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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

#391

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312
potato3732842 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then what value does the bureaucratic process add if it's the first thing that gets shitcanned when good results in good time matter? At the end of the day it's all people cost. Just because it's fractional lives wasted in the form of man hours worked to pay the taxes to pay for unnecessary paper pushing labor instead of whole lives doesn't actually make the waste less (I suspect it's actually more in a lot of cas…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#392

Post by philipallstar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312
potato3732842 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then what value does the bureaucratic process add if it's the first thing that gets shitcanned when good results in good time matter? At the end of the day it's all people cost. Just because it's fractional lives wasted in the form of man hours worked to pay the taxes to pay for unnecessary paper pushing labor instead of whole lives doesn't actually make the waste less (I suspect it's actually more in a lot of cas…

> 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…

> The bureaucracy aims to keep waste and corruption to a minimum during peacetime

This is the problem though - the bureaucracy is guaranteed to add a lot of cost, both in its own personnel, the personnel in the companies employed to deal with the bureaucracy, and the additional time taken for all bids to be evaluated. This is guaranteed to slow down everything, with the promise that it will try to prevent issues. Which, if the bureaucracy is badly run, weaponised, or captured, is a terrible trade.

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

#393

Post by array_key_first »

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…

The process aims to minimize risk. This goes for process in general - that's why process exists.

Okay, let's think about what risks might be associated with making a fighter plane. The plane could blow up. The plane could be hard to maintain. The plane could get fighter pilots killed.

In a war, death is already on the table and soldiers are, more or less, expendable. In peacetime, this is not the case.

It's not that when we are in war, everything goes lovey dovey and great. No. Shit goes wrong constantly.

But we don't have time to care, we have bigger fish to fry: war.

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

#394

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

>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.

China has no issue with manufacturing so they will be happy to sell weapons to US at better prices than US manufactured weapons. :)

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

#395

Post by scott_w »

potato3732842 wrote: post #386
scott_w wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone keeps saying this yet it seems to be the opposite, results for dollars tradeoffs are better in wartime. Do you understand what economies of scale are? Of course some production costs go down because you're producing far more. You're producing at this high level because the enemy is busy blowing up your equipment! This is also why it's easy to show results: you have live test subjects in the form of the ene…

>Do you understand what economies of scale are? Do you understand what results are? Not having something because people lied and took money is no different to the guy in the foxhole or the guy ordering those guys around than not having something because nobody lied and the money got spent paying people to do work that did nothing to get that something closer to being actually available. >Hell, the article also makes…

>> Do you understand what economies of scale are? > Do you understand what results are?

So I take it, no, you don't understand. You're comparing costs and processes that exist outside of wartime to costs and processes that exist during wartime and haven't considered why, despite being told.

> It speaks volumes that your responses are constantly attempting toward strawmen and false dichotomies

I find it hilarious that you state this after your first 2 paragraphs.

> the right amount of procurement process is.

This childish fixation on a flat number is why you don't seem able to understand the problem.

Let's go back to the top, where you 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?

This was in the context of comparing wartime to peacetime procurement processes. My entire comment addressed the difference between those environments, which you completely ignored to have a childish rant about "too much process." This isn't the first time you've responded to my comments by ignoring the substance and instead trying to (badly) strawman it.

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

#396

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#397

Post by array_key_first »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #280
thaunatos wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. https://www.war.gov/

Departments are created by acts of Congress. Not because a wannabe dictator registered a domain name.

What's the difference between a wannabe dictator and an actual dictator?

I don't think it's what's on a piece of paper somewhere. I think it's what they're able to do, and get away with.

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

#398

Post by array_key_first »

hereme888 wrote: post #380
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 is a fact the democrats shut down government because they wanted to hide irrelevant provisions in the funding bill. Enough shady business from democrats!

> Enough shady business from democrats!

Okay what is with this style of writing? I see it in Trump tweets, on Fox news, and in other conservative circles.

Are you guys made in a fucking lab or something?

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

#399

Post by t1234s »

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…

Programs like the F35 might possibly be used funnel money into other LM black projects over the years

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

#400

Post by philwelch »

carabiner wrote: post #81
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…

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 wasn’t a heroic effort, it was a straightforward application of mRNA technology paired with an FDA Emergency Use Authorization to bypass the onerous approval process. And even that 10 month process could have been significantly faster if they performed human challenge trials.
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