Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

steveblank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 527 posts

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

#351

Post by ACCount37 »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #225
ACCount37 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you think that The Entirety Of US Government is one monolithic and self-consistent person that only ever does things for one purpose only?

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

#352

Post by ExoticPearTree »

moomin wrote: post #271
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.

I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

> I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

Probably because if people could buy tanks to protect themselves, then the police would also need tanks to deconflict a situation where someone with a tank is upset and the damages are a bit higher when tank rounds start flying around. Imagine two neighbors getting into it in a a town, not to mention a city.

Even portable nukes are a stretch in the logic of "I need to protect my home" from intruders, not to mention the hundred kiloton yield ones.

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

#353

Post by scott_w »

potato3732842 wrote: post #335
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what value does the bureaucratic process add if it's the first thing that gets shitcanned when good results in good time matter? This is like asking what good do reserves do if you spend them down in a crisis. The bureaucracy aims to keep waste and corruption to a minimum during peacetime. In war, the aims change--you're now not only ramping up production, but the penalties for fucking with a war are typically more…

Think about the local implications of what you just said. If we toss the process when effective expenditure of resources toward results matter and consequences are the most serious then the process must be less efficient at producing good results for the expenditure than the corruption (or whatever else the process is replacing). So then why are we running it at all? You can absolutely make an argument about acceptin…

War and peacetime are two different things. During wartime you need lots of materiel quickly, so value for money estimates, anti corruption practices all get reduced in the name of production numbers at all costs. Verification is easier because you go directly from the assembly line to the front line. If it doesn’t work, you find out and make changes quickly. You know what you need because you’re in the process of using it.

In peacetime, everything is different. You don’t know who your next opponent is going to be, so you need to keep options open. You don’t know if you’ll have a war before the equipment you just bought rots away. You don’t want wartime production levels and stifling your wider economy. You also don’t want a Russia situation where you ignore value for money estimates and audits only to find the money you spent on missiles went in the back pocket of a random colonel.

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

#354

Post by p_l »

mmooss wrote: post #286
p_l wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "special casing" of "operational capability" is public fact - USMC decided to claim initial operational capability on aircraft that didn't even have complete SMS (stores management system), something that was missing even after first "front line" USAF units got theirs. Block 2 software had only minimal air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities implemented. Block 3 was the infamous one with constant reboots, with Block 3F the first planned to provide full not just weapons capability, but even flight envelope. Heck, in 2015, they barely lifted limitations on attitude and acceleration/wing loading after finally testing them in flight.

Conflicts between requirements of -A/-C and -B, among other reasons due to weight, were discussed as far and wide as GAO reports, because like with F-111, there was strong political push for maximum commonality, which resulted in cascading issues - for example, -B added 18 months around 2004 to -A and -C when the fuselage ended up too heavy for -B to operate with any equipment, and extensive rework had to be done on all models to shave ~1200kg. By 2010 there was discussion to cancel -B altogether.

On a topic closer to typical fare on HN, ALIS (IIRC now renamed to ODIN, but awarded back to the same team...), the ground support system critical to even running the airplane, was close to useless in 2015. Something that anyone with experience with that part of Lockheed probably expected and were not listened to.

Ultimately the aircraft is probably pretty good (I am saying probably because some crankiness isn't much talked unless you're actually embedded with users of such hardware, and is secret - there I have only my suspicions), but the road there was more painful than it should be - and ofc I would not trust it if I was foreign buyer for reasons of not just software black boxes but also dependency on US-located labs to provide mission data updates - at least I have not heard of that aspect changing. We used to joke it was first aircraft with "phone home" license system...

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

#355

Post by watwut »

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…

The high level corruption is core reason why nothing can be done for actual problems of citizens. And the more corruption, the less will be done. Impeaching Trump would be first step toward word where lives of citizens can be improved.

What happened was the opposite and lives of citizens will be worst off.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #352
moomin wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

> I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes. Probably because if people could buy tanks to protect themselves, then the police would also need tanks to deconflict a situation where someone with a tank is upset and the damages are a bit higher when tank rounds start flying around. Imagine two neighbors getting into it in a a town, not to mention a city. Even p…

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by ethin »

senkora wrote: post #244
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 federa…

I'm 99 percent sure that executive orders are not at all legally binding. They're just ways of setting out policy. But the president does not have the authority to override congress with an executive order. An executive order can say whatever the president wishes.

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

#358

Post by tokai »

rpmisms wrote: post #289
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You, and people like you, are a part of the problem.

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

#359

Post by Y-bar »

mellosouls wrote: post #303
Y-bar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nerd culture. Def not maga, more silicon valley and tech startup types.

I'm not so sure, JD Vance created a company called Narya after Gandalf's ring and Viggo Mortensen has more than once had to call out far-right groups trying to co-opt the fandom or litterature:

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-48187786

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1litq7h/viggo_mort...

https://www.brego.net/article/viggo-mortensen-interview-3/

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

#360

Post by ExoticPearTree »

delfinom wrote: post #295
msabalau wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have scaled artillery shell production, it's about 3 times what production was prior to the conflict in Ukraine. And the Pentagon claims they'll double that again by next Spring. Given that the actual peer conflict that matters to the US will almost certainly be decided by air and sea power, this all seems very much like pointless distraction. But evidently it can be done, because it is being done. I suppose we ar…

The problem is, the US sea power is being dwarfed by China rapidly, who have now surpassed the size of the US Navy and are quickly going to be even larger. And the US does not have enough missiles for a war with China or even Russia realistically. It's why there's a panic for artillery shells. They realize any real symmetrical with an enemy that isn't some guys in caves would become a war of attrition through numbers…

> The problem is, the US sea power is being dwarfed by China rapidly, who have now surpassed the size of the US Navy and are quickly going to be even larger.

The thing is that size matters in wars of attrition, but experience almost always wins.

China's problem is that they lack the experience the US Navy gained over decades of pretty much non-stop war even if they did not go up any significant adversary since the Vietnam war.

Post reply on HN