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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

#321

Post by donkeybeer »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #226
johnnyanmac wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

Trump being hanged would improve your life immensely. It sends a message to future criminals snd traitors.

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

#322

Post by XorNot »

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…

$300 drones are not doing much of anything in Ukraine. Maybe some light weight ISR, but they don't even go-to the front line before having several grand of hardened radio equipment put on them - at which point they're not $300 anymore...

The flippant commentaries about drones help no one: they're a significant change in the intel environment, but nobody carefully inspects assumptions about cost efficiency or on the ground conditions.

Expensive drones are being used to fulfill roles which artillery fires could fulfill far more effectively, except both sides of the conflict don't have enough artillery but for vastly different reasons (whereas significant amounts of supplies are coming from a party which is more or less arming both of them: China's factories).

It should be noted that Ukraine has invested significant effort attempting to acquire US spec long range weapons like ATACMS and Tomahawk, and F-16 and HIMARS were both a big deal which took significant effort to get. Drones have created a new warfare dimension, but I find the way they're often discussed lacks of a lot of rigor or bearing on how they're actually being used.

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

#323

Post by poulpy123 »

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…

> 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

Up until WW1, the US were not a global military power, and because of their location, they had little reason do become one. Additionally they were not involved directly in ww1, so they had little reason to develop quickly a military industry that was at the level of western europe

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

#324

Post by leoedin »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #252
ethbr1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing in western countries was gutted by the price of labor (read: rising standard of living relative to global averages). 1. It's difficult to manufacture competitively when a local living wage is in the upper echelons of global wages. 2. It's often cheaper to manufacture something semi-manually (e.g. 80% automated) than invest in buying and maintaining full automation.

The Chinese laborers working in BYD and foxconn factories have higher wages than their equivalents in Mexico and Vietnam building products sold for 3-5x as much in the US. The cheapest labor in the world is found in Africa and yet Western industrial manufacturing has largely ignored the continent. The price of labor isn't the most important factor here.

Western countries wouldn't have moved manufacturing to China in the past if wages weren't cheaper.

I think the cost of labour now is kind of irrelevant. It was the cost of labour (and China being a stable country with favourable rule of law) that drove offshoring in the 90s and 2000s. The Chinese manufacturers chose to invest in process improvement and automation rather than just chasing the cheapest labour - and so now they've got a massive technical advantage.

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

#325

Post by poulpy123 »

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…

> We can be a nation that gets bombed into nothingness

There is literally no one that can bomb the US into nothingness. Even if the US decided to stop develop new weapons, they cannot be invaded. They are too big, too rich and too protected by the ocean and weak neighbors for that

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

#326

Post by poulpy123 »

I don't care either way, but if there is something that cannot be said about the US it is that they are bad at creating and producing weapons. I bet it's some scheme to get more money from the taxpayer for the friends of Donald Trump. Also I cannot take serioulsy someone saying that the US cannot match ukraine production of drones

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

#327

Post by ElFitz »

yesco wrote: post #137
amluto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

As a big part of Europe is learning at great cost.

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

#328

Post by bootsmann »

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…

Is this just their marketing language or have they independently verified this? IIRC their interceptors got absolutely rinsed at trials in Alaska so I’d be very wary of their claims at this point.

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

#329

Post by ACCount37 »

gyulai wrote: post #320
ACCount37 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to war. If you can't sustain a conflict, you will lose to anyone who can.

There's no need to welcome me to war. I'm not in one, despite the fact that the powers that be are hellbent on getting me (and everyone else) into one.

Oh, yes. That's exactly how it works. No one would ask you "do you want to get into a war"? Ukraine didn't want to get into a war. Turns out it wasn't their call to make!

Least you can do is be prepared. If a hostile country believes "oh, they can't handle a war, it's going to be so easy", the risk of that country trying shit goes up. And if you really can't, the war would be more devastating than if you can.

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

#330

Post by ElFitz »

SpicyUme wrote: post #223
mauvehaus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: NASA chasing around for Saturn V blueprints and the blueprints for the equipment needed to make the actual rocket parts.
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