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The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

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Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#171

Post by Lolaccount »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

If that's right, why don't they clarify it and call the excess spend a 'grant'?

At least it's then clear and people can decide on whether that grant is value for money or not.

The thing appears ludicrous.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#172

Post by oefrha »

jtrip wrote: post #161
cushychicken wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.

Development costs of what? The trashcan? What could possibly have cost them 50,000xplane frames to develop it in the first place? The reading of the article implies the contract set prices for commercial items and Boeing simply started charging the army whatever as soon as it technically wasn't 'commercial'.

Hey, you must retain the rare talent capable of developing military-grade trash cans at all costs.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#173

Post by arp242 »

cushychicken wrote: post #143
mcdonje wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS. That's the 2nd paragraph of…

Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.

Some price increase after that would be completely fair and reasonable, because it is harder and more expensive to produce. But 165×? Colour me skeptical on that. At $50k you can hire a craftsman to custom fit something (at a $500k income a year they'd have about a month for it).

There's also some foresight involved here. I used to work for a company that delivered computers for industrial applications such as ASML and FEI (lithography machines and electron microscopes). They had very precise requirements: "we want Intel Xeon 5119 Rev 3 CPUs for the next 4 years, not Rev 2, not Rev 4, the revision shall be 3 and 3 shall be the number of the revision. Revision 5 is right out". The same applied with mainboards, memory, etc. There was also an entire testing procedure involved for many of these things and not all components passed.

So, we charged them more for this then $random_person buying a component, obviously, but we also talked to them beforehand and knew roughly how many units they expected to sell, overbought components in bulk beforehand before they were EOL, and sold the rest afterwards fairly cheaply (because by then they were pretty old components). The volumes for these kind of machines is low (on the order of dozens or hundreds a year) so this was all practical. We made a fair but far from exuberant profit from this.

I see no reason why this couldn't have happened here: "oh, your trash cans are going EOL; we expect to need 40 of them in the next 30 years, please produce them before you EOL them".

I don't know which party failed on this part, but someone did. Possibly both. Even ordering two new-price trash cans leaves you with 250 of them at the old price. Storage isn't free either so let's assume 150 of them.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#174

Post by sailfast »

cushychicken wrote: post #58
goodoldneon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Military spending is good for the economy” is basically the same as the broken window fallacy. There’s a massive opportunity cost

There's also massive benefits which are hard to directly measure. Doing advanced, completely unprofitable basic research, for one thing. These are the sorts of projects that spawned GPS, the Internet, and IC manufacturing. Wasn't super profitable at the time of conception, but the military doesn't care. They need capability, irrespective of price. All of these technologies are now keystones of numerous gigantic Ameri…

It can be good! That said, as someone who has spent time in the five sided puzzle palace I would argue the time has long passed for a harder look at how the dollars are spent and how procurements are happening so we improve the process, open to more domestic competition and open ourselves up less to single points of failure for our key defense elements (see F35 program).

“Do more with less” during the Obama administration / Afghan war was a test of this and the things that got cut were the innovative programs while inefficient tent poles remained.

We should reform now while we have the budget so we get more good public innovation and can actually cut effectively and have that muscle memory in leaner years.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#175

Post by ceejayoz »

aeyes wrote: post #148
throwaway290 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single trashcan shipped from China for military purpose in US would have to be pulled apart, inspected down to nanolevel and then put back together. That would not be just a few dollars... Edit: Yes obviously they are concerned about targeted attacks. And where do you live that hardware store sells trashcans that verifiably comply with all requirements to be put on a custom military Boeing 707 and not f things…

You can't be serious. Buy a plastic trashcan, use a generic metal scanner and an X-Ray and you are done. If you are concerned about targeted attacks, head down to your local hardware store and buy one of the thousands they have in stock.

> Buy a plastic trashcan... head down to your local hardware store...

It's for a highly specialized 707 airliner. It'll be metal, rated for fire resistance if someone sneaks a smouldering cigarette into it, wheeled for servicing, lock into place during flight, etc. You can't buy it at Home Depot, and intelligence agencies are constantly making smaller and harder to detect devices for bugging items.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#176

Post by paganel »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #154
cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

If this were true, then other countries’ militaries would also be paying $50k for a trash can, since none of what you wrote is unique to the US. Given other countries’ military budgets are a fraction of the US’s, I highly doubt that they’re spending anywhere near that.

That's why comparing defence budgets as a measure of a country's military capabilities is so problematic.

Yeah, Russia has a defence budget 12 times smaller compared to the US, but that means that Russia can now afford to only pay ~$4100 dollars for a trashcan and still be America's equal in terms of "PPP" defence expenses.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#177

Post by ilyt »

hef19898 wrote: post #150
ilyt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So borrow a vaccuum chamber, throw it there and certify new company doing trash cans. It won't cost 50k

No, including profit it costs peopably somewhere around 200k for a run of 5 trash cans.

sure buddy, trashcan costing as much as building a custom car

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#178

Post by tgv »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

I see a people riding their libertarian hobby horse of blaming the government for overspending, but only yesterday it turned out that a few devs managed to raise $50M for a glorified terminal emulator.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#179

Post by kodah »

ilyt wrote: post #128
cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

>The government isn't just paying for the trash can. >They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design. It's economic investment in people and skills, not necessarily just the finished product. I call bullshit on that. There is no "maintenance" on that design, it was already done and paid for. It's a trashcan, it doesn't require specialized tooling to the cost of $50k. That's far above "make the to…

Sure there is. Anyone who has served an had to fill out an Equipment Repair Order (ERO) has seen the every day screw or bolt that costs over $150.

I was really annoyed by this at my shop and asked S-4 (supply) why this was. What it comes down to is that when military vendors sell a plane, radio, tank, etc to the military they aren't selling one product. They're selling a product list (called an SL-3). Each product on that list must be specified, routinely tested (eg: certain amount each batch), and then manufactured. As time goes on, the screw is used in less things that are in production so the batch sizes for production are reduced, which inflates the overhead test cost. A lot of products have pretty interesting test standards; for instance we had a truck that after every significant change had to be blown up a minimum of four times. The base truck was $400k and then the equipment inside - which was the actual configuration that was being tested - cost millions per vehicle.

I think the military could benefit from part standardization and longer lifetimes on component production.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#180

Post by vegetablepotpie »

TrackerFF wrote: post #124

I had the pleasure of being involved in a software project where the contractor was one of the usual suspects (Raytheon, Lockheed, etc.). Prior to this, I had no idea why defense projects were so expensive and slow. You have to understand, there are so many levels of negotiation, over the smallest changes imaginable. There's no such thing as "open source code" in these projects, everything is either modified off-the-…

My experience has been that you can use open source software, but security considers that to have a high risk and you need to make a business case for it.

What isn’t a security risk? A closed source vendor supplied application that has its headquarters in the US.

You can sometimes find pockets of innovation in the defense sector, but it’s mostly filled with bureaucrats with engineer in their title.

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