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

steveblank.com

501–510 of 527 posts

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

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us. That’s a problem easily solved. We have the menace of the Red Maple Leaf people to the north, and perhaps a buffer zone south of the Rio Grand would stave off the caravans, give Texans some breathing room, and make more room for real Americans. Remember, the anti-Christ may show up at any time.

The American people have no appetite for war with Canada. Half the country think it's a deranged threat and the other half think it's a hilarious joke. There's no genuine support for it from the public. Mexico is another story, but even then I don't think there's much in the way of public support for a ground invasion.

> There's no genuine support for it from the public.

90% of the genuine public couldn't find Iraq on the map on September 12 of 2001, but that didn't stop half of them from becoming utterly convinced that going on an imperial adventure on the other side of the world was integral to preserving their freedumbs.

Media literacy in the US is a complete and utter shitshow, and public support for inflicting incredible violence on other people is trivial to manufacture.

Hell, half the country is currently cheer-leading soldiers and goon squads deployed against it's own cities. They don't even think their own neighbours are entitled to be treated as human beings.

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than half the country was against the wars in Vietnam or in Iraq (2003), but they still happened. And if the current administration decides they want to invade Canada, Canada will be invaded no matter what the country thinks. Same goes for Mexico. How it ends, it is a completely different story and another administration's problem.

A great deal changed after Vietnam. Iraq was only possible because the country had a general blood lust against Muslims after 9/11, who were easy for a mostly white christian country to "other". Nothing like that exists for Canada. Proposals to invade Canada aren't taken seriously by the public. Those who pretend to support it are just trying to piss people off with how stupid they can be.

The heartland of this mostly white christian country is currently busy othering their mostly-christian non-white neighbours (Against whom they are weaponizing ICE) and their mostly-christian mostly-white city dwellers (Against whom they are deploying the army).

For anyone who can stand behind that, a bunch of foreigners in another country won't even register as someone to have any empathy towards.

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

#504
post #72

As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally. Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue. Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when…

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…

I had a friend in college in the mid-1970s. He was in engineering, and his dream was to get hired by one of the major shipyards near the beginning of development of a new aircraft carrier, because he knew design to delivery would take up the majority of his career.

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

#505
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

> I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes. Probably because if people could buy tanks to protect themselves, then the police would also need tanks to deconflict a situation where someone with a tank is upset and the damages are a bit higher when tank rounds start flying around. Imagine two neighbors getting into it in a a town, not to mention a city. Even p…

The second amendment to the US Constitution doesn't concern itself with home defense justifications, but only with "we need to scare up a military force, right now". The "right way" to forbid tanks and tac nukes as arms that the people can own would have been to amend the Constitution with something that specifies the limits in some way, but instead we got creative interpretations of "shall not be infringed" to mean "can be infringed as long as a law or agency regulation is produced at either a federal or state level". Which is odd, as GP noted.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

AKA - it’s the department of defense in the same way Robert Kennedy was named Robert but went by Bobby sometimes. Trump doesn’t get to change the name, just assign an unofficial nickname that he thinks sounds more tough. Sort of like his pretend tough guy Secretary of defense that dresses up as a Secretary of war for TV moments. The fact they drag along the entire military and its leadership in their charade is embar…

[dead]

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

#507
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they want to add parts of South America to the hegemony, for reasons unknown.

What does venesuela have that we want? Consider the reasons known.

The USA currently produces more oil than Saudi Arabia.

So maybe you are meaning arepas? They are delicious, but the USA could make their own without invading a sovereign nation.

Or maybe you believe that a certain tinpot wants to acquire more land for a country of sovereign states. If so, why?

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

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone believe these changes are being made for some sort of pragmatic reason? I feel like I'm insane. This administration is doing so many grifts how does anyone take what they say at face value anymore?

Do you think that The Entirety Of US Government is one monolithic and self-consistent person that only ever does things for one purpose only?

> The Entirety Of US Government

That's a strange way of saying "one person who is a direct lackey of the President".

> only ever does things for one purpose only?

Oh, the career-employees do other purposes... But a big one right now is "avoid capricious weirdos killing my entire career out of spite". That isn't a mission-oriented purpose we should be happy about.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest as a more efficient way to achieve this goal? Building thousands of advanced fighter jets for private citizens? Keeping highly skilled engineers up to date on the most modern technologies and maintaining specialized factories is inherently expensive. You can't leave the factories mothballed because you need to keep the skilled workers employed and practiced with manufacturing. Maybe there could…

Rather than the sarcastic non-answer, you could just respond to the question as asked. Is this an official goal, or at attempt to handwave away the fact that we seem to waste trillions and decades to get anything done?

You would be hard pressed to find an official document that says it bluntly, but analysis of the situation makes it clear.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-us-defense-industrial-base...

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest as a more efficient way to achieve this goal? Building thousands of advanced fighter jets for private citizens? Keeping highly skilled engineers up to date on the most modern technologies and maintaining specialized factories is inherently expensive. You can't leave the factories mothballed because you need to keep the skilled workers employed and practiced with manufacturing. Maybe there could…

My question is genuine. Not really the point, but an idea that springs to mind is selling fighter jets to allied countries.

This is messy. The countries that could afford to buy the jets generally have domestic industries they want to protect, and you never know when some President will come into power that is hostile to that country and tells the contractors to stop supporting that very expensive hardware. There is precedent for this: See Iran's fleet of F-14s.
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