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

(steveblank.com)
285 points ridruejo | 1 comments | 11 Nov 25 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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1. stinkbeetle ◴[11 Nov 25 23:37 UTC] No.45894410[source]▶
> Move fast [is] not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/air-force-blames-oxygen-depri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Andersen_Air_Force_Base_B...

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/2017/07/21/f-35b-helmets-ni...

(etc)

The reality is that developing bespoke solutions with bleeding edge technology is going to result in brand new jets crashing, no matter how much bureaucrats and processes slow down the process. Nothing can substitute for using it.

> Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.

Where "misuse of money" means money not being spent a manner convenient to those who wrote the rules. Which means starting illegal wars, cost-plus contracts, lies about WMDs, no-bid contracts, arms trafficking to dictatorships, pork barreling, and *nudge* *wink* 7 figure do-nothing "consulting" gigs for bureaucrats and generals after they leave the government. Nothing is going to solve that, but if you threw out the whole rule book and started again, it would require a monumental effort to do worse than things have been.