US Air Force jet engine manufacturing plagued by 'significant challenges' | Hacker News Reader

US Air Force jet engine manufacturing plagued by 'significant challenges'

militarytimes.com

21 pointstoomuchtodo25 comments

As practically anyone who has worked in even the smallest organization knows, much of the success depends on doing boring things well, efficiently and predictably. The U.S. Federal government has lost the interest and depth of competence to carry out the boring stuff, while focusing much of its attention on pointless vanity projects. It’s no surprise that logistics is suffering when the top leadership has zero experience (or even interest) in it.

I know nothing. But when I see headlines like this, and our dwindling missile stockpiles, and the fact that we have moved all carriers away from Asia, and the many other worrying things, I have to ask - are we about to get attacked? We seem rather weak right now.

Our nuclear subs alone are a significant deterrent (as long as people think you'll use them).

To be honest, they're getting a bit old, they need to be replaced, and underneath the brave face the shipyards and staffing levels are challenged:

https://www.buildsubmarines.com/mission

Probably all good in the long run, unless POTUS has a 3 am on the gilt toilet moment and declares they all need to be steam powered and have their conning towers moved.

( see: Ford class carriers )

> are we about to get attacked?

Nah.

Not because we aren't relatively weak right now (because we are), but because there isn't another world power that has the motive and desire to attack us at this time despite our being weak.

All of the US-Sino saber rattling comes from the US, not China.

China is more than happy to just sit back and watch the US empire fall from the inside out entirely through the incompetence of our own leadership.

No, but private conversations between China and Taiwan right now are probably… tense.

Korea as well this week.

If they had any sense China would be looking at Ukraine and Iran and conclude that it isn't a good idea to invade Taiwan.

Iran isn't an invasion. It's just lobbing some missiles hoping they'll cry uncle, which has worked approximately never. It says nothing about the ability of Iran to resist an invasion.

Russia has 3x the population of Ukraine. China has over 56x Taiwan's population.

Invading an island nation like Taiwan wouldn't be easy, but I'm guessing China's takeaway from the Ukraine War and Iran War is that they can win pretty quickly as long as they strike hard, fast, with overwhelming force, and start invading by sea and air immediately and continuously. They'd lose many people initially (though relative to their population, maybe not enough to break their stride), but victory only requires commitment on China's part. They're already building a fleet of specially developed landing ships: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/20/china-landing-...

The only thing that could possibly save Taiwan is American intervention. But Iran has shown the US has zero interest in shedding it's own blood in open combat even to win a war it started. And in his first term there were claims Trump admitted privately he wouldn't actually save Taiwan if China invaded.

I thought the same about Russia when they invaded Ukraine. It turned out I was wrong.

The relative manpower advantage Russia appears to have is smaller than the raw numbers indicate. Russia can't abandon the far east and China has a lot of motivation to mess around. Russia's border with NATO dramatically expanded since invading Ukraine. They also need to keep Belarus in line.

China will take Taiwan and a shot won't even be fired. Why? Because China is not America, they will do the hard work.

I suspect but cannot prove that a lot of the issues the US is experiencing right now exerting itself around the globe, such as lack of regional logistics ports and long supply lines and less enthusiasm from allies to join in, would apply in spades to anyone who decided to have a serious pop at the continental USA (barring globe-spanning nuclear missiles, but nobody wants to start that war right now).

Looking like a big man in your near waters, no more than a few days away from a home port, is one achievement (and it is an achievement - many nations can't do this). Sustaining a war on the other side of a serious ocean or two is a game very few countries in the world can manage right now.

The US would look extraordinarily strong to anyone bringing a war to the US.

The US is not about to be attacked. But your allies are getting sick of your bullying and hypocrisy. Without allies you won't keep your overseas bases, and without those you cease to be able to project power and maintain global dominance.

The US mainland won't get attacked but places the US wants to protect like Israel already are.

far simpler to watch US self-destruct than to attack

Not just that it is also strategically smart, if you are a geopolitical rival of the United States the absolute last thing you want to do is be the external aggressor that unifies them again (if temporarily).

Far better to just sit back and watch them blunder from unforced error to unforced error while you quietly achieve whatever your long term goals are.

While they’re sitting back, they might as well buy into the open corruption to serve their own interests like never before.

Sorry? Look at the map. USA has the best position in the world with a literal oceans as a natural defenses.

Sorry. Look at your leadership today.

“The Intern in Charge”: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-thomas-fugate-c...

And? There is no country what can attack USA and accomplish... anything?

The 9/11 attackers accomplished plenty in stripping rights from Americans. And now we’re back to cutting deals with their home country.

> in stripping rights from Americans

That wasn't done by some '9/11 attackers', that was done by Americans themselves.

The "widely debunked" theory that I find explains a lot is that Trump is Agent Krasnov[1], one of the hardest working KGB assets in history, with 39 years of experience!

Then again, never attribute to malice that which can be more then adequately explained by incompetence. In this case it's massive, unchecked, sane-washed incompetence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...

Those questions at the end of the article sounds like Gov has no idea what the problem(s) even are

there was a recent article detailing why jet engines are so hard to do, and that the US was one of the few countrys that maintained the very complex and precise layered knowledge and manufacturing base to make the hot section blades and the arcane methods to keep even those ultra tough and durrable parts from melting or breaking. To put it into perspective, every last thing in your home or business would be burnt and destroyed very quickly if exposed to the conditions inside a modern jet engine, including titainium and ceramics. From my perspective I can see how under current management conditions it would be easy, very very easy, for some bro to wreck decades of acumulated knowledge and practice and never even know, and his "superiors" to never know, just that there is now a problem with something™. And they also dont know that in mechanical engineering of aircraft the first law or aviation is that everything effects everything else , which requires some things to operate at there limits, meaning that changes or substitutions will fail the whole aircraft, or create havock for maintenance, etc, etc, etc. No Bros, bro.

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