The Worst US Defense Program of All | Hacker News Reader

The Worst US Defense Program of All

spoilsofwar.substack.com

50 pointsfarseer29 comments

This article is a malicious misrepresentation of the facts.

https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/boeing-delivers-14-k...

Is this tanker program 7 years late in delivery? Yes. But Boeing has eaten the entire $5 Billion dollars of cost overruns, as the contract for these planes is fixed price. In addition, the reason the plane is 7 years late is absolutely not due to the boom control mechanism, but more so the fueling system.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32818/the-air-force-ha...

Because of the strict procurement laws we have in the USA, instead of the tax-payer taking huge losses on the program, Boeing shareholders have eaten the cost. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

Also the idea that after the prosecution of Druyun Boeing was favored is simply a lie.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125383323357539115

All your points are valid and appreciated. I am stunned that she still keeps her government pension though.

I think you are misrepresenting the article. Its main argument is that the remote visual guidance system for the boom initially didn't work as intended and the fix is still in progess. Are you implying that is wrong?

It’s very strange that the author go lengths to demonstrate how remote systems doesn’t work, just to, at the end, inadvertently providing an exemple where it works wonderfully (moral questions aside).

The ending made little sense. Some of the facts of the article may be correct, but the flow of logic was odd.

I would say the main argument of the article is that the US Military Industrial Complex is corrupt and that the taxpayer is getting scammed by corrupt procurement officials into paying for things they don't need. I feel like this is pretty clearly a persuasive piece.

The article states that leasing caused an increase of $10B over non-leasing, so isn't Boeing still reeling in $5B more profit than necessary? I mean $5B is a drop in the bucket, but it still seems like needless waste.

The "author" started the blog one day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the theme in many of the articles is the usual triad of arguments from Russian bots:

- The West is to blame, Russia is innocent!

- Russia is strong! Western sanctions can't hurt Russia!

- Western sanctions are provoking Russia and will lead to nuclear WW3!

As an European with many Polish and Ukrainian friends I'm happy that isolationist American techno-libertarians are confined to Hacker News and r/Conspiracy. It would be a terrifying world if American libertarians had a say in foreign policy and defense policy.

I definitely get a libertarian feel from people on Hacker News, but not an isolationist one. Also it does seem like a strange move to pigeonhole and insult the group of people with whom you're trying to interact.

It would be a much better world for most Americans if the government wasn't spending lives and billions of dollars policing countries 6000+ miles away on behalf of other countries and foreign interests. Calling people who don't want to waste American lives and resources over Ukrainian soil to allow Poland and Germany a russia free buffer zone "russian bots" is a joke, most sane Americans don't want war over who gets to be installed as the leader of Ukraine for this decade.

The "author" is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cockburn. You can remove the quotes now

But it's on substack it must be true!

> But it's on substack it must be true!

Honestly, at this point seeing *.substack.com is a red flag, just like seeing *.blogspot.com.

> Because of the strict procurement laws we have in the USA, instead of the tax-payer taking huge losses on the program, Boeing shareholders have eaten the cost. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

So the failure to deliver a product in the agreed upon timeline is a good thing? The delay is having knock-on effects with capacity:

> TRANSCOM: Refueling Capacity a Major Shortfall, Made Worse by KC-46 Delays

* https://www.airforcemag.com/transcom-refueling-capacity-a-ma...

> More problems with Air Force’s new tanker could put the squeeze on the Pentagon’s refueling capabilities, TRANSCOM chief says

* https://taskandpurpose.com/news/kc-46-tanker-problems-pentag...

>> the urge to displace direct perceptions of the real world in favor of costly and therefore profitable technological interfaces

That for some reason brings in mind all the chaotic ecosystem of modern IT infrastructure and development. Somehow, bigger and more complex seems to be the way things are lead to go every time.

I would be interested to see metrics on articles involving positive vs negative opinions regarding defense programs.

I would think that the second with infrared imaging would be a plus.

I wonder if the desire to use a digital imaging system is really so they can use the videos to train a ML system to perform the task without people. I think the MQ25 only uses the non-boom system currently.

Boeing is the ultimate "too big to fail" company, judging by this and other scandals.

All defense companies fall into this category, it's by design.

tldr: There are a number of US defense programs that are boondoggles and are a waste of taxpayer dollars.

What can be done to fix it and make it more efficient? Well, the big problem is that congress loves boondoggles like this. The politicians are also delighted to take the money to help fund their campaigns. Now they owe some favors. As a bonus, they also get to brag to their constituents about how many jobs they're helping to create.

The US system of government perpetuates this. Unfortunately, things are just going to get worse until we make some changes like establishing term limits and preventing politicians from becoming lobbyists.

I'd love to see more choices come elections besides the lesser of two evils.

Most people dont vote in primaries. That is only time choice is really an option for same party candidates. Since CU basically makes bribery legal its that much harder to remove bad incumbants since they have more campaign funds.

CU?

Citizens United

Citizens United vs FEC [1] is a Supreme Court ruling, overturning limits on the amount of money corporations can spend supporting politicians' re-election attempts (i.e. bribes) because it's "freedom of speech"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

Citizens United was really determined by how badly the FEC f'd their argument: which was that there was no limiting principle on how far the FEC could use their power to limit non-candidate speech. They ruled the way the did because the alternative was worse.

If they'd decided the alternative, then any 501(c) organization could find itself muzzled during election season (which is roughly 90% of the year at this point). This include organizations like: EFF, ACLU, and Planned Parenthood. All of these are technically corporations.

I wish we had a way to channel a lot of the electoral anger into electoral reform — e.g. how many people complain about Joe Manchin but never mention the odds of someone more to their taste getting elected in WV? — but it's hard to see that getting off the ground at the moment when we're fighting a rearguard campaign simply to preserve the existing level of access to voting. It's hard to convince people that the answer to disliking the available choices is to get more involved with things like local elections, propositions, etc. but we really need to figure out how to make that happen.

Term limits and limiting lobbying won’t help.

US Military is a massive jobs program and supports a huge section of the population if you include all it’s vendors. This is especially true in the heartland. Unless the amount of non-defense jobs all over US expand to such a level that people aren’t as dependent, they will always have people’s support and politicians will keep funding these.

Term limits are a deceptive idea: they sound good but part of why they get so much support as the go-to electoral reform idea from industry-backed groups is that they're either long enough not have much effect or shift more power to the lobbyists. If you are regularly forcing your most experienced people out, you're going to need more new candidates and those groups run programs which help identify and coach candidates, give them drafts of legislation to propose, and their media teams can make sure everyone hears about those proposals (not to mention punishing someone if they get too independent).

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