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Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

politico.com

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Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#61

Post by ptero »

Jtsummers wrote: post #34
Brian_K_White wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you worked with them on the same projects, and that's how you know they are lying about their own firsthand experience?

The paid by the foot thing is why I am doubtful of OP's story. There are drawings of where cables go in every aircraft and ship and building owned by DOD. Their accuracy with respect to reality, of course, is not always spectacular but these drawings existed before construction began. The subs routing cables arbitrarily through the ship is not likely to go unnoticed, and is better described as "sabotage" as it makes…

I would not be surprised if "paid by the foot" is correct. But paid by the foot of the cable installed to an external spec, with no ability to choose routing.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#62

Post by amenhotep »

morkalork wrote: post #21
SignalM wrote: post #8

Worked in one. They are safety nightmares. They give safety bonuses if “nothing is reported” so nothing gets reported. Working conditions suck.. you spend your time begging for AC in a metal can in 100 degree heat (outside) on top of that the craziest thing was how subcontractors made money. I was in test so we wondered why certain runs of cable were way out of spec. Turns out subcontractors are paid by the foot to i…

There's a BBC Nova episode about the soviet union with an apocryphal story about train schedulers being evaluated on the amount of cargo shipped by distance so of course, freight was sent on the least efficient route to its destination. Amazing to see the exact same metric get gamed again.

I don't know if it was actually the most efficient strategy, but the thing I always liked to do in Transport Tycoon was find a coal mine etc in one corner of the map and a power station etc in the other one and build a line delivering between them - you got paid by the mile so when the train finally arrived the fee would be massive. Didn't realise that was actually an accurate (modulo apocryphal) element of the simulation :)

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#63

Post by red-iron-pine »

euroderf wrote: post #57
somenameforme wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's all about the money being the main motivating factor. With government contracts more money should mean you can do a better job - which is why these contracts are so large. But there's a conflicting motivation to 'generate value for shareholders.' And this is further confounded by conflicts of interest in oversight. Congress not only receives large donations from the military industrial complex, but is also l…

> They all seem to go from ideologically driven to MBA driven OT but, is there a public database of how many MBAs (as a %-age of workforce) are employed by various public companies ? It would be a helpful guide to companies to avoid.

if i had to bet money, there would be a high enough proportion in most large companies that you have to avoid every publicly traded company.

plus proportions are deceptive. you just need one in an accounting dept. with enough empowerment to cut cut cut. a couple of em in CFO and COO roles, for example.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#64

Post by bell-cot »

istjohn wrote: post #48
alephnerd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation Specifically, it was Clinton's SecDef Perry's Last Supper meeting with defense contractors in 93 that destroyed the entire base we had in the US [0] "I asked [former SecDef] Les [Aspen] to call a meeting of the senior defense industry officials where we had a simple message to them: The first was that the budget was not only down, it wa…

It's called a peace dividend

By the politicians, yes, it is.

But if you look at the older history - the U.S. did not shut down & sell off its navel shipyards in response many previous outbreaks of peace - after the Revolutionary War, or the War of 1812, or the Civil War, or the Spanish-American War, or WWI, or WWII, or the Korean War, or ...

But sadly, Wall Street was ascendant in the 90's, the proud old tradition of leading American families sending their sons server in the military was pretty well faded, and the Clinton Administration was a hot mess of noobs - convinced that the world was brand shiny new, that they were geniuses, and that smooth-talking Capitalists were perfectly competent and trustworthy.

Edit: Okay, yes, some of the shipyards were closed (or effectively so) in the very late 1960's and 1970's.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#65

Post by euroderf »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #63
euroderf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all seem to go from ideologically driven to MBA driven OT but, is there a public database of how many MBAs (as a %-age of workforce) are employed by various public companies ? It would be a helpful guide to companies to avoid.

if i had to bet money, there would be a high enough proportion in most large companies that you have to avoid every publicly traded company. plus proportions are deceptive. you just need one in an accounting dept. with enough empowerment to cut cut cut. a couple of em in CFO and COO roles, for example.

Right, I shoulda specified proportion of upper mgmt.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#66

Post by alasdair_ »

Jtsummers wrote: post #35
nradov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914, and yet it happened. The concern is that Xi Jinping has purged all rivals and has assumed personal control of all key strategic decisions. We don't know what's really going on but he seems increasingly prone to miscalculations and unwise decisions. There are reasons to suspect that yes-men in the inner circle are telling him what he wants to hear and he is a…

> A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914 Europe leading up to WWI was not exactly a land of peace and harmony. There were a number of hot wars in the years leading up to WWI.

Like Russia and Ukraine.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#67

Post by jki275 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #25
jki275 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is accurate other than the fact it might be hot if the AC isn't running, and there are a lot of perfectly legitimate reasons why the AC might not be running. We actively encourage reporting of all incidents, and cable runs are not determined by subcontractors trying to find the longest route. Cable runs are determined by drawings done by the Navy and they're installed in accordance with the drawings or p…

So, you worked with them on the same projects, and that's how you know they are lying about their own firsthand experience?

I helped install the combat systems on a CVN, so I can speak pretty authoritatively on how that process works. It's not different on different ships, that contracting process is very cookie cutter. Contractors don't get to choose how they want to run cables. Everything is carefully specified and if it's not followed nobody gets paid and they have to rip it out at their own expense.
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