Perpetual Defense Thread (Defense & non-commercial Space Nerds ITT)
- Thread starter PsionEdge
- Start date
IP protections on an oven?
Someone needs to hunt down whomever signed off on that contract.
Someone needs to hunt down whomever signed off on that contract.
And send them to Leavenworth!
Those types of contracts seem to be the norm after the Cold War ended. The issues that Germany had with Puma recently really brought the issue to light. The German army was not allowed to conduct the repairs and they had to be done by the manufacturer.
The only thing surprising about this is that it isn't more prevalent.
I don't know, while I understand the grift for the industrials, there seems to be very real, significant operational downsides for the military here. Considering the leverage they have in these negotiations, I don't understand why they would agree to it. Especially for something as low tech as an oven.
I'm probably being cynical here, but the phrase "Why do we need all these support troops?" keeps popping into my head.
If you want to cut the military budget (because it's free money; the Cold War is over haven't you heard?), but not lose "front line" units, cutting the logistics and maintenance corps and outsourcing the maintenance to contractors probably sounds attractive.
Plus the manufacturer said they'd lower the up-front unit cost if we sign up for a maintenance contract...
In the mid 2000s "headcount" was a primary metric for everything. Government and business.
As a result you kept your headcount low by outsourcing everything you could. To contractors who charged twice the cost of an in house employee.
IIRC, there are legal reasons for it too with Congress setting personnel size limits for the services. So, outsourcing to contractors saves headcount that can be used for say, ship crew.
I'm guessing that contractors also mean not being on the hook for pensions or VA benefits down the line as well.
You're out of date my friend! I've spent the last year harping about that nonsense. Congress already overrode the Pentagon on that and mandated that licensing/contractual obligations trump feeding US navy sailors, or having a functional air force.
Quite literally the US Navy & Air Force both once again do not have the right to repair their own equipment.
Part of it is that contracts with full IP rights cost more, so the DoD says - we aren't paying for that. Then complain when they don't have the right. Why does it cost more, because if the govt gets full IP rights, they can issue the contract to anyone to build or repair it. Sometimes no big deal, sometimes it means the contractor has a negative ROI. Enough negative ROI and they are out of business.
It's funny how that works, though. People scream that private enterprise can always do it better than an inefficient government running anything. Yet private enterprise can't even manage to stay in business without ripping off the government, and there's no other businesses to pick from? What happened to those capitalists starting new businesses to fill the need? That's the kind of logic loop that guarantees the US will eventually topple. Ours certainly would not be the first world-leading military force to topple because of creeping systemic rot or logistical failings.
It wasn't a big deal 30 years ago, but it's become one today. It wasn't just six of the eight ovens on a year-long cruise, the actual ship elevators they use to move aircraft between decks were also breaking and they weren't supposed to repair those either. The toilet system on the Ford class is simply a broken design that can't be fixed, no amount of right to repair will solve that one without ripping it out. I facepalmed when I realized the Kennedy has the same system and exact same problems necessitating $400,000 acid flushes every few months just like the Ford. They're building the same vacuum design right into the Enterprise too, because why not. Clearly ship's personnel are just cogs and combat effectiveness doesn't matter an iota if the crew lives at an acceptable 1800's standard of living with no indoor plumbing, cold showers, and cold food served every day. And don't forget the ~50% availability uptime on the aircraft that is the entire reason they're out there in the first place.
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Who said anything about anyone ripping anyone off? If the company spends $100million of it's own profit (and DoD contractor profits are restricted) to develop something valuable, why should they at least get their money back? If they didn't develop it on their own dollars, then it should literally be the government's property - but that's not how any of this works. Every company uses IRAD to develop something valuable to help win contracts, but the government rarely does not want to "own" that IRAD developed software because it might cost them $110 million.
I get real tired of this meme about the entire MIC being a corrupt collusion between the government and companies. Sure, it DOES happen - but a hell of a lot less than the stereotype.
Vast majority of cost issues are due to the acquisition process which is utterly fucked. Most of the remainder is due to sheer incompetence on either the contractor or customer side. A small portion is cheating, trying to get away with something.
Vast majority of government project offices hate/don't trust the contractors. It's almost always adversarial. Which causes a shit ton of overhead - "we don't like/trust you, so we have to oversee everything you do and you have to status every 15 minutes".
Navy cannot procure shit.
Air Force is not much better.
Army is better, but not great.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any procurement system that isn't some combination of public and private whether that's Daewoo and Hyundai for South Korea, or Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, IHI, and JMU for Japan. Even CSSC, Jiangnan, etc. in China are SOEs, so separate organizations from the navy unlike the Royal Navy Dockyard or the US Navy's Navy Yards.
It's like using 'private healthcare' as a catchall for the ills of the American healthcare system. Most countries have various combinations of private and public healthcare and different ways of providing levels of coverage and allocating costs. It's a copout that misses both that procurement is hard and countries screw it up all the time, but also that there are some uniquely American dysfunctions like the degree of influence Congress has and the repeated inability to pass budgets (or often legislation, for that matter).
Also, building warships is also just genuinely tricky, especially given the unavoidable long lead times to the process even as the world, and missions/requirements change around them.
Oops: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...akes-hit-after-assembling-royal-navy-frigate/
Double Oops: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...ng-f126-and-meko-frigate-projects-in-germany/
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Because outside their narrow specialty many troops like many civilians are fucking lost. Non-technical people should not be making technical choices because they lack the enthusiastic self-immersion of many years to be good at that.
I remember learning about something similar going way back - thinking 1990s, before perpetual war on terror - that Army doctors would work in hospital ERs and get all kinds of experience they were not getting in the Army - like treating gunshots. Not to mention other trauma cases like vehicle crashes and workplace accidents. All those years in Afghanistan and Iraq may have changed that.
It's still a thing. The navy has Navy Trauma Training Center to give USN surgeons trauma-response training at LA General for example. And HMs get trauma rotations in a bunch of big cities around the country too.
That's how it works, it's the Mcdonalds flurry machine situation just in military form. Either the US military pays more for the "right" to fix what they're buying, or they pay on the backend every time they call out the repair techs, but either way we pay for it. It's not like the US military doesn't end up paying for the fixes when the hardware's design flaws come through regardless, like the F-22 hololens, or stealth coatings that require considerably more frequent reapplications as was advertised.
Anyway, apparently the US navy will become insolvent in two months if it doesn't receive additional funding to make up for the now $29 billion cost of this war. Going up at a rate of two billion a week now. Are we winning yet?
This is part of the problem to some extent. I used to work for one of the American contractors, albeit not in the US, and one of our annual goals was double digit ROI on systems developed for contracts that mandated middling single digit profits. You either accepted you couldn't achieve your goals that year which was reflected in your review, or, if you're a careerist manager type who couldn't accept that, you started coming up with 'clever' ways to achieve them.
Having said that, unlimited profits is clearly not the answer to the problem.
I’ve seen total fees go up to 12%, but not much more than that, and usually a chunk is award fee or incentive fee based (I.e. you NEVER get a 100% award). While I was working on a contract with Boeing (not at), they got an award fee of 50%. 3 VPs were fired on the spot. Usually award fees range from 85% - 95% of the award fee pool (NOT contract value). 50% is pretty damning as the project office hates giving awards that low because it indicates failure on their part as well.
I’ve also seen contractors take a hit on material costs, particularly computer. Government will pay what the equipment costs, but many states have a use fee from 4% - 10%. Feds won’t pay, States won’t waive. So it’s a net loss trying to buy computers for government contracts.
"Only" a training centre just doing rotations at civ hospitals? Here we got several DoD‑run and staffed hospitals with a Col. M.D. as their chief ;-)
But yes, any such programme is good.
[crossposted from the Ukraine war thread because it's also relevant here]
Ukraine have unveiled some more details of their plan for an indigenous anti-ballistic missile system
View: https://x.com/DenShtilierman/status/2054847010650439809
The plan is to use either a Saab Giraffe 8a or Thales GF-300/GM-400 surveillance radar, and a Wiebel GFTR 2100/80 or Leonardo KRONOS LAND tracking radar, coupled with a Ukrainian-made TEL carrying FP-7 interceptors, all interconnected with the wider air defence network through NATO Link 16.
Interesting that they are going with an IIR seeker (like THAAD or SM-3) rather than an active radar seeker like Patriot PAC 3
Ukraine have unveiled some more details of their plan for an indigenous anti-ballistic missile system
View: https://x.com/DenShtilierman/status/2054847010650439809
The plan is to use either a Saab Giraffe 8a or Thales GF-300/GM-400 surveillance radar, and a Wiebel GFTR 2100/80 or Leonardo KRONOS LAND tracking radar, coupled with a Ukrainian-made TEL carrying FP-7 interceptors, all interconnected with the wider air defence network through NATO Link 16.
Interesting that they are going with an IIR seeker (like THAAD or SM-3) rather than an active radar seeker like Patriot PAC 3
2 color or 1 color.
What C2 system? Wider air defense network isn't it. A poor C2 system can tank a missile defense system.
C2 system is listed as a modified Kongsberg FDC, presumably because Ukraine are familiar with it's capabilities as part of their NASAMS systems
Oooo, that's going to be a nice system.
When you're fighting an actual war, you get to jettison the political considerations of design / procurement and focus on what's actually going to work.
Unless it's WWIII, US isn't going to jettison anything political. It's gotten MUCH worse over the last 18 months.
EDIT: I can think of at least 3 politically motivated selections of worse performers. Unfortunately not public, so I can't discuss.
https://www.twz.com/air/argentina-retires-its-a-4-fightinghawks
I want to make a joke about how Argentina is retiring its A-4s because there aren't any Royal Navy escorts left for them to bomb. Not literally true, but a lot of the Royal Navy's active ships have been laid up for unusually long stretches
I want to make a joke about how Argentina is retiring its A-4s because there aren't any Royal Navy escorts left for them to bomb. Not literally true, but a lot of the Royal Navy's active ships have been laid up for unusually long stretches
The slide mentions FP‑7 at around Mach 4.x (1,500 km/s). Although I am sure that might be improved with solid boosters or such, how does such an interceptor realistically compare with the others? THAAD and SM‑3 are obviously around double the speed IIRC, but even half of that can still be pretty useful.
Let's say the slides are correct and the system missiles are around Mach 4.x at most. How does that hypothetical capability compare and any hypothetical limitations on their AAD envelope? Against Russian missiles, obviously.
I know we are just talking hypotheticals here, but let's say the numbers are accurate (hopefully might be even better than than), what would be the AAD envelope of just the missile, given "perfect" radars and such? @Hap ,perhaps?
Any source on that? The slides seemed to say that the actual seeker is still TBD...
Bottom of the 5th slide - "Seeker - Image Infra-Red advanced seeker developed together with Diehl Defence"
Range is going to depend on the propellant mass and missile mass, plus a variety of other things. launcher orientation, I'll have to see if I can find something comparable. Do note that actual velocities and ranges are typically classified with publish ranges (unless you're Russian) typically shorter than reality.
Do note, that unlike radar seekers, you have to be careful on intercept angles with IR seekers. Seeker opens its eyes and sees the sun, or even the moon - game over - seeker fried.
2 color IR seekers are a lot more effective against decoys, which is why I asked, but they are also a lot more expensive and take more on board processing power.
The chart is an eye chart and I can't get it to blow up, so I'm having to rely on others posting to see full details on what it says.
Do note, that unlike radar seekers, you have to be careful on intercept angles with IR seekers. Seeker opens its eyes and sees the sun, or even the moon - game over - seeker fried.
2 color IR seekers are a lot more effective against decoys, which is why I asked, but they are also a lot more expensive and take more on board processing power.
The chart is an eye chart and I can't get it to blow up, so I'm having to rely on others posting to see full details on what it says.
Sorry about that, let me see if I can embed images via nitter.net
The FP-7.x interceptor will be a weird missile if enters production; an anti-ballistic missile modification of a single-stage tactical ballistic missile that is itself a simplified version of the interceptor used in the S-400 SAM system which is advertised as having... anti-ballistic missile capabilities.
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It says TDL from Launcher to Interceptor. Normally that is Tactical Data Link (i.e. Link 16/Link 22, etc). I sure the hell hope not. IME, that would be terrible. Link 16 barely sufficies to get a search queue over to meet timing and precision requirements. It's ill suited to an IFTU. Hopefully they are using that term generically. It's not the data sharing aspect, but TADIL links typically (especially 16) work similarly to token ring, i.e. you have to wait for your slot on the network to talk. Now it's been 2 decades since I worked directly on Link 16, but I'm pretty sure the architecture is the same.
I think, not sure, that we have access to Jane's at work. It's too damn expensive ($2K for ONE book) for individuals, but it is open sourced data - not classified. I'll see if I can find any relevant, sourced data. No promises though.
I think, not sure, that we have access to Jane's at work. It's too damn expensive ($2K for ONE book) for individuals, but it is open sourced data - not classified. I'll see if I can find any relevant, sourced data. No promises though.
There is an upgrade to Link 16 designed for network enabled weapons. Called (cleverly enough) “Link 16 NEW”. It includes J-series messages tagged to have priority on the network.
The full frame cycle on Link 16 takes 12 seconds, but “NEW” can allow for jumping into the network and getting updates through the network faster than that. Not sure I’ve ever seen reference to how fast, but the IFF subsystem on Link 16 — which is also prioritized — operates on something like a one to three second latency (depending on total traffic).
There are also systems which use proprietary waveforms to talk to inflight weapons and then connect to the broader network over Link 16. And those variously get marketed as Weapons Data Link (Collins) or Advanced Tactical Data Link (L3Harris), so I’m not sure how well the nomenclature is even nailed down at this point.
I guess the most important factor is that there are a number of off-the shelf options for how to communicate with a missile while also having the whole operation connected to a broader battle network. They’ve just got to source an appropriate one.
Makes sense, and I agree that selecting an existing one makes sense, it was just my prior experience with Link-16 did not seem to indicate it was an appropriate selection.
Then again, it could be something like TADIL J (Link 16 over ethernet).
PS - I once worked a program that was mandated to support the entire message set. Now understand - this was an AD system. The entire message set includes things specific to submarines as well, so unless we were going to put the AD system on the ocean floor and shoot down torpedoes, it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Yeah. The most relevant part of my post might be that the terminology for these mixed-protocol/mixed-waveform systems is all over the place, so the use of the abbreviation “TDL” might mean just about anything, as long as it’s got one Tx/Rx that can talk to the battle network.
I inquired. It requires a charge number and I'm about to spend program dollars on a personal question. Got asked why I wanted Janes when most of what we really used was classified. I just said I wanted an unclassified reference.
I suspect the range for the missile would be in the 12 - 16mi range, but to be honest, that's just a gut feeling. I could be WAY off.