That’s how the national debt accumulated…
The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
371–380 of 387 posts
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#372I 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-…
Modern defense contracting has become, first and foremost, a process to transfer government funds to private hands. The fact that any useful products or services happen is purely incidental.
you can say that again
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#373Earlier 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
Just think what the private sector could have accomplished if the military didn't waste its time developing ARPANET and early internet standards. Lot of good those ever did us.
The US spends $800 billion per year on their military. The fact that some high value tech has come out of the military doesn’t justify it. Should we never question the spending?
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#374I 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-…
Part of this stems from government accountability issues. If you fix that bug, and you don't go through the process, no you didn't. At any time the government can ask for a contract performance review, and doing things the easy way means lots of things that should be tracked don't get tracked... which means they never make it into the contract performance review.
They mean well, and I understand how hard it can be for government agents to hold massive contractors accountable, but the purpose of a system is what it does... so we wind up with entrenched bureaucracy, and the players who don't subscribe to these approaches wind up getting outcompeted because their on-paper performance doesn't measure up. Even if they're in fact a million times easier to work with and do a great job.
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is your metal you are using NIST certified and traceable? How about your welds? One guy, so yours saying he inspected his own work and no sign-off?! You gonna retain those records? ASA-100, Distributor Quality System Standard, paragraph 12: “The distributor shall maintain documentation of traceability for at least 7 years… Here is a small non-exhaustive list I found of what you need: Did your shipment meet all the cu…
You think Boeing didn't already have all those processes and shops in place? If it still costed them tens of thousands to produce a trash can, I'd argue they're doing their job really inefficiently. Not really what you'd call an economy of scale.
You are not certifying a process. You are certifying a process for that part.
If the process changes, you have to go back and re-certify. If the technology changes, you have to go back and re-certify. In some places, if you change the machine the part is run on, you have to go back and re-certify.
So if you take a part that was stick welded, move it to a tig welder and then move it to an automated spot welder, you have to certify 3 times.
Not to mention, a tig weld may behave differently under stress than a stick weld so make sure that you do a part analysis too!
Last but not least, the regulations have changed from the last time this aircraft was produced. Are your parts governed by the new regulations or the old?
This is what got Boeing in so much trouble with the MAX, they didn't want to re-certify the aircraft so they kept making changes to the design. Do you think they are getting more or less scrutiny now when they say "It's an old design, everything is cool!"
The FAA got beat up, badly, justifiably so over their handling of that. Congress mandated them to regulate more strictly: https://www.reuters.com/article/boeing-737max-congress-idAFL...
Up-thread, comment was to farm it our to a local machine shop with one guy. Here is the FAA on Counterfeit parts: >Counterfeit Parts: These are unapproved parts manufactured and sold without FAA >approval. You should report them to the FAA as a SUP. There may be obvious, or >not so obvious, visual clues to help you spot these parts. The FAA aggressively >investigates these cases and works closely with the Office of Inspector General >(OIG) and law enforcement officials to ensure proper adjudication. There are >cases of this nature that have resulted in significant civil penalties and/or >jail time for those involved. https://iflyamerica.org/safety_suspected_unapproved_parts.as...
Adding: I have found an older(2022) AMCOM Spares SAR Guidance Document. This will show you what you need to do in order to apply to manufacture parts for American Military Aircraft. https://www.avmc.army.mil/Portals/51/Documents/SAR%20Guidanc...
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just think what the private sector could have accomplished if the military didn't waste its time developing ARPANET and early internet standards. Lot of good those ever did us.
The US spends $800 billion per year on their military. The fact that some high value tech has come out of the military doesn’t justify it. Should we never question the spending?
Sure, the spending should be subject to question, but even a seemingly staggering sum like $800 billion is only a few percentage points of GDP. I don’t want to call it a rounding error, because it isn’t, but it’s a pretty small burden on the US economy.
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can not buy one of these at Target This is a site apparently populated by fairly bright people. I'm struggling to understand why no one seems to get this.
This is a site populated by a group of people that society massively overestimates the intelligence and competence of, and it very often goes to their head. The amount of software developers that actually have any real idea of what rigorous engineering actually is is vanishingly small and those that do usually only "get it" because they worked adjacent to disciplines that take it more seriously. Not to say the averag…
I bet they’d recoil in horror when they hear that critical systems still use Ada, too. So archaic, so hard to make changes! Why can’t we write the nuclear weapons code in JavaScript or Rust instead?
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And you did, at least, go through full ISO 9100 certification, as the minimum to make the long list of suppliers for flying parts. It is becoming so frustrating to read all those tech bro comments, believing that doing some messy 3D printing is the same thing as manufacturing. Ignoring that the whole field of mechanical engineering exists. Thinking like that, a bunch of millions, get you the Titan and five dead peopl…
> And you did, at least, go through full ISO 9100 certification
That's not what he said was making it expensive though, was it? He said it was economies of scale. Furthermore, if an ISO 9100 certification is taking a $10 trashcan and making it $50,000 then we shouldn't insist on an ISO9100 certification.
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm talking about a desk trashcan though, at $100 an hour, it cost $400 to design. By the way I'm a (real) engineer and I did design mechanical engineering for 5 years and electrical design engineering for 3 years. (and other fields of engineering for 4 years total as well) Yes, you get your specs and you design to them. I got real engineering parts certified and I believe the total cost, including tooling was under…
All nice and dandy. And now imagine doing all that according to some obscure military aviation certification standards from the 50s. For a handful of parts. When you are the only reasonably available supplier. Aerospace is different from automotive, just how different is only apparent by actually suffering through it. And as I said elsewhere, 200k to keep four highly specialized military planes in the air is, as stup…
All roads lead to "the situation is completely fucked up." The more immovable the reasons are for the $50,000 trashcan, the more evidence we have that something is systemically wrong. The best case scenario is that this was fraud and without it the trashcan would cost a reasonable price. But if it just "has to be this way" then it's clear that the existing processes are terrible.
Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you getting 2% ? I’m seeing much higher: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/interest-payments-...
That's as a fraction of revenue which is distorted due to our fragmented federal system and relatively low national tax rates. Interest as a fraction of GDP is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S If you had gone to the primary source of the data in your link you would have seen the prominent limitation, to wit: "Because budgetary accounts may not include all central government units (such as social securit…
Ok, but then how can you compare that to other countries to say the US is higher/lower? I haven't been able to find a unified source of raw interest payments by country (not as a % of revenue).