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The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

responsiblestatecraft.org

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Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#201

Post by jtbayly »

cushychicken wrote: post #149
Symmetry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it, probably. These sort of contracts operate on a cost plus basis where the profit margin that Boeing takes home is fixed ahead of time. I hear from people doing software for defense contractors that they spend a lot of time being bored not doing anything productive, but by collecting their salaries they increase the cost of the software, which is the only way for the defense contractor to increase its profi…

This commenter understands how contracts work. I'll direct all the righteously indignant folks claiming "corruption" to you from now on. XD

You do realize that paying people to do nothing in order to take home more profit as a corporation, and charging both the worthless employee time and the extra profit for the corp that allows to the taxpayers is the definition of corruption, right?

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#202

Post by giaour »

smallerfish wrote: post #168
hef19898 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. And all of this needs to be peoperly certified, to whatever standard the E-3 was certified against, in order to be mounted on the plane. Your comment tells me you were never involved in any of this. Alternative: Those trash cans set in stock somewhere, the 300 buck price guarantee ran out, and the alternative was to not fly or develop new cans. Well, that wpupd also justify 50k per can if said E-3s are actually…

And your comment tells me you're too deep into the system to realize how ridiculous this is. Your guy in a metal shop can do this for $5k with plenty of padding. Hire your certification consultant for $15k, and so on. If being efficient with taxpayer money was a priority, you could do one-off jobs a hell of a lot more efficiently than this was handled.

Assuming your numbers are accurate, that's still $5K per trashcan. Aviation is stupidly expensive.

Maybe contacting to a custom shop was an option but would take an extra week, and they needed those E3s in the air ASAP. I don't know what specific circumstances were at play, and neither does anyone in this thread.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#203

Post by ceejayoz »

hospitalJail wrote: post #165
nonethewiser wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason you can buy an OXO trash can for $30 on Amazon are the scale and volume at which they're produced. I could make 1 plastic trashcan at home for less than $50,000. And probably less than $30.

I have a 3D printer, and I made a desk trash can. I even gave it a fancy pattern. I used FreeCAD. It took 5 minutes to make the trashcan, and 2 nights to learn the pattern tool. Total cost was 1.50 for my fancy color changing filament.

Can you guarantee it's not going to move around and dump its contents or crush a crewmember when the military plane it's in does evasive maneuvers?

Can you guarantee a fire started in it won't spread to the rest of the aircraft and fill it with noxious fumes?

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#204

Post by ren_engineer »

Symmetry wrote: post #109
scotty79 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It keeps people employed, ... What fraction of that $50k landed in the hands of the workers, do you think?

Most of it, probably. These sort of contracts operate on a cost plus basis where the profit margin that Boeing takes home is fixed ahead of time. I hear from people doing software for defense contractors that they spend a lot of time being bored not doing anything productive, but by collecting their salaries they increase the cost of the software, which is the only way for the defense contractor to increase its profi…

it's still a net negative to society due to the inefficiency, having presumably skilled people sitting around doing nothing due to bureaucracy instead of producing things of value. The opportunity cost is massive and the result is DC area codes being some of the richest in the nation off the backs of tax payers

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#207

Post by Symmetry »

cushychicken wrote: post #149
Symmetry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it, probably. These sort of contracts operate on a cost plus basis where the profit margin that Boeing takes home is fixed ahead of time. I hear from people doing software for defense contractors that they spend a lot of time being bored not doing anything productive, but by collecting their salaries they increase the cost of the software, which is the only way for the defense contractor to increase its profi…

This commenter understands how contracts work. I'll direct all the righteously indignant folks claiming "corruption" to you from now on. XD

See my first reply to the topic for more details, but over a decade ago I worked for Group 33 at Lincoln Labs and we considered trying to keep Boeing from overcharging the government too much to be an unwritten part of our mission. But the problem is that the problem is genuinely complicated. It's a situation worth some outrage but outrage without understanding won't accomplish anything useful.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#208

Post by suoduandao3 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #130
sesuximo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t add up to 50k. Maybe 300. Probably not even

> This doesn’t add up to 50k. It's a procurement project to purchase four very specific aviation trash cans for an aircraft that's no longer made. The cans themselves aren't the cost. The project manager, the paperwork expert who does the thousands of pages of documents, etc. all cost before they even think about setting up a production line (for an hour's run!) to actually make the things. They're also factoring in…

Then they'd be spending thousands every year to store them at a secure facility :P

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#209

Post by jeffbee »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #56
afterburner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US’s unique ability to essentially endlessly deficit spend This is not unique to the US, nor even unique to countries. Almost all countries deficit spend endlessly, which is fine as long as it's offset by economic growth. And that deficit spending can speed up that economic growth. The US's uniqueness is being massively wealthy, so its deficits are bigger.

The US has the fourth highest debt:GDP ratio amongst OECD countries; only Japan, Greece, and Italy are higher, whose high debts are mainly due to severe economic problems, and are not offset by growth. The US is unique in that (thus far) its massive deficit spending has been offset by growth, although it remains to be seen how long that’s sustainable.

Debt to GDP is a useless metric. The US has a uniquely low interest on its debt. Interest payments as a fraction of GDP are less than 2%, in the middle of the post-War range of 1.1 to 3.2% of GDP.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#210

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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-…

I worked on a radar system that could see precipitation- think doppler radar map view. The ability to do this was in the contract but there was no way to view it. We had Matlab scripts so we the devs could view it and the weather people wanted them. We weren't allowed to hand them over without a contract. They'd pop in multiple times a day to view our doppler.

The adversarial nature that defense companies treat our military is appalling. I'm convinced that refactoring a lot of this BS could get us way more with less $

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