To me, one of the key learning from Elon Musk and SpaceX is that it is entirely possible to cut the cost of weapon systems by 60-80% with a fresh approach to procurement certainly in aerospace and likely across the board. The current system is focused on spreading job around to as many congressional districts as possible. So the cost of a weapons system includes a healthy markup on each sub-system, and each sub-system includes multiple components, which also have their own markup. In procurement environment where many things are still Cost Plus pricing, there isn’t much incentive to drive down costs.
One of the things, I learned from reading Elon’s biography, is that SpaceX (and to a lesser extent Tesla) would often receive a quote for a $1,000 for a simple part. In many cases, that part could be made for $10 in aluminum along with $50,000 machine and a few minutes of operator time. Both Tesla and SpaceX are very vertically integrated companies because they’ve found it cheaper to make stuff then buy it. That hasn’t always worked so well for Tesla since the compete in the competitive auto market. But the oligopoly world of aerospace and most military contractors, SpaceX has already dropped the price of launching a KG by 70% and by next year it will over 90% and those not even counting the cost saving of reusing the 1st stage. I have little doubts this same cost saving could be applied to other weapon systems.
There’s a difference though between “not ready for massive production on a scale never before seen,” and “willful mendacity.” IMO, the teething problems that US industry suffered, and there were some, were mostly the former type. Compared to earlier wars (the Civil War in particular, where stuff was really bad), WWII saw a pretty efficient and relatively honest production scene. I’d take issue with the idea, too, that US equipment was grossly subpar. There were a lot of systems that were mediocre, a few that were bad, and a lot that did pretty much what they were supposed to. Contrary to the way wargamers and rivet counters look at things, US production during the war did exactly what it was supposed to–deliver a shit ton of stuff that worked well enough to win the war. Cost overruns in the context of WWII don’t make much sense to talk about, either, because no one had the vaguest idea how much stuff that had never been done before was supposed to cost, anyhow. Pretty much the whole war was “cost plus,” anyhow. Willow Run is a great example. It cost a lot more than projected, took a lot longer than expected, and still ended up being amazingly productive. And tank production (including the whole armored vehicle shebang) managed to rope in the auto, rail, agricultural machinery, and pretty much everything else vaguely associated with moving machinery, and do it pretty effectively. The shortfalls were generally not the fault of industry, but of the pace of the war, unexpected consumption rates, bureaucratic hangups, and the like.
And yeah, this is a digression, but it’s relevant, because the US hasn’t always had such a terrible procurement system as we have now…we did after all manage to win WWII.
We also supplied the Russian with a lot of amount of equipment along with the French, Polish, and modest amount of equipment for the UK countries
I’m not really sure when the congressional district pork laden procurement system arrived on the scene. I got to believe it was during the 50s since Ike railed about the Military Industrial complex.
But it’s clearly deeply entrenched now. In Robert Gates’ bio, he describes how he practically had two jobs. One was the SecDef and the other was Project Manager for the MRAP (mine resistant) vehicles.
Gates was probably the most highly skilled bureaucrat in the government. He was not only highly respected but also feared since he fired a bunch of folks from 3-star Generals to DoD Dept Heads and defense contractors. He used all of his skill and position power to get MRAP to Army, Marines units in Afghanistan and Iraq. ASAP
We spent 50 billion, to get 12,000 deployed in the front line and it took us from 2007 to 2012, for a vehicle that was already mostly finished in 2007. This is several times slower than what happened in a WWII, and I believe much slower than procurement in Vietnam.
To be fair, and to Miramon’s point, during WWII there certainly was shady stuff going on; that was guaranteed by the sheer volume of contracts. And the war was a unique situation, where money was pretty much no object and there was a strong and pretty much irresistible impetus for getting stuff done. But I agree, as bad as the history of military procurement has been in the past, it’s terrible now.
As to when it started to get like this, maybe Eisenhower is a clue. His famous farewell address in early 1961 warned of the military industrial complex. After Korea there was a resurgence in military spending and R&D prompted by the realization that the Cold War could get hot and fueled as well by the realization that scare tactics worked to get Congress to fork over money; see the interstate highway system, federal education funding, and the Sputnik scare. Once you coupled a vague but present and seemingly never-ending threat with the prospect of making billions of dollars and never really having to prove that the stuff you were selling actually worked (because, hey, if WWIII happened, there wouldn’t be any post-war investigations!), and you had a witches brew of circumstances that helped get us where we are today.
I don’t know if they’ve fixed it. The last time I was with them for secret squirrel crap, they said that the rain nullified their stealth capabilities and damaged whatever special “skin” they have.
So no, they didn’t fly during rain and had to be sheltered (the only of our aircraft to have that prohibition). It was sad launching Warthogs left and right and looking at the F35s sitting under the canopies.
But hey, if they can fly near lightning storms, who knows what’s in their future!
What is the point of a fighter jet if you can’t fly in rain? That is obscene. Will be fun when Russia can fly their fighters to striking distance of our carrier fleets and all our fighters are grounded (when the Navy retires all the F18’s). Or we do fly in rain then we spend a cajillion dollars replacing the skin of every F35 that gets a wet.
As far as I can tell from quick Google searches, it just hasn’t been fully certified for all weather flight, which is why it was/is still restricted from flying in certain conditions, not because it can’t fly in rain. Lightning appears to be an issue if it is flown for long/multiple periods in lightning conditions with external fuel tanks, because charge doesn’t completely dissipate.
Nope, just our operational restrictions actually working them. We had briefing papers on that but obviously not anything that I could share. I will not deploy again with them for another nine months (I’m mostly a civ ATC) but can try to ask around to some of my coworkers. Some of the pilots trash talked its ejection abilities, too, but I can only verify what I saw with rain in person. This was some time ago; may be resolved.
Agreed. A-10s are amazing and don’t cost trillions of dollars while being unparalleled in doing their job and doing it better than anything has in history.
We’d have been far better served by F-22s and A-10s and saved enough money to fund anything you can think of wanting to fund.
