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

(steveblank.com)
287 points ridruejo | 7 comments | 11 Nov 25 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 1.649s | source | bottom
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stackskipton ◴[11 Nov 25 21:26 UTC] No.45893105[source]▶
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 brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.

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Alupis ◴[11 Nov 25 22:37 UTC] No.45893847[source]▶
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 for a new airframe and some were not. I suspect the issue wasn't "move fast, break things" but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline.

The F-22 was part of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program which dates back to 1981. It's prototype, the YF-22 first flew in 1990, and the F-22 itself first flew in 1997. It entered production in 2005. Again, 20+ years to field a new airframe.

Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies. By the time these technologies are fielded, a whole generation of employees have retired and leadership has turned over multiple times.

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1. carabiner ◴[11 Nov 25 22:45 UTC] No.45893924[source]▶
It's peacetime engineering. These things would be developed 10x faster during a hot war. Look at COVID vaccine in 10 months vs. 7 years normally.
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2. jltsiren ◴[11 Nov 25 23:42 UTC] No.45894445[source]▶
Peacetime funding.

Experts generally expected that there would be effective COVID vaccines by the end of 2020, because vaccine development is not magic. There are several known approaches to creating vaccines, and it was reasonable to expect that some of them would work.

What set COVID vaccines apart was government commitment. Governments around the world bought large quantities of vaccines before it was known whether that particular vaccine would be effective. (Regulatory approval was also expedited, but that it business as usual during serious disease outbreaks.)

The equivalent with fighter jets would be the government committing to buy 200 fighter jets, with an option for many more, from everyone who made a good enough proposal. And paying for the first 200 in advance, even if it later turns out that the proposal was fundamentally flawed and the jets will not be delivered.

3. credit_guy ◴[12 Nov 25 01:10 UTC] No.45895222[source]▶
That is not a guarantee. We look at WW2 and think that what happened then will happen at any other time. But in WW1 the US had to borrow rifles from France. WW1 was a total disgrace as far as the US military industrial complex was concerned. I know I'm committing a bit of a sin, today marks the 107th anniversary of the end of WW1 and that end was possible because of the US involvement. But, uncharacteristically for the US, it was the manpower, not the arsenal of the US that decided the end of that war. And, yes, even at that time the US was the largest economy of the world.
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4. mythrwy ◴[12 Nov 25 05:37 UTC] No.45896711[source]▶
They borrowed (or rented for $1 for the duration of the war) binoculars from US citizens for WWI. Then returned them after the war was over. Patriotic people sent them in.
5. poulpy123 ◴[12 Nov 25 09:51 UTC] No.45898259[source]▶
> But in WW1 the US had to borrow rifles from France. WW1 was a total disgrace as far as the US military industrial complex was concerned

Up until WW1, the US were not a global military power, and because of their location, they had little reason do become one. Additionally they were not involved directly in ww1, so they had little reason to develop quickly a military industry that was at the level of western europe

6. philwelch ◴[12 Nov 25 14:23 UTC] No.45900567[source]▶
That wasn’t a heroic effort, it was a straightforward application of mRNA technology paired with an FDA Emergency Use Authorization to bypass the onerous approval process. And even that 10 month process could have been significantly faster if they performed human challenge trials.
7. philwelch ◴[12 Nov 25 14:34 UTC] No.45900710[source]▶
You’re right of course, but there’s another important way the US contributed. Who do you think paid for those French rifles in the first place? The Entente was financed by Wall Street for years, until Wall Street ran out of money and the federal government took over the loans. The British Empire was close to insolvent at the end of the war—the main reason they were so insistent on receiving reparations from Germany was because of their own debt to the United States, a debt they ultimately defaulted on.