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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

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Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#441

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mmooss wrote: post #285
scandox wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.

The LoTR had a great distrust of power as dangerous and corrupting - the Ring corrupted everyone who tried to use it - and a rejection of those who abided with evil. The mission was to destroy the power, not build a super-army.

Yeah, it's in the introduction written by Tolkien, explicitly making the connection between the Ring and WW2.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#442

Post by CGMthrowaway »

stackskipton wrote: post #112
Alupis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 was Lockheed's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSF has roots going back to 1996. The X-35 first flew in 2000. The F-35 first flew in 2006, and didn't enter service until 2015(!!). That's nearly 20 years to develop a single airframe. Yes, it's the most sophisticated airframe to date, but 20 years is not trivial. The F-35 had many issues during trials and early deployment - some are excusable fo…

Most of time, this delay is in peacetime, it makes sense to do a ton of testing, wait until testing results then go to full production. Your primary concern is not spending a ton of money and not getting a bunch of people killed. It's basically waterfall in fighter development. Wartime is more agile, you quickly close the loop but downside is sometimes does not work and when it does not work, there might be a people…

Are we not in peacetime? What war has the US declared?

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#443

Post by thmsths »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #383
LarsDu88 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule 14 is pretty interesting. Keep the teams small and reward performance with compensation. Don't just reward increasing headcount. Could improve things at so many tech companies today.

Rule 14 is why every government and large cooperation has an insane amount of bloat and middle managers, IMHO. People's power and pay are determined by two things - the number of people working under them, and their budget (which is often determined by the number of people working under them). It is rarely determined by positive outcomes, it seems, in the government world.

Because when someone working for a public entity is rewarded with more money, eventually it results in someone else publishing something along the lines of "Our investigative team scoured records and sent a bunch of FOIA request, they found that some public servants make more than ", cue outrage, tightly defined salary bands set by the legislator and ultimately the problem you describe.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#444

Post by pdabbadabba »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #442
stackskipton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of time, this delay is in peacetime, it makes sense to do a ton of testing, wait until testing results then go to full production. Your primary concern is not spending a ton of money and not getting a bunch of people killed. It's basically waterfall in fighter development. Wartime is more agile, you quickly close the loop but downside is sometimes does not work and when it does not work, there might be a people…

Are we not in peacetime? What war has the US declared?

We're in peacetime, but the current leadership perceives us to be in a pitched great-power struggle, and perhaps near-term shooting war, with China. Similarly, while we are not literally at war with Russia, we are in a very acute global conflict with them of another type that might be thought to warrant a different pace of military innovation. Perhaps these factors are what GP had in mind.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#445

Post by moregrist »

tsoukase wrote: post #408

There might be no 80 year long period in global history more peaceful than the current (measured by war fatalities per global population). And this happened due to a single reason: nuclear warheads. The super-powers USA, China, India whatever better go back to a cold war: stable balance, no casualties, only media fights. Every body, war guys and normal people, is happy. And in case the things escalate we are all to a…

This puts far too much emphasis on weapons and far too little on the diplomatic soft power that made the threat of these weapons effective.

I don’t think we would have had decades of stability without the Marshall plan investing in western Europe. Similarly the US investment in post-WWII Japan and South Korea gave the US strong allies that had common purpose.

It’s not separate; soft diplomacy made the extensive network of US military bases palatable to foreign governments.

I think pointing to nukes as the only factor neglects a lot of other important work. Stability requires the status quo to be another intolerable for governments and their people. The mutually-assured destruction of nuclear deterrence alone doesn’t give you that.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#448

Post by electrondood »

spiritplumber wrote: post #227

Can we please keep calling the DoD with its actual name and not humor the stupids? Thanks.

Exactly. "Department of War" is guidance that applies only to Federal employees, and the Department of Defense was named through Congressional legislation. That is still the department's name, whatever Trump decrees.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#449

Post by Guvante »

potato3732842 wrote: post #335
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what value does the bureaucratic process add if it's the first thing that gets shitcanned when good results in good time matter? This is like asking what good do reserves do if you spend them down in a crisis. The bureaucracy aims to keep waste and corruption to a minimum during peacetime. In war, the aims change--you're now not only ramping up production, but the penalties for fucking with a war are typically more…

Think about the local implications of what you just said. If we toss the process when effective expenditure of resources toward results matter and consequences are the most serious then the process must be less efficient at producing good results for the expenditure than the corruption (or whatever else the process is replacing). So then why are we running it at all? You can absolutely make an argument about acceptin…

The difference is getting material vs getting designs.

It is way easier to scam someone when your major output is just blueprints that everyone acknowledges aren't even ready to be used.

Re: The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

#450

Post by electrondood »

senkora wrote: post #244
pjdesno wrote: post #239

The mere fact that the title says "Department of War" is a raging red flag...

Do you mean a red flag for the quality of the article, or for the actions of the department? "Department of War" is currently a real name for the department: > On September 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing "Department of War" and "secretary of war" as secondary titles to the main titles of "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense." The terms must be accommodated by federa…

It's an alias that only applies to Federal employees.

The Congressionally-legislated actual name of the department is still Department of Defense.

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