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Comment by m-ee | Hacker News Reader

Hasn’t the remote vision system on the KC-46 been a bit of a disaster as well?

Taken in sum, virtually everything about the Pegasus has been a trainwreck, and you can see muted signals that virtually everyone is quietly searching for an alternative fleet. I would not be surprised if the 46 program on the whole is forecasted to run deep, deep in the red for Boeing.

BDS is, in general, having a hard time adjusting to a post-GWoT world of fixed cost, versus the oh-so-coveted cost plus glory days in the Aughts.

Then again, maybe the problem runs deeper. If anyone can name me a unqualified-no-doubt-successful new Boeing project - something that isn't someone else's IP or sucked up in an acquisition - from the last twenty years, I'm all ears. The USAF tossed them a softball project to bolt wings and a GPS on a Mark 82 iron bomb . . and they couldn't figure it out without bringing in Kratos.

> Taken in sum, virtually everything about the Pegasus has been a trainwreck, and you can see muted signals that virtually everyone is quietly searching for an alternative fleet.

And yet they are still favoured to win the KC-Y competition (the successor to the KC-X, which picked Boeing's KC-46A as the winner) either (a) by default since Lockheed Martin has left competition (with Airbus saying they're going it alone), or (b) the USAF just cancelling the competition and ordering more KC-46As.

(a) https://breakingdefense.com/2023/10/lmxt-exit-lockheed-to-sk...

(b) https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/air-force-leans-towards-...

Meanwhile Canada (which all sort of issues with military procurement themselves) found that Airbus was the only qualified bidder for their tanker replacement program and picked the A330 MRTT (of which deliveries have already begun).

Good ol nepotism and anti-competitive practices.

The age of being too scared to speak up is nearing an end. Money, ideology, coercion and ego doesn’t actually define 100% of the population. It defines a convenient portion.

Boeing is definitely a shell of its former self. They need to get out of the news. Period. Are there any engineers left in charge, or has it all be overrun by pointy haired bosses and MBAs? I have a feeling the answer to that question has the answers to their issues.

MBAs, Accounting, Biology, Accounting, Management. . the board is almost entirely non-aerospace background, and largely nontechnical even when it is an aero degree (Sabrina Soussan being the sole exception, and I suspect she's just on the board because of Siemens). Speaking anecdotally, yes, the vast majority of leadership, also nontechnical, with very very very few aerospace backgrounds.

This all tends to flush out the go-getters, and doing good CFD work largely requires go-getters. It's very good at retaining box checkers though, and of course the serially dishonest.

This problem of nontechnical leadership[1] is bigger than Boeing, but that same JackWelchian focus on finance-uber-alles[2] is a real thorn in the side of American industry, or even just "American-Made Stuff".

[1] "I ran a shoe factory. And now I'm in charge" Late stage capitalism has so many echoes of late-stage Soviet industry that it's getting a little creepy.

[2] Again, "if you're good with money, you're good with everything" is a crappy way to make stuff, but our problem is when that matches your ideology you tend to see everything through that same lens. Ironically, this is a mental trick that gets tends to get trained out of you in hard sciences.

Yes, Just one of the many issues Boeing is eating the cost overruns for.

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