As former enlisted Navy let me say this. Every officer thinks they’re captain Picard. That they can just say, “make it so” and somehow all of this impossible shit will just happen. Contractors will never work themselves out of a job. Most sailors are fuckups who join because they couldn’t put a life together in the real world. It is literally a billion dollar mess. The train wreck of the LCS program really highlights all these issues.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
49 points (94.5% liked)
politics
18651 readers
4040 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
as a fellow enlisted I would recommend the movie The Pentagon Wars. I watched that and was pointing at the screen like Leo the whole time.
I was in the Navy when these we being announced, and since I worked in the engine room everyone had an opinion....
Officers wouldn't stop talking about how great they'd be. Because lots of stuff was automated and there wouldn't be many enlisted. They envisioned it as like a Star Trek bridge where they had a handful of people to push buttons for them.
Every enlisted knew it would go to shit, because eventually everything breaks. And if the people on it only knew how to press buttons, no one would be able to fix what broke.
I didn't know the actual plan was to rely on contractors so much for maintenance, but that's probably the stupidest part of the whole thing. It's bad enough if they're brought on for shipyard stuff where it's parked for 6-12 months, but trying to get them to do routine maintenance is insane.
Every enlisted knew it would go to shit, because eventually everything breaks. And if the people on it only knew how to press buttons, no one would be able to fix what broke.
I think you've just summed up modern civilization right there.
Not really the same thing if you're talking about cars.
But the people on this ship were literally prohibited from even touching some systems.
Auto mechanics are all over the place on land. But if something breaks out at sea with six months left on deployment...
Going back to port and scheduling contractors to come out before you even know what's wrong is fucking insane for any type of ship, and 100x as stupid for military vessels.
Failed military industrial complex chronyism as usual. Government builds more than anyone wants because lobbyist and officials with shipyards in their district want money. The military industrial complex just funnels as much money as they can with zero fucks given about if the end product is successful.
So the navy has the Littoral ships, the army has the Bradley (watch the movie Pentagon Wars), so what does the airforce have?
The Bradley thing was way overblown and The Pentagon Wars didn't really happen that way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk
https://piped.video/watch?v=2gOGHdZDmEk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I knew it would be Lazerpig even before clicking. You're doing good work looking that.
The F-35 program.
That has turned into one of the most useful political tools ever made.
For all its flaws, it’s an aircraft that when it showed up to the first Red Flag training series, it flew against the best fighter pilots and aircraft in the western world racking up a 78:1 kill ratio.
The cost has come down on A models, flight availability has risen, and costs per airframe are dropping as costing and maintenance costs reduce.
It’s got problems. It has lord of problems. It’s got a reputation as a failure of a program from the early 2Ks, but it is in reality the most successful political military program ever created. Every. Single. One. Of NATO countries want them, but just need to figure out how to buy them. 16 countries we want able to integrate and work closely with us have them in order or are flying them.
They offer capabilities simply not possible with any other aircraft, and quarterback the battle space with sensor integration from inputs across all aircraft, radars, and it’s own sensors. This gets pushed out to every other data linked aircraft in the battle space.
The F-35 is an incredible and continually getting better program.
