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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

I find it impressive that the government is actually punishing a project for running late and underdelivering. They should expand this to all parts of the government. Can you imagine if the F-35 was cancelled the first time it fell behind schedule? The Space Launch System? The Littoral Combat System? The USS JFK?

So many boondoggles could be killed off before they spend money. Maybe contractors would have to start properly estimating costs up front. Or maybe nothing would ever get done again.

I do wonder what the FCC is planning to do with these funds if they aren't funding Starlink. Are they going to go towards a "safer" project like Project Kuiper? Or maybe dumping it into Inmarsat?

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I think you may not understand what the government is.

The government is a collection of individuals. It is not a single borg instance. Some individuals within that collection are going to act different than other ones.

Also the government does a lot of funding through different mechanisms. Many miltiary programs are a cost+ program where they pay the contractor the cost of development plus a profit% so the initial budget is a bit moot since the point is to pay for a capability. That obviously doesn't apply here and the FCC wasn't offering a Cost+ program.

As if cost+ contracting hasn't been a major factor in projects going overbudget and behind schedule. Even with cost+ the contractor needs to provide an estimate up front of both the time and money needed. While it is understood that it is just an estimate, having projects come in for 5x or more of the original estimated cost is egregious. SLS for example was estimated to cost $1.5B, but instead costs $11.2B and still hasn't launched.

> SLS for example was estimated to cost $1.5B

I wish it was; lol. The initial estimate was $18B [1]. I suspect you saw the $1.5B number for some sub-component of SLS. That's another common problem with government projects. The media will read some government report that says a new railroad will cost $1B and then report that the entire project will cost $1B while the report only talked about track cost and not about land acquisition, even environmental studies, or etc.

That said, yes SLS is over ($23B) the $18B budget and not done.

I do wish NASA would move closer to how DARPA does things where you payout a reward to companies that achieve some milestone. Somewhat close to what the FCC did here except the FCC is giving the money ahead of milestone. But there are pros and cons to this as government contracting is a pia so when you get into the situation of a single competitor it gets awkward.

Contractors not meeting their bids is a problem though. At the personal/corporate/government level I don't think people account for enough the fact that the contractor might not uphold their side of the bargin. Similar to how many people choose the cheapest insurance and then :surprise-pickachu-face: all their claims get denied.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding

It was $1.5B per launch. But that figure keeps going up as they have to amortize even more development cost into each launch, and the total number of launches remains constant or even drops.

> I do wish NASA would move closer to how DARPA does things where you payout a reward to companies that achieve some milestone.

SpaceX seems to have done well out of how NASA does bids for contracts. And that's for actual work done, not for fudgeable project milestones?

> I do wish NASA would move closer to how DARPA does things where you payout a reward to companies that achieve some milestone.

NASA already does this for a lot of things around ISS and Artemis. SLS is legacy bondoogle pushed by US Senate.

The problem with cost+ is that contractors can inflate the actual cost of things, and pocket the difference. Obviously they can't do this to an unlimited extent, but the cynic in me would have a hard time believing this isn't a common practice.

It's much more likely that this stuff is difficult to do, and thus difficult to price out, than that somehow the managers of these companies are working with the finance people to secretly steal money from the government and hide it in their books, the government never catches it, and these very amicable ties between the government and defense contractors continues - and all of that is before we even get to what happens when you try to steal and your project falls behind.

It's way more valuable, usually, to get it done quickly and done well the first time, so you can move onto another project. You leave a few people on the original program pull in tons of super easy maintenance contract money for what essentially ends up being a skeleton crew.

Or, I suppose, you could try and inflate costs by a couple percentage points (not too much - you'll get caught and the risk here is MASSIVE), keep working on the same program, and hope the opportunity cost doesn't get too high.

I'm sure it happens, but I doubt it happens often.

I mean there's almost certainly crime that happens in contracting but there is a real risk of being caught if you commit fraud. Do remember that companies such as Google do pay out literally millions of dollars to random people that send in invoices for work never requested or done.

Cost+ at face-value isn't that bad of an idea. An alternative to it is the government hiring a bunch of people to do a project and ideally the government only pays Cost in that case. For people that don't believe the government can do anything this is a pretty good trade off.

IIRC, the `+` part is capped at 15% profit so IIUC that's similar to an operating margin of 15%. Although IIUC, executive expenses and a ton of other things come out of the `+` part so it should be lower than 15%. But the point I'm going to make here is that an operating margin of 15% isn't really impressive and that's the best that the contractor can do.

> Some individuals within that collection are going to act different than other ones

Actually, no, they seem to have been acting as a (predictable) monolith for at least the past three years...

The various FCC rural broadband programs in specific have been horrible about ISPs not completing the work and not having money clawed back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abandoned_military_pr...

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

F35 Survived but there are like 50 other planes that didnt in that second list

Bradley IFV is not on this list.

Say what you want about the Bradley, and criticism of the military is very healthy! I think the war in Ukraine shows that while the project may have been wasteful the end result is still useful.

Because the Bradley IFV was only a boondoggle within the almost completely fictionalized setting of Pentagon Wars.

Someone else pointed out the performance in Ukraine, but IMO this was already a settled point in 1991, when they collectively destroyed more enemy armor than the Abrams and only lost 3 vehicles to enemy fire.

The Pentagon Wars was misleading bullshit and the Bradley IFV was a good idea that was slated to come in under budget (before James Burton demanded his tests).

The tests were a huge waste of money that conclusively proved that the Bradley couldn't survive an anti-tank missile, which is irrelevant because 1) the Bradley isn't a tank and was never required to survive one, and 2) the Pentagon already knew that; they'd tested the components individually already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk

(28min 20sec)

Former Bradley guy here. Like others have mentioned, it’s done far better then expected. It (along with any other IFV) are pretty much the ultimate Swiss army knife of a military vehicle. It can pretty much do almost any ground role even though isn’t insanely awe inspiring for any one. And the 25mm autocannon is prob the easiest thing in our existing arsenal we have to adapt for an anti-drone role.

And, no, that one set of photos from Ukraine of Bradleys damaged in a minefield has zero bearing pro or con given the 40 years of experience we have otherwise with it.

My friends in Ukraine fucking love the Bradley. It fills a lot of roles, being very useful for casevac under fire (much better than many alternative options).

I find it quite amusing how proud American guys are defending their MIC... which took 15 years to produce Bradley. This thread is not about how good/bad M2 is. Please re-read the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38632482

The Bradley is actually good. Did it have some initial hiccups? Sure, but all military equipment has.

These days? The Bradley fucking rocks. My friends out in harms way love them.

Most of those weren't cancelled because they ran behind schedule, they were cancelled for political reasons or because the role they were designed for went away. Sometimes because some other project was overrunning their budget so badly that they had to be cancelled to free up the money for the boondoggle.

And the f35 is honestly legit when it's all said and done. There's a reason why it's sold so well, and it's only getting better.

If the Marines hadn't insisted on adding STOL/VTOL capabilities wrt the F35B, the project would have been much more straightforward and successful. Even despite that crazy requirement, it's still a success for NATO exports.

Those lists would be far more informative if they had some years associated with them. Many of the cancelled projects were prop-planes cancelled in the 1940's and 50's.

To be fair, defense is an existential risk for the US and its allies. NATO can’t really afford to not have a reasonably up-to-date combat jet. They also need to continually feed money into the military industrial complex so that suppliers don’t go under/downsize too much/etc.

Not disagreeing with your sentiment, just think that certain fields like defense, healthcare, etc have slightly different priority lists.

> defense is an existential risk for the US

this is not a true statement for a huge country with oceans on 2 sides and nukes. it is a true statement about people relying on the us military to make money tho

Oceans are only a defense if you can float a navy on them. The British Islands got invaded a couple of times... until they built a big navy.

Having two oceans is great, but now you need at least two fleets.

Nukes are only worth something if you have a lot of them and can credibly delivery them in multiple ways. Now you need subs, long-range bombers and the fighters to protect them, and missile silos.

Now add in reliance on a global supply chain (many types of oil and minerals, grades of steel not made in the US, TSMC), and all of a sudden you need to be able to help protect your partners on the other side of the world.

Now sprinkle in a couple of crazy dictators with nuclear arsenals and huge armies of their own, and it's starting to make sense why the US military needs constant re-investment.

Don't forget satellites and SIGINT (which just might involve crazy submarines and big "scientific" radio astronomy dishes). Or cover stories about ships and manganese extraction worthy of James Bond.

> Glomar Explorer

That was the CIA's plot, which the Navy vehemently objected to. The Navy said it was farcically complicated, too large of a plot to keep secret and likely to fail. Both proved true. The Navy offered to recover Intel from the Soviet submarine using DSVs and ROVs, low risk operations they could have easily kept secret. But the CIA won this dispute and fumbled the submarine and got putted by the press.

this is hyperbolic. there are various coastal defenses and naval deployments that are not nearly as intensive as you describe.

the "crazy dictator" theory is a conjuring of the govt and media in service of empire. they are acquiring nukes because they are afraid of being invaded by us!

Not all crazy dictators are dangerous purely because they have nukes.

Some sponsor anti-US terrorism.

Some are chomping at the bit to invade Europe (Russia) or Taiwan (China).

Some are just nuts (North Korea).

But now that these nutjobs have nukes, they’re all the more dangerous.

> Now you need subs, long-range bombers and the fighters to protect them, and missile silos.

The role of the long-range bombers in the nuclear triad is heavily questioned. It is not quite certain that you "need" them.

You need them anyway because almost 100% of the time you’ll be dropping conventional ordnance / paratroopers / perhaps drones in future.

I looked a bit more into this program and its all a lot more complicated

1) The money was granted in 2020 based on an inaccurate map (leading starlink & others to get funding for covering places like Target's and major airports)

2) This Starlink-FCC debate has been a protracted process, since then the program has essentially failed (a third of the money has gone to companies that didnt deliver)

3) Since then significantly more funding has been given to states for broadband, making this FCC program relatively small

It seems like the FCC is clawing back as much money as possible to try and recover from the initial auction design.

https://communitynets.org/content/worries-mount-rural-digita...

> So many boondoggles could be killed off before they spend money.

This is, in fact, precisely the issue with government contracting. But not in the way you think.

For all practical purposes, every single government contract can be cancelled without warning and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Consequently, every single government contract is executed with that in mind.

This leads to all the pathological behaviors that everybody bitches about.

The FCC didn't even give Starlink a chance to run late or underdeliver, they assessed the program and capability and decided it wasn't where they wanted to spend grant money. So they aren't being punished, they are being passed over for a better option.

What is the better option?

The FCC originally didn't want to include fixed wireless or satellite internet for RDOF consideration, so from that fact alone I believe they were intending it to be fiber optic. A fiber plant is pretty immutable, even if you end up upgrading the things connected to the fiber for higher speeds. Once it's buried, it's pretty reliable (unless a passing herd of excavators get hungry and smell the fiber buried underground) while a satellite system is hard to upgrade and subject to the unpredictability of space. For example, mission Group 4-7 deployed 49 satellites and a geomagnetic storm killed all but 10 of them.

The risk is just much higher with satellites than with buried fiber. If the FCC is trying to build more permanent networks, fiber in the ground is much more permanent.

Buried fiber is never going to happen for the rural folks serviced by Starlink. It's hard to get companies to put fiber down in well populated suburbs, getting them out into the country is pure wishful thinking, especially if you're only talking about a billion dollars.

Do we have to bury it? Why not just put it up on transmission lines?

It seems weird to me that we can run Cable TV to fairly remote locations but not fiber.

We can! Many rural electric co-ops run fiber internet on their power poles.

Not sure what your definition of fairly remote is, but these places absolutely don’t have cable TV.

Nation wide buried fiber is never going to be profitable, so why bother involving the for-profit corporations in getting it up and running?

Plus they've shown themselves to be not trust worthy after they stole previous funds for fiber expansion.

There's going to be future rounds

Part of the issue is that some of these companies are the only companies in the US capable of this scale of manufacturing, which is expensive to maintain, and only the government really uses. In other words, they're too big to fail. If we penalize them, and they go out of business or even just downsize, and then we need something urgently, we're SOL. And so we keep ponying up so that, should we need it, we keep their manufacturing capabilities.

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