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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

#281

Post by watwut »

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.

I have seen considerable fraud in corporation. Contractors love to take money and not deliver, report more hours then they workee, and then they get more money from allied managers.

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

#282

Post by watwut »

almosthere wrote: post #270
efnx wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s putting a pretty low price on human life.

No, it's putting a high price on human life, but it depends on how you look at it. We can be a nation that gets bombed into nothingness, or the only country that can defend our own or another one. But we can't do that unless we're willing to actually build weapons of war. It's why WWII vets did what they did knowing not every bomb, aircraft or handheld weapon was perfect but still ran in to stop Hitler. I would say t…

Right now USA is cpintry that threatens others and is primary threat to stabilily. Its rhetoric is not building up to defense.

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

#283

Post by exe34 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #268
forgetfreeman wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just, without a hint of irony, compared killing service personnel with civil service office work. Giving someone a job isn't what wasted tax money looks like.

I don’t know what your first sentence means. Do you say “killing” to mean “eliminating the job of”? I don’t see anywhere that mentioned “killing”. If your second sentence is correct, then let’s allocate taxes to digging holes and filling them in? Ad absurdum but I think it applies? Like it seems reasonable to have an opinion on whether a function should continue to be funded by tax dollars. In a properly operating ec…

The argument was literally about pilots dying because of war-time cutting of costs to ensure fast deployment of new tech. Then somebody misread the room and suggested office work was just as much of a waste of life as dying in a horrible accident due to canning of safety testing.

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

#284

Post by probably_wrong »

metaphor wrote: post #212
johnnyanmac wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I think you should also quote this part:

> Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of War shall submit to the President (...) a recommendation on the actions required to permanently change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. This recommendation shall include the proposed legislative and executive actions necessary to accomplish this renaming.

It may currently be a second name, but the explicit intention is for it to become the only one. In HN terms I'd argue that saying "there is no Department of War" is akin to arguing that a piece of software doesn't have feature X because it's only available in the beta release.

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

#285

Post by mmooss »

scandox wrote: post #277
mmooss wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.

The LoTR had a great distrust of power as dangerous and corrupting - the Ring corrupted everyone who tried to use it - and a rejection of those who abided with evil. The mission was to destroy the power, not build a super-army.

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

#286

Post by mmooss »

p_l wrote: post #278
mmooss wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a theory, but the evidence is that VTOL F-35s are needed and used widely. > -B meant delays and issues The -B was the first of the three variants to become operational.

For very special meaning of operational that could be summarized as "USMC could not allow it to fail". And the delays were on the whole project due to forced commonality (in addition to L-M being L-M)

Can you provide any evidence? What I'm stating are public facts. We can always come up with reasons, but we need evidence of what actually happened.

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

#287

Post by almosthere »

watwut wrote: post #282
almosthere wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's putting a high price on human life, but it depends on how you look at it. We can be a nation that gets bombed into nothingness, or the only country that can defend our own or another one. But we can't do that unless we're willing to actually build weapons of war. It's why WWII vets did what they did knowing not every bomb, aircraft or handheld weapon was perfect but still ran in to stop Hitler. I would say t…

Right now USA is cpintry that threatens others and is primary threat to stabilily. Its rhetoric is not building up to defense.

I don't know to me it sounds like Isreal and Russia if you ask, well anyone. NK wants a lot of people dead too.

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

#288

Post by watwut »

rpmisms wrote: post #152
netsharc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how we can tell now whether the other person is a Kool-Aid drinker by how they refer to things. Gulf of Mexico, or Gulf of America?

Department of War is far more honest. The Gulf name doesn't mean anything, it's a joke and we all know it.

It is not joke. He punished companies for not obeying. "It was just a joke bro" is stupid manipulative excuse in normal situations, but in the case of Trump, it is a complete unambigous lie.

It was not a joke, no one laught. It is what republican leader said in all seriouaness and insisted on. And his voters seen it as a show of strength.

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

#289

Post by rpmisms »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #273
rpmisms wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Department of War is far more honest. The Gulf name doesn't mean anything, it's a joke and we all know it.

It's not a joke and I don't know it. Trump is gradually demanding the authority to control every aspect of American life, and you're enabling it by not taking his entry-level steps seriously. I hope you'll realize your mistake while he's still stuck on relatively harmless things.

A gag, a giggle.

> Trump is gradually demanding the authority to control every aspect of American life

Trump, or the federal government? This trend is bipartisan, and renaming the Gulf doesn't really hold a candle to PRISM.

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

#290

Post by kakacik »

monknomo wrote: post #36
pragmatic wrote: post #19

So fast forward five years and 50% of our war materials are produced in foreign countries? I can't help but believe this is going to weaken our war footing because the dumbest people in the room are behind it. Thirsty Pete does not inspire confidence in the Department of War Thunder. I mean on the surface it sounds good, but LEAN is why we had no PPE on hand during covid. In order to have off the shelf supplies we ar…

from the reading I have done, something along the lines of 'bump up 155mm production' is more what is needed not as sexy as drones, but ask the ukranians if they'd rather have drones or artillery

Drones all the way, they go through roughly 1 million a year and this number keeps increasing as time goes.

Artillery was more decisive till cca 2023 when switch to new warfare model happened. Its still important, but not #1. You have (ukraine-made since US switchblades proved inefficient overpriced piece of shit) drones now that have 2-3x the reach, can carry same/bigger payload, steer them till last second, some can come back home for reload. Drone teams are much smaller and more agile compared to artillery, they can drive around in normal SUVs.

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