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

The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

responsiblestatecraft.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 387 posts

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#241

Post by hef19898 »

suoduandao3 wrote: post #208
ceejayoz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Last time I calculated storage costs, it was around 50 cents per day per cbm. Add in military security and so on, and your not far from it.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#242

Post by ceejayoz »

paulddraper wrote: post #236
ceejayoz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they needed another 11 the next year. Buying a couple hundred seems sensible if (as I suspect it is) most of the cost is at the project level rather than the unit level. > And why did the government spend $8M(!!) in unused solar panels? Spares? A lower than expected defect rate? Who knows? Paul doesn't provide useful specifics, just the politically sexy top-level numbers. In an organization with a mu…

Presumably that would be for the Dept of VA to clarify. > In an organization with a multi-trillion dollar annual budget, $8M in unused solar panels is a bit like you throwing away a ream of paper that got some water damage. And yet a fraction of that amount is front page HN. Clearly a lot of other people believe differently.

> And yet a fraction of that amount is front page HN. Clearly a lot of other people believe differently.

A lot of people believe incorrect things about stuff they don't understand, yes. HN most certainly isn't immune.

Outrage bait is hardly a new phenomenon. The unit cost looks insane because it's a side effect of the fact that a defense contractor won't get out of bed without a minimum of a couple hundred grand in the contract to cover the program.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#243

Post by cushychicken »

jtbayly wrote: post #201
cushychicken wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Paying people to learn how to make plane parts - even trash cans - is not corrupt. It's investing in manufacturing skills and knowhow.

I'd wager most of the money spent on this venture went to the people designing and making the trashcan, not executive bonuses or admin fees.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#244

Post by cushychicken »

Symmetry wrote: post #207
cushychicken wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Love the Lincoln Labs folks.

Smart cookies working on tough problems.

Also probably the best radar designers in the whole goddamn world.

I am proud to be even tangentially associated with them.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#245

Post by hef19898 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #190
mda wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But simply saying "if prices look high to me it must mean corruption" is very naive." Naive or not, this turns out to be true surprisingly frequently.

This is the money quote you can use to argue this is actually corruption: > 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 So now one can look why it cost "mere" $300 before, unless Boeing losing money back then the price hike may be shady behavior and then someone should change supplier asa…

Single source supplier tend to have incresible bargaining power. And 50k per E-3 propably isn't even worth mentioning for everyone involved. Peanuts, actually.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#246

Post by bannedbybros »

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-…

[dead]

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#247

Post by sneak »

jliptzin wrote: post #222
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 have encountered a situation a few times where a bug that went unnoticed for a while was actually keeping another, more serious bug from surfacing. So when the first bug was fixed, it caused more serious problems elsewhere in the system. I could see where they're coming from where any kind of "fix" needs to trigger a careful reevaluation of the whole system. That being said, I don't see a need for the Kafkaesque mo…

> That being said, I don't see a need for the Kafkaesque months of planning and budgeting that follow.

It's a method for transferring billions of dollars from public tax revenues to private companies which are cozy with the state. It has nothing to do with safety or reliability.

All other methods of stealing tax money are illegal.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#248

Post by hef19898 »

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.

For aircraft parts? Yes, they absolutely do. Up to the point where investing a couple of billions for a new fleet is cheaper than keeping the old ones airworthy.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#249

Post by bentxt »

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-…

Do you have an opinion whether this kafkaesk bureaucratism is especially well established in the domain of software or is it a broader pattern? Where does this come from?

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#250

Post by mdorazio »

jeffbee wrote: post #209
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where are you getting 2% ? I’m seeing much higher:

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/interest-payments-...

Post reply on HN