The F-35's $400k helmet

Lead times on hardware is years. That helmet - how long would it take you to make one? You can't just tell that team don't sweat it, we are going to change requirement on you every two weeks. And you can't tell the jet team wait 3 years for this helmet, then start designing the system.

Military development is so far outside the realm of agile that it make so sense to compare (source: I've done both). The things agile people struggle with I just scoff at. Building large, physical, state of the art systems require planning, requires schedules, requires rework, requires huge teams, requires reams of documentation, and so on. You can't agile your way through that stuff.

Planning doesn't lead to unbounded schedules. It leads to compromise. We have 3 years, 85 million dollars. We need an architecture (assume, say, a flight system for a helicopter, something I have done and delivered). I'm sorry, but very early in you have to choose your processors, distributed network (you need to be fail safe, so multiple redundancies are needed), and more. Then you can buy that, or simulate that; either has costs, but your engineers something to work with. Many have very strict environmental concerns - limited weight, has to fit in this bay, needs radiation hardening, and so on. I can't wait until the last 3 months to make this decision, sorry. Somebody has to build these, deliver them. They need to design and build out the logistics chain - how do I retrofit the existing fleet? HOw do I do repairs? How quickly can I spin up my factory line if you need spares? Do we buy 3x the units you need now, or plan on JIT. This is just one tiny nit of a tiny detail that needs to be decided and tracked. Don't forget instruction manuals, plans to train the maintaince workers, training the workers, training the pilots, building a school for the next people coming through in two years.

I have a meething. I could type for several hours. There is nothing agile about this problem.

BTW Bandera had nothing on Stalin when it comes to murdering civilians, and there are 1000s monuments of Stalin in Russia, and your president called the fall of USSR the greatest tragedy of XXth century...

Anyway - this doesn't matter. You lie regarding the nationalist forces (look up the percentage won by right wing parties in elections after Majdan - less than 5% IIRC).

And the threat to ethnic Russians in Ukraine is pure bullshit Russian propaganda. There is not even clear way to tell who is Ukrainian speaking Russian (significant amounts of these live even in Kiev), and who is "persecuted Russian". And telling by the fact that Russian minority in Estonia, Latvia etc complain about persecution too (and EU laws regarding minorities are very strict about such things). I'd take such complains with big grain of salt.

In conclusion - it was invasion and annexion of democratic state by authoritarian neighbor. The excuses are poor. That's why most of civilized world put sanctions on Russia.

Bandera was doing ethnic cleansing of a region and killed 60000-100000 Poles, Stalin doing military occupation of half of the country - 150000 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland#After...

Percentage-wise Poland probably got easier than USSR itself during the same period under Stalin. Not that it wasn't a tragedy, just that it wasn't specifically against Poles. It was pretty much the same "upper class cleansing" that happened in USSR - military officers, ministers, government, and other educated or "advanced" in any other way people. Bandera on the other hand was specifically killing Poles.

>You lie regarding the nationalist forces (look up the percentage won by right wing parties in elections after Majdan - less than 5% IIRC).

Yatsenuk's and Poroshenko's parties took around 50% and have full power in the country. It is these forces that direct the "pacifying" operation in the East which in particular results in significant ethnic cleansing of that region.

>And the threat to ethnic Russians in Ukraine is pure bullshit Russian propaganda. There is not even clear way to tell who is Ukrainian speaking Russian (significant amounts of these live even in Kiev), and who is "persecuted Russian".

you just don't know what you're talking about.

>And telling by the fact that Russian minority in Estonia, Latvia etc complain about persecution too (and EU laws regarding minorities are very strict about such things). I'd take such complains with big grain of salt.

Have relatives in Litva. Fully integrated, inter-married, children, etc... If you're relatively young and determined, you can be able to jump through all the hoops... And it wasn't immigration, it is for the people who lived on the territory at the time of the new state formation. You're probably again talking about things you don't know about.

>In conclusion - it was invasion and annexion of democratic state by authoritarian neighbor.

Presidents in democratic state are changed either through elections or impeachment. Taking power in a coup is completely different thing. These new Ukraine powers were stupid to immediately manifest direct and open hostility toward ethnic Russians (first order of business of the new powers - the language law - no practical effect, only huge symbolic gesture) before having built up the military forces. Putin doesn't care about fate of these ethnic Russians of course, it just provided the opening for him, and Crimea more than happily voted for separation (speaking about democracy - Crimea separation was more democratic than the power change in Kiev, so if you think that current regime in Kiev is democratically legitimate than it would be a double standard to not recognize Crimea separation). And as a side effect Ukraine got punished for stupidity of their new regime. Nationalism blinded by hate always gets punished in the end...

And by the way - everybody is ok with Saudis attacking Yemen where the president they liked was ousted... Try Putin actually attack the Ukraine when Yanukovich was ousted... Double standards.