone, I can believe this is a good thing. The US military suffers incredibly from its monopsony position and without a doubt will get a heavy wakeup call (read: dead young people) next time it has to fight a real war. In addition the army should be the most accountable and results oriented branch of government, since it’s the only one that’s actively oppositional. If we can’t fix procurement th…

> Based on this article alone

Isn't it unwise to rely 'alone', in any way, on a clearly partisan article like this one?

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