[HN Gopher] Soldiers speak out about being blocked from repairin...
___________________________________________________________________
Soldiers speak out about being blocked from repairing equipment by
contractors
Author : danso
Score : 280 points
Date : 2021-07-15 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattstoller.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattstoller.substack.com)
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Does the pentagon consider it a feature that repair knowledge is
| compartmentalized outside of the combat zone such that it cannot
| be as easily leaked?
| austincheney wrote:
| No. Maintenance and repair of a contracted item are governed by
| the active contract. That means if a soldier steps in to repair
| the item the military is breaking the contract and the assigned
| contractors won't touch that item moving forward. This is
| problematic because the soldiers in place likely don't have the
| dedicated resources to assume full ownership.
| ruined wrote:
| it sure would be an unmitigated disaster if the enemy knew how
| to fix an ac
| shadilay wrote:
| As always, government contracts are some of the most lucrative
| out there. Especially when 'unauthorized' repair can be spun as
| 'dangerous'.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| "Sorry Lockheed didn't change that bolt, you forfeited future
| repairs. We can get you back into compliance for 2 million"
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This was a deliberate decision back in the 1980s and 1990s
| related to how to structure personnel. You'll likely recognize it
| as how software teams are siloed and the concept of "full stack"
| is kind of a misnomer.
|
| The theory was basically that complex systems needed
| specialization for building and maintenance and that the US
| military could not afford or recruit the kind of people that
| could simultaneously run operations, do management AND
| troubleshoot.
|
| In other words, military personnel are not seen as technical
| experts that focus on one thing for a decade, moreso that they
| are like project managers who have depth in one area from their
| first 5-6 years and then "broaden" out to fill in the management
| layer of the force beyond that.
|
| There are exceptions to this of course, warrant officers and the
| like. However it's a tiny slice and given how massive the system
| is and how many sub-systems are involved - the management layer
| grows in the form of uniformed ranks while the technician layer
| grows in the contractor ranks because of how the force is
| structured.
|
| The incentive for that contract force however is to keep the
| contract (and follow on) and the knowledge related to it, so they
| end up building in these kind of "nobody can touch this but us"
| requirements. Functionally you can see how this is a self
| fulfilling prophecy - we aren't recruting or structuting our
| force to have the capability to maintain systems because we have
| a contract force that does it.
|
| To fix this a deliberate decision has to be made to change the
| force structure to build more technicians and unfortunately
| people like that don't want to take the pay and lifestyle cut so
| we just can't fill out the ranks.
|
| I could go on all day, including how the defense industrial base
| as well as citizens balking at growing the size of the uniformed
| forces reinforce this system, but it's a pervasive problem across
| multiple vectors.
| [deleted]
| extrapickles wrote:
| The problem is that the military _does_ (or at least did in the
| 200X 's) train people how to repair and troubleshoot. They
| basically take the people more adapt to do that sort of work
| and train them how to do it.
|
| I know several people who were trained to do board level
| component replacement, but for most of the equipment they had,
| they were not authorized to do the repair, even though they
| were trained and equipped to troubleshoot and repair most
| circuit boards (including surface mount).
|
| For design and creation of new things (eg: software) they used
| to train for that, but I don't think they do that anymore.
| nradov wrote:
| If you do component level repair on a circuit board would it
| be more likely to fail later in combat than if you just
| replaced the whole board?
| Li7h wrote:
| Possibly, but the component level repair could be a good
| triage solution while awaiting that replacement board. Not
| a soldier, but I imagine in warzones and combat areas a
| good enough solution that works now is more important than
| awaiting the "right" solution that takes 3 days.
|
| >When I was in Iraq (08-09), we had a juniper firewall go
| down, didn't have another on back up, and they had to fly a
| contractor out from the states to Iraq, to change it out.
| Took 10 minutes to diagnose the problem, and 3 days of
| waiting, and 15 minutes to install it. We lost feed to the
| predator drones in the area, phone, internet, coms, and
| several other mission critical things for 3 days.... a real
| s** show.
| [deleted]
| Meph504 wrote:
| Much of the communications equipment have complex counter
| measures built in, and sometimes just really simplistic
| ones that if you say open the case without unscrewing the
| screws in the right order, they are designed to fry
| themselves to prevent tampering.
|
| This isn't something you really want to try to do in 120
| degree heat, hanging out the side of a vehicle in a very
| sandy environment.
| mcguire wrote:
| In a combat situation, having a thing down now may be worse
| than an increased likelihood to fail later. You can always
| order a replacement, but what are you going to do in the
| mean time?
| noxer wrote:
| Often stuff has to be repaired for training and its not
| equipment that would ever be used in combat. It would not
| be an issue if it fails again in fact it would be useful
| for training if it does. You dont have to simulate failure
| and people learn if their repair is actually lasting.
|
| I did train soldier on technical equipment (not in the US)
| and we would have broken or known unreliable parts given
| out so they learn how to find it. Also we had no
| authorization to repair most stuff and sometimes it was
| hard to keep broken parts to use the for training because
| these parts where scheduled for maintenance witch would
| mean the manufacturer of the part would replace it and
| turning the perfectly "good" part for training into
| e-waste. It's the classic problem in hierarchical
| structure. The top just never gets what the people at The
| bottom really want and need. They cant warp their head
| around why a broken part could be of more value than having
| 100% of the replacement parts functional all the time.
| toast0 wrote:
| It depends on a lot of things. If the root cause for the
| failure was poor factory soldering, a new board will likely
| fail in the same way after similar use where as a field
| repair may solve the issue.
|
| There are plenty of other root causes where many components
| were overstressed and replacing them all with a new board
| would result in less downtime than replacing components as
| they fail, too. Of course, sometimes you can do well with
| replace this group of components anytime any one of them
| fails.
|
| Also, availability of full boards and availability of
| individual components makea a difference.
| rasz wrote:
| Oh, the sweet innocence of someone who never looked inside
| electronics around him. Probably 1/10 of the products you
| ever owned shipped with some kind of factory bodge or went
| thru rework at the factory. That includes silly things like
| alarm clocks, VCR/DVD players, but especially expensive
| ($xx-xxxK) scientific equipment, airplane avionics,
| industrial control and medical devices.
| penagwin wrote:
| It depends so much on what it is, a simple single component
| swap seems unlikely to cause issues.
|
| Sure I understand that a full diagnosis/repair of say a
| water damaged board I might not trust, but if it's just a
| port or a capacitor then it seems unlikely to cause massive
| issues if the person has any EE background whatsoever.
| Meph504 wrote:
| When I was in the army I use to rail against contractors all
| the time, until I got transferred to a maint. center for
| communications equipment. The equipment you get there is
| usually the result of a failed attempts by trained personal
| to fix things, but were trying do it in the field, without
| the proper reference materials, equipment, or parts. There
| units were issued all of these, but after several
| deployments, books get lost or destroyed, tools walk, etc...
| Half the times the equipment was fried by its own protection
| systems being tripped because it wasn't dissembled correctly,
| making the issue they wanted to fix a moot point.
|
| So some PFC just destroyed a $40,000 system because a Capt.
| was up his ass about fixing it right now, he has no ability
| to push back, nothing that can be done but to follow the
| order to the best of his abilities. If he destroys it, well
| if the capt. is a dick, he gets written up, and charged for
| it. If not, the equipment is still fried, and has to be
| replaced.
|
| With a contractor, they are outside the chain of command, and
| can tell the capt. to pound sand, and tell them the equipment
| will need to be shipped and fixed properly. And reminds the
| capt. that there are several dummy switches that without the
| right tools, and training, the equipment will fry itself, and
| if this is discovered to be the case, the indecent will be
| turned over to CID (army detectives) for investigation and
| that he should make arrangements to source a replacement from
| supply ASAP.
|
| Seeing the straight don't give a fuck of these guys could
| exercises, in relation to what is best for the equipment and
| not the commands ego was amazing, and made total sense why on
| the high end equipment this method was used.
| avmich wrote:
| I don't understand. With pounding sand, don't contractors
| get tried with military tribunal if they interfere with
| field activities of the army? Like, SWAT team in the house,
| with "give us source code or we're going to the court with
| charges of treason now"? I'd assume Capt. is correct in
| attempting to fix immediately, and somebody who'd oppose
| him should be investigated, right? By CID or FBI? Because
| contractors can't likely make fixes more ASAP than
| operators in the field?
|
| Or is it the purchasers who're procuring the equipment
| which "needs to be shipped and fixed properly"? Are we
| fighting wars in a manner "wait a minute, dear enemy, I'll
| just fix this small issue in a gusto, and we'll continue"?
|
| Just curious.
| saulrh wrote:
| I have wondered what the procedure is when someone gives
| impossible orders. Like, I know there's a spectrum here,
| but just to illustrate, what do you do if your superior
| says "I'm ordering you to jump that gap" but it's thirty
| feet wide and fifty feet deep with big metal spikes at
| the bottom? If you ordered me to, I don't know, fix a
| computer, and I've diagnosed that the computer is busted
| because the CPU has let the magic smoke out and I don't
| have any spares or any other less-critical equipment to
| cannibalize for a replacement CPU, is it just my job to
| tell my superior that it _can 't_ be fixed and if they
| keep insisting I'm just going to have to wait for my
| lawyer save me at the court-martial?
| Meph504 wrote:
| I'm not sure how you are refusing to improperly service
| something, The contractor is there because a high ranking
| individual at the DOD put them there, in most cases they
| are helpful, and willing to help out when they can, but
| they are there with the orders to make sure the equipment
| they are tasked is maintained properly.
|
| With that said, if a commander orders someone under his
| command to smash the piece of equipment with a hammer,
| the contract won't interfere, but he will report the
| situation.
|
| The issue is, most of the equipment at this point is well
| beyond the knowledge a company commander would have, they
| aren't qualified to know if this is something that can be
| fixed in the field, and a soldier under his command that
| is qualified isn't in a position to refuse the capt.
| order. So they fry the equipment.
|
| The army is pretty big on redundancy, and having
| contingencies, it would be very rare that an operation
| couldn't continue without a single piece of equipment. It
| might be harder, and may be a greater risk, but in a
| place where lots of things get shot, you make a plan,
| then you make due.
|
| I'm not saying the scenarios I'm describing fit all
| situations, but I can say that far less equipment was
| destroyed after they came on board.
| mierz00 wrote:
| Contractors don't fall in the military hierarchy and the
| example given isn't interfering with field activities.
|
| Basically, a Capt can say what ever they like but if it's
| just not possible to be fixed in the field then it's not
| going to happen.
|
| Also, you don't get thrown into jail everytime you
| disobey an order. Especially when it comes to technical
| equipment.
| avmich wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I'd assume when a field unit
| conducts operations, in the field, and some equipment
| fails, it's the job of the supply chain to do everything
| possible to help mitigate the issue reasonably fast.
| Definition of "reasonably fast" would be an expectation,
| carried from previous history of similar cases, and
| definition of "similar" is carried from previous history
| of purchasing equipment for the army. In other words, one
| can't just say "oh, this is more complex, and suddenly
| you can't rely on your practices anymore" without first -
| when the equipment was talked about - making that clear.
|
| And "everything possible" would include tools, electronic
| or software, and software codes - and yes, possibly
| engineers who created them on the line, something like
| what was done when Apollo project had landings on the
| Moon. Only in this case I'd assume different kind of
| responsibility than just contractual.
|
| I don't fall in the military hierarchy at the moment, but
| that doesn't mean I can give aid and comfort to enemy.
| Again, I'm not a lawyer - that's why it's a tribunal -
| but for a court to give go-ahead to this (absent more
| prompt collaboration beforehand) would be something to
| expect. What would you expect if you'd be in the field in
| this case?
| azernik wrote:
| And that's the point - for such a contractor, the only
| punishment available is through courts, with more or less
| a presumption of innocence, and where the officer is in a
| lot of career jeopardy if the tribunal digs up that they
| were being unreasonable.
|
| By contrast, a soldier in the chain of command can be
| punished administratively, and disobeying orders is a
| crime that in most militaries is only excusable if the
| order is criminal, not if it's stupid. Rarely brought,
| but the spectre of it is there
| worik wrote:
| That is interesting.
|
| Surely there is a middle way? This is a classic throwing
| the baby out with bathwater.
| vkou wrote:
| The middle way is have fixed-cost civilian contractors
| for 'standard' maintenance, and contractors that bill by
| the hour for fixing fuck-ups caused by field repairs.
|
| You still have the issue of middle-managers in the armed
| forces asking enlisted men to do stupid things, that end
| up wrecking equipment, but the only way to fix that is
| for better accountability within the command structure.
| Good luck with that, since the lack of accountability
| shields the only people who have the power to fix it. [1]
|
| [1] See this outline of the fatal collision of the USS
| Fitzgerald for an example of how well accountability for
| stupid orders works in the US Armed Forces -
| https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-
| fitzgeral... [2]
|
| [2] The long and short of it is that someone above you
| tells you what to do, and if you can't do it, you get
| canned. So you do it, but you cut corners. If those cut
| corners cause a disaster, it'll be your ass on the line.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> were trying do it in the field, _without the proper
| reference materials, equipment, or parts_
|
| there is your problem.
|
| that does not mean that the fix is to have a 'nobody can
| touch this but the contractors'
|
| The US Military - all branches - have a long and great
| tradition of making field fixes. This is critical out
| there.
|
| Waiting 3 days for a 10min fix may be acceptable in a US
| base, but in a war zone it will get people killed. At the
| very least, they need to be able to get remote support for
| on-site personnel to actually implement the fix.
| Meph504 wrote:
| Man, I think you have a wrong impression here, field
| fixes are usually sacrificial, and are made in haste, and
| often on "this might work." A great tradition it isn't,
| coat it in 100 MPH tape and 550 cord, and hope it holds.
| is generally the the solution to most issues.
|
| Not to say there haven't been great innovation, but
| realistically most of these repairs are being made by
| guys that barely got out of high school, and had maybe 20
| weeks of training. (I was one of them, its not a dig, its
| reality)
|
| And as much as it pissed me off when a piece of equipment
| was no longer available, because it got shipped off, I
| was also equally pissed off when my unit all got sick and
| was throwing up because our water purification system
| broke, and a commander told the cooks to add bleach to
| the water. That is something a soldier has to do, where
| as a contractor wouldn't be likely to.
|
| In the military you spend a lot of your time pissed off
| because someone, somewhere is doing something stupid, and
| it will probably get you killed.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| As I said, there are exceptions. However the general
| principle at the Force Management level is as I describe it
| so the incentives for the decisionmakers are built around
| that, not the exceptions.
|
| I will say though that it has changed a lot since I was
| active duty - better and worse. It's getting better for
| software and worse for hardware.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _To fix this a deliberate decision has to be made to change the
| force structure to build more technicians and unfortunately
| people like that don 't want to take the pay and lifestyle cut
| so we just can't fill out the ranks._
|
| I'm doubtful that it's impossible to train some number of
| existing personnel to do basic repairs - especially the repairs
| involving simply replacing a part, as described in the article.
|
| The original bureaucratic logic you're criticizing seems bad.
| But it seems like you're using a similar sort of reasoning to
| claim things are all or nothing.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Seems like an old issue. I used to know a WWII British navy
| officer who complained how the Americans were so wasteful because
| they would get equipment replaced instead of repairing it
| themselves. I had assumed it was because their manufacturing
| capability was greater/cheaper but maybe it was this kind of war
| profiteering (is that the correct term?).
| tehjoker wrote:
| Well, we don't fight wars for any reason other than war
| profiteering so it might as well be as blatant on the ground as
| the geopolitical calculations are.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Did the US fight in World War II only for war profiteering?
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Did the US fight in World War II only for war
| profiteering?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor was
| also a factor in the US entering the war.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Mainly yes. WW2 is the only US war where I can identify
| some objectives that decent people can support. However, US
| war aims in WW2 were based on expanding US influence around
| the world. I think if you look in retrospect, the results
| of post-war planning are obvious. The US is the world
| hegemon after we turned on our Soviet ally, whom collapsed
| decades later leaving us a monopole.
|
| US business interests were very friendly to the Nazis,
| providing manufacturing knowledge, financing, and equipment
| for chemicals, tanks, and advanced computing equipment.
| Without IBM computing equipment, the holocaust would have
| been logistically impossible. They have never been brought
| to justice and are name brands today including what is now
| Monsanto, IBM, Ford, General Motors, and Chemours.
|
| After the war, the United States helped the former Nazis
| escape on the "rat line", seeding them inside US
| industries, around Europe (including NATO command), and
| South America. Nazis and their ideological descendents were
| used for US covert operations around the world to counter
| the communists and latin american governments that were a
| bit too independent.
|
| We live in this world now.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Everyone knew Korea and Vietnam would be a waste of money at
| the time but we did it anyway because we thought the
| alternative would be worse. It was more or less a purely
| ideological thing.
|
| Afghanistan was basically all spite.
|
| Latin America intervention, Gulf Wars you'd have a better
| argument.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Vietnam & Korea: I think you have to ask, all that money
| was spent... where did it go? In great part, the increased
| military spending went to contractors who don't care how
| many helicopters get shot down because they get to make
| more.
|
| The ideological part is about expanding global markets so
| US interests can extract natural resources and sell it back
| to them at increased prices. That's called imperialism, but
| it's also a kind of war profiteering (if you win).
|
| Afghanistan: They wanted to place US military bases within
| striking distance of Iran, China, and Russia -- the few
| countries in the world that aren't fully integrated into
| the US lead world order. Afghanistan is also sitting on
| trillions in mineral deposits that were mapped out by
| Soviet planners.
|
| Iraq has some other stuff going on too, but just look at
| what country sits between Afghanistan and Iraq. Not too
| hard to figure that one out.
| fnord77 wrote:
| if you look at a map with all the military bases in the
| region, the US has (well had) Iran surrounded. Iraq and
| Afghanistan were the final two pieces.
|
| I don't understand why we're so antagonistic towards
| Iran? Some corps still mad that their assets there got
| seized during the Iran revolution?
|
| edit map: https://i.imgur.com/qw6dOWE.png
| jessaustin wrote:
| _It was more or less a purely ideological thing._
|
| "Ideology" is usually better termed "marketing" in the
| American political context. The war media popularizes the
| myths and prejudices (even if they weren't fake they
| wouldn't rise to the level of "ideology") that make favored
| wars more likely. They do that in order to make more money,
| which is typical of marketing.
|
| Besides, both of these wars can be traced to particular
| events rather than some sort of general ideology. The
| Korean War was foisted upon civilian leadership by the
| insubordinate and deliberate poor tactics of nest-
| feathering military brass like MacArthur. The Vietnam War
| was justified by the Tonkin Gulf Hoax executed by navy but
| mostly by NSA.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I would agree with profiteering being the right word. They
| would argue against it because it is a negative, and nobody
| likes being called a spade when they are the spade.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I would argue with profiteering as a concept because it is so
| ill-defined. There is no agreement on what is "excessive
| profit" for one it is a matter of opinion cast as ironclad
| fact.
|
| The mathematical implications also can get quite silly - if
| you get overpaid for manufacturing guns but are awful in
| efficiency and but well financed and don't break even you
| cannot be accused of profiteering.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Well, the other side of the coin is legacy physical debt.
|
| Do you want to be the one overhauling a piece of gear duct-
| taped together for 10 years using undocumented procedures and
| materials?
|
| We've definitely slid too far down "end users can't be allowed
| to repair anything" and are overdue for a correction. But
| factory / manufacturer repairs have their merits too.
|
| It feels like the worst excesses could be curbed with right to
| repair minimums. Factory wants to get into the business? Fine,
| but they need competition instead of being the only option.
| lupire wrote:
| Why is military dependent on private corporate manufacturers?
| Do we want private corporations controlling the military?
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Ideally we shouldn't want the military dependant on private
| corporations but there really isn't any other way to do it.
| It is way cheaper to outsource the work to a third party
| that is designed to efficiently do the exact work you need.
| Same thing goes for other non-military organizations like
| NASA, a lot of the actual fabrication and manufacture of
| parts is outsourced to private companies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They certainly don't have control over the military in the
| "Napoleonic supply officer coup" way. Diversion of funds
| and corruption while bad cannot lead to an outright coup.
| Gear is a long term thing for securing loyalties of the men
| holding the guns. Money alone wouldn't work well - the
| government has more and gave them everything they have. The
| high level of complexity and specialization of advanced
| military gear while favoring them fiscally also means that
| they wanted to go full treason and use their manufacturing
| capacity to equip an army covertly they would be at massive
| disadvantage from lack of skill even if they had enough
| legitimacy that their employees wouldn't just nope out the
| moment they did something so crazy. That and fear of facing
| serious charges.
|
| That bit aside the reason is that corporations do a better
| job at it. The US navy once had their own manufactury -
| they quit doing it when private industry could get them
| better bang for their buck. Also methods of social
| arrangement which are helpful at a corporate level for
| their domain would be disastrous for governments.
|
| Having competing monopolies of force isn't a stable
| situation for instance. Squabbling divisions drawing from
| the same resource pool are bad for serving the root cause.
| Corporations have seperate resource pools in competition
| without the same set of problems.
|
| A government would have a Morton's fork for its own
| manufacturing. If they had only one division they have the
| same disadvantages as a monopoly. If they have multiple for
| the same niche they have the same issues as above.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Armaments manufacturers don't just control the military.
| Actually they control the entire war media and most
| national politicians as well.
| quesera wrote:
| Because the US military has no manufacturing capability.
|
| From coffee cups to routers to tanks, jetfighters, and
| satellites. Everything is designed and manufactured (to
| spec) by private industry.
| exporectomy wrote:
| I don't think it was duct-tape repairs. They had their own
| fitters and turners onboard who could make replacement parts,
| presumably of the same quality as the originals. I guess,
| back then, more stuff was just bits of metal that could be
| made by anybody.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I guess, back then, more stuff was just bits of metal
| that could be made by anybody.
|
| There's a reason the good old AK-47 - a design from 1946! -
| is _still_ used on battlefields and insurgencies worldwide:
| it is easy to manufacture (so easy that there have been a
| number of both legal and illegal clones), easy to repair
| and to find spare parts for, it can take _a lot_ of abuse
| before it jams up or breaks so hard you need to do an
| extensive rework and your average rookie doesn 't need much
| training other than "this is target, pull trigger until
| target dead".
|
| Modern weapons may be more accurate (e.g. G36) or have more
| firepower... a result of more strict tolerances and _way_
| more components, at the cost of reliability.
|
| Large weaponry, from your average car over tanks to capital
| ships, is even worse.
| dingaling wrote:
| > There's a reason the good old AK-47 - a design from
| 1946!
|
| Not a great example. After a number of tweaks to try to
| simplify production it was eventually accepted that the
| original design wasn't conducive to mass-scale
| manufacturing. So it was redesigned from scratch as the
| AKM, which entered service in 1959. It used simple metal
| stampings instead of a milled receiver.
|
| So the vast,vast majority of AK patterns you see on the
| news are actually AKM derivatives since very few
| countries ( Finland, Israel, Yugoslavia ) could justify
| using the original 47 design.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Obligatory Nicholas Cage speech.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99XlWQ9KsA
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I have no doubt of the skill and efficacy. Military
| mechanics or technicians with enough time on their hands
| could effect equal or better repairs.
|
| But they probably wouldn't be to spec.
|
| Does that matter when it's a Bradley AC unit? Probably
| notsomuch. Does that matter when it's a capacitor matched
| to the expected interval between service overhauls? Or when
| it's a component downstream of that capacitor on the next
| repair?
|
| It doesn't take much for equipment to drift out of spec,
| and then you've got a collection of custom one-offs.
|
| So, balance -- somewhere in the middle.
| partiallypro wrote:
| My dad was stationed in Afghanistan and he told me a story
| about how an air conditioning unit stopped working and instead
| of fixing it the Army just got a new one. It wasn't a major
| problem apparently and could have easily been fixed.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > If people understood how much money we actually waste on
| defense contracts they'd be in awe.
|
| Yes, but would they be surprised? Does anyone argue that the
| money is spent efficiently or effectively?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It seems like this could be really risky, what with sophisticated
| equipment in the field being unready at time of crisis.
|
| I doubt it though. I recall from "Best damn ship in the Navy", a
| chapter about how the navy had satellite communications on every
| modern ship. But still used the old communications system anyway
| because until everybody was trained on the new one, nobody wanted
| to use it. And nobody wanted to go first. (So in the
| Mediterranean this guy's ship sent their communications officer
| to each other ship in the area and trained them, but that's
| another story).
|
| My son was in Iraq and relates that all the night vision and
| fancy portable display devices and whatnot got left in the
| barracks. For whatever reason, they just used radios and guns
| like they always had.
|
| It's one thing for the military to fund and buy all the latest
| technology. But somebody on the ground has to give a flip, and
| get it trained and deployed effectively. Until then, it's
| irrelevant.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| i know a guy who works as a contractor to do helo repairs in
| afghan, iraq, etc for the USGov, he makes BACON! ya'll thought
| tech salaries were good.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Hit or miss here.
|
| Hit: can get a field rep who by contract has to be available, in
| the motor pool, for 1-2 weeks stretches when called. That field
| rep may have just designed the very weapon system you're trying
| to maintain and they improves your readiness in 2 weeks more than
| 2 years worth of soldier maintenance would, and all for free to
| the unit.
|
| Miss: you find out about that field rep and their cellphone
| through word of mouth, and the on post field reps are garbage.
| mcguire wrote:
| Further problem: You are one mortar round away from that weapon
| system becoming completely useless.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| And minor addition as to why contractors are valuable -- you
| only pay them when they're there, and can terminate them when
| they're not needed.
|
| Granted, this can be mismanaged (omnipresent contractors on
| infinitely extended contracts), but the general principle is
| that it's sometimes cheaper to pay $600/hr and $60/part, than
| have to pay for (1) recruiting, (2) training, (3) sustainment,
| (4) pension, & (5) inventory warehousing and management.
| worik wrote:
| Thereby incentivise your contractors to let things fail.
| Contractors only get paid if things fail, if they are on
| salary and on staff they are incentivised for things not to
| fail.
| mcguire wrote:
| Speaking as a current government contractor, this is not how
| government contracts work.
|
| On the individual level, someone would have to work very
| hard, or be seriously disliked, to be terminated. In
| particular, when an old prime contractor loses a contract,
| the new prime contractor attempts to hire all of the
| individual workers from the old contractor, and generally
| succeeds. (It kind of makes sense; the work will likely
| remain the same, and the workers are the only ones who know
| what that is.)
|
| Second, the government is often paying the $600/hr not
| because it's cheaper or more flexible, but instead to insure
| that there is a national market for, say, aerospace
| engineers. (Without defense contracts, the number of
| aerospace engineering positions in the country would likely
| be in the three digits, not the five digits.) The government
| is paying for recruiting, training, sustainment, pensions,
| and inventory management _anyway._
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Well, talking about a range here. Presumably the government
| isn't privatizing janitorial services to maintain a
| national market for janitorial engineers. ;)
|
| And I guess that's the rub. There's places where it does
| make sense and places where it doesn't. Unfortunately,
| where it gets used and where it doesn't is ultimately a
| political process.
| hughrr wrote:
| The reason they don't allow repair as such is twofold: competence
| and liability. Both increase the risk of the equipment
| malfunctioning in the field. This leads to dead people fairly
| quickly.
|
| Repair is one of those things where the Dunning-Kruger effect is
| very real.
|
| Source: the guy who used to work at the contractor doing the
| repair or disposal evaluation of things which had been attempted
| to be repaired.
| metaphor wrote:
| The underlying issues are _far more nuanced_ than that. In
| fact, it has little (if any) to do with manual labor competence
| and /or liability risk; if you can be trained then you can be
| summarily replaced, and the risk is hardly a support
| contractor's prerogative to assume.
|
| The root cause of these issues (as I see it) is almost entirely
| traceable to tech data availability/quality, commercial
| influence on DFARS data rights language, and the acquisition
| games being played (of which the general public only every
| catches superficial wind surrounding ACAT I programs).
| [deleted]
| rightbyte wrote:
| This is no way similar to Louis Rossmann's case. If the military
| would want to repair its fancy stuff it would.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| You don't think there could be perverse incentives if not
| outright bribery with the people who negotiate with the
| contractors?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Surely. I just mean that the US military is in a position to
| choose how their stuff is repaired, while I can't force Apple
| to sell me spare parts or whatever.
| soneil wrote:
| It is related to the politics of getting anything changed
| though. Does America venerate "the good old days"? Farmers
| aren't allowed to repair their tractors. Does America venerate
| her military? Soldiers aren't allowed to repair their
| equipment.
|
| (Alternatively, you can frame those as food security and
| national security.)
|
| If you can't get the people who matter to sympathise with your
| problem, put it in a context they can sympathise with.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Louis would be first to tell you that it is all related. Many
| manufactures have moved to this model. In his space he is
| specifically seeing 'just toss the thing and buy a new one',
| when the real fix is 30 cents worth of resistor and a couple of
| hours of someone's time. The military is no exception. But they
| may have the bargaining power to fix it for themselves at
| least. Think of it more along the lines of what mcdonalds did
| to themselves. Their milkshake machines are broken (10%-20% of
| the time) because they outsourced fixing it to a third party.
| The third party has no reason to really fix the issue when a
| good chunk of their income is repeatedly fixing the broken
| thing. When the reality is poor diagnostic and poor info to
| some teenager who was told by his boss to 'fill that thing' and
| he did it _slightly_ wrong. Mcdonalds could fix it real quick
| if they just stood up to their third party and said 'fix this,
| like last week'. But the companies have 'political' issues
| where people in mcdonalds are incentivized to keep it the same.
| Also parts of the costs are take on by others and mcdonalds
| proper does not really have to deal with it. The military has
| similar issues.
| hugosbaseball wrote:
| > Louis would be first to tell you that it is all related.
|
| Would he, though? He seems more than happy that people think
| Apple seized a bunch of parts shipments because they don't
| "like" that he does repairs, as redditors are oft to repeat.
|
| The real reason they seized the shipment of batteries was
| because he bought from a manufacturer who copied the battery
| packaging, right down to the Apple logos. The manufacturer
| passed them off as OEM parts and Rossman was happy to do the
| same.
|
| Meanwhile iFixit doesn't sell new parts with Apple logos on
| them and somehow Apple has never even glanced at them...and
| they very, very clearly help more people actually repair
| their Apple shit by means of their very well written and
| illustrated guides.
|
| I like him pushing on the R2R movement but the man is almost
| pathologically narcissistic and sometimes borders on con-man.
| He's like the RMS of R2R.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| He has said as much in many of his videos. Basically 'they
| all do it'.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Think of it more along the lines of what mcdonalds did to
| themselves. Their milkshake machines are broken (10%-20% of
| the time) because they outsourced fixing it to a third party.
|
| Ye there is no end to such bullshit deals with 3rd party
| suppliers that pop out from nowhere from the top.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Yes. I think they agreed to these repair conditions as part of
| the contracts to make the things. Right to repair would protect
| consumers who don't have any special contract and didn't really
| think about negotiating that.
| speeder wrote:
| I am not from US, but reading this makes me feel US is very, VERY
| vulnerable.
|
| They made it so they are more dependant on logistics than any
| army already is, meaning if they ever got in a war against peers
| (China, Russia, etc...), USA could lose the war because the front
| line got cut-off or sieged.
|
| Seriously, for example if you send a special force group to
| sabotage a carrier for example, then all you need to keep the
| carrier non-funcional is siege it, place boats with anti-air
| equipment in certain positions and shoot any airplane trying to
| reach the carrier.
|
| Land battles against bases seemly can be won by just sieging them
| and waiting all their gear to break, specailly if it is in harsh
| environment (like desert or snow), don't need to wait them to run
| out of food or ammo, just have to wait until their gear stopped
| working properly and then you can assault.
|
| How the leadership doesn't see that?
| cartoonworld wrote:
| In time of full scale war (or potentially whenever they want)
| the gov't can do whatever they want including changing the
| deal. This of course doesn't obviate your claims, because in
| case of all out war all the broken equipment contractors have
| been milking might cause huge problems. Also, it might be
| nuclear already, so who knows if anyone will be there to fix
| it, or even pull the trigger.
|
| Regardless, this looks to me like a function of the huge $$$
| that is referred to as the "Military Industrial Congressional
| Complex[0]", in which the mostly protected cost center of
| "defense" and of course those thousands of global US mil
| installations essentially milk these degenerate spasms of cash
| all over each others faces in the name of patriotism, service,
| the public, and whatever else.
|
| Also refer to "War is a Racket" (1935)[1] by medal _s_ of honor
| recipient Major General Smedley Butler
|
| [0] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_co...
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket and
| https://feralhouse.com/war-is-a-racket/
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| > In time of full scale war (or potentially whenever they
| want) the gov't can do whatever they want including changing
| the deal. This of course doesn't obviate your claims, because
| in case of all out war all the broken equipment contractors
| have been milking might cause huge problems.
|
| I mean, assuming the soldiers have the tools and training to
| do it. If they don't, changing the terms of the deal doesn't
| matter much, since the soldiers won't be able to repair when
| they need to.
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Yeah, the military contractors silo off the repair data and
| probably special tools, but I mean if it were really an
| emergency the Defense Production Act can compel the
| contractors to turn it over today. They can throw them in
| jail, too.
|
| Not saying this is likely, but it is possible. I'm not
| educated enough to rate the probability.
|
| Here's an example of this power being used to compel
| telecoms to spill some beans:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-30/obama-
| inv...
| nickysielicki wrote:
| > In time of full scale war (or potentially whenever they
| want) the gov't can do whatever they want including changing
| the deal.
|
| Nothing quite says 'military preparedness' like, "In the
| event of an actual real conflict, we can always just scramble
| to change everything."
| mcguire wrote:
| It's the American Way of War. See also the US Civil War, US
| participation in WWI (the US went into that one with
| essentially horse-mounted dragoons intended for the Indian
| Wars), and, of course, WWII.
| kazen44 wrote:
| isn't this how most countries changed to a total war
| system? looking at world war 2, most countries radically
| changed their economies and nationalised a ton of
| industry to be able to conduct warfare.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Yes, they saw USA create a military from scratch in five
| years and curb-stomp two giant multi-continental martial
| empires who had been building their armies for decades.
| The lesson they somehow drew from that was "it's bad to
| build a military from scratch!"
| samizdis wrote:
| > Also refer to "War is a Racket" (1935)[1] by medals of
| honor recipient Major General Smedley Butler
|
| That is a terrific piece, and one that's had a lot of HN
| attention:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+is+a+Racket
|
| Most active discussion, from five years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22012255
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Smedley Butler is also one of the few people in history who
| was tapped to help with a fascist coup and refused the
| seduction of power. A modern day Cincinnatus.
| nefitty wrote:
| > milk these degenerate spasms of cash all over each others
| faces
|
| You really could have omitted that thought.
| hawkice wrote:
| I think both that the US is vulnerable for these reasons, but
| systemic issues like this are worse in China, and Russia is not
| a substantial threat outside of nuclear engagement. I think the
| US military is actually much better than China at maintaining
| decently competent people in positions of power. You'd be much
| more critical of China if you were able to witness their
| actually attempting a military objective.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > I think the US military is actually much better than China
| at maintaining decently competent people in positions of
| power.
|
| Looking at what China and the US have accomplished in the
| past 30 years, how do you draw that conclusion?
| mcguire wrote:
| What has China accomplished militarily in the last 30
| years?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I would consider the possibility that reading a bunch of
| YouTube comments that Matt Stoller copy pasted to his Substack
| probably did not give you a full picture of the U.S. global
| military posture.
| duxup wrote:
| It's not like the history of logistics and repair when it comes
| to war was solved / squeaky clean to begin with.
|
| Not to hand wave the actual problem but this topic isn't
| exactly new.
|
| Also just not knowing if another given nation does or doesn't
| have a problem sometimes is more about how open they are about
| it ...
| tehjoker wrote:
| The US is protected by two oceans and nuclear weapons.
| Amphibious landings are some of the most complex and difficult
| military operations, D-Day is so hyped in part because it's so
| difficult. We'll be fine.
|
| The question to ask is what the heck are we doing out around
| the world.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Isolationism doesn't work. Two world wars showed that.
| vkou wrote:
| The DoD employs millions, the United States is bordered by two
| oceans, and has enough nuclear weapons to kill billions of
| people.
|
| 'VERY vulnerable' is the least accurate description I can think
| of for it, despite TFA.
|
| With enough screw-ups, it might be at a point where it _can 't
| effectively press an overseas war_, but it's not going to be
| 'vulnerable' in our lifetimes.
| justin66 wrote:
| You're very confused about how these things work.
|
| > Seriously, for example if you send a special force group to
| sabotage a carrier for example, then all you need to keep the
| carrier non-funcional is siege it, place boats with anti-air
| equipment in certain positions and shoot any airplane trying to
| reach the carrier.
|
| A Navy ship does its important resupply via ship, not via
| aircraft.
|
| > Land battles against bases seemly can be won by just sieging
| them
|
| If any of this stuff you are suggesting were feasible, it would
| mean the US already lost the war.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > If any of this stuff you are suggesting were feasible, it
| would mean the US already lost the war.
|
| It didn't win the one discussed in the article - Afghanistan.
| mcguire wrote:
| Special case. The US has a lot of experience with counter-
| insurgencies and screws it up every time.
| ta988 wrote:
| Because you are rewarded to cuddle metrics not make things that
| work properly.
| throwaway20875 wrote:
| The leadership does, but their interests are political so that
| they may end up in the ranks of the private contractors selling
| materials and services to the military. It's beyond
| dysfunctional and isn't well recognized. The military
| industrial complex has converged into a self-defeating feast of
| taxpayer's money.
| mcguire wrote:
| The US military has a long and glorious record of getting into
| situations with craptastic gear and training and half-assing
| things until they kind of figure out what they're doing (and
| then half-assing that). But yeah, that first year or so really
| sucks.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't think you're speaking with much context.
|
| > USA could lose the war because the front line got cut-off or
| sieged
|
| No formation is set up to operate without resupply anyway.
| That's not a thing in the first place - issues with contracting
| or not.
|
| > don't need to wait them to run out of food or ammo, just have
| to wait until their gear stopped working properly
|
| Why do you think gear would stop working before they run out of
| ammo? Ammo is almost always going to be your limiting factor
| way before anything else. Ammo runs out in hours.
|
| > can be won by just sieging them
|
| Just run a siege. Simple as that, huh? How many people do you
| think that takes? Huge cordon, defending in both directions at
| the time same? I wouldn't want to do that. Would you?
| snypher wrote:
| Even the Admiral Kuznetsov, intended to sail solo, would
| completely ruin any type of 'siege' attempt.
| DantesKite wrote:
| The US would definitely lose against China if a war was fought
| today.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| In a war between nuclear powers, I expect both sides to lose.
| [deleted]
| handrous wrote:
| Depends heavily on the objectives of both sides. That is
| nowhere near being _absolutely_ true.
| SEJeff wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/china-
| pape...
| panzagl wrote:
| The US military is far better at logistics than any other
| military. If nothing else, they have had more recent practice
| at larger scale and longer term deployments than any other
| military.
| silexia wrote:
| This used to be called war profiteering and was a crime and a
| great shame to those who did it.
|
| We need to get rid of the patent system and dramatically overhaul
| intellectual property to increase competition and reduce barriers
| to entry.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Totally agree that this should be called war profiteering,
| although I don't think the people who engaged in it were shamed
| in the slightest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
| tomohawk wrote:
| The military is specifying this behavior in the contract. If they
| want spares, training, field replaceable units, or support techs
| stationed in the field, they need to put that in the contract.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| That's what I first thought of when I read it, someone has not
| writen a good contract.
|
| The contract could even be constructed to penalise the suplier,
| eg if the army doesn't have the capacity to fix the issue, the
| supplier has to pay for the technician to go out immediatly and
| with in a time frame - this isn't very hard to do
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This isn't a right to repair issue, it is a purchasing
| specification and policy issue. The DOD can and does specify what
| has to be field repairable by soldiers by design, documentation,
| and spare parts. The fact is that they made a policy choice that
| they don't want this.
| vfclists wrote:
| Sorry to break this to you soldiers.
|
| To the military industrial complex you are not soldiers. You are
| simply logistics and weapons sales accessories.
|
| I know it is tough to hear this, but most of you already know
| this.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| This sounds like a threat to US military readiness and
| operational capabilities in a serious conflict.
| science4sail wrote:
| This feels like something out of Warhammer 40k. The troops aren't
| allowed to repair their equipment, they need to call in a
| techpriest^H contractor.
|
| 40k started off as a satire of 1980s British culture, but somehow
| reality ended up matching fiction.
| worik wrote:
| A lot of comments here essentially about how it is all too
| complex, specialist contractors are needed, soldiers cannot do
| it.
|
| Perhaps design criteria should include failure modes that can be
| corrected (faults can be fixed) in the field.
|
| The defence contractors are piling complexity on complexity.
| Still the Taliban won, the USA Army lost.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yikes! This is crazy. I could understand if an AC breaks in some
| general's tent in the backlines, but preventing soldiers to
| repair things _in combat zone_ can have serious consequences. Ok,
| it may not be like the old days when some wire and duct tape
| could keep a plane flying; today if you need a chip you need a
| chip; but for fsck sake, let them bring spares and documentation,
| rather than forcing them to wait for service. I 'm not even from
| the US, this is against the education everyone in the military
| should have been taught everywhere.
|
| Just imagine this being replaced by business cards with the
| service phone numbers on them (bookmark it, quality is
| excellent).
|
| https://maritime.org/doc/
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| While I have no doubt that the linked article is legit, this was
| not my experience (I used to fly Blackhawks in the army).
| Maintenance schedules are periodic, where after every flight day
| there will be minor maintenance, every x0 hours there will be
| moderate maintenance and repair, every x00 hours there will be
| major maintenance and repair, etc. Typically post-flight and
| x0-level maintenance and repair is conducted by the unit that
| owns the aircraft, by soldiers, not contractors.
| metaphor wrote:
| With respect to aviation, the O-level maintenance activity you
| would have encountered is largely unapplicable here. You'd have
| to step into the depot bowels of e.g. Corpus Christi,
| Tobyhanna, etc. to get a feel for the real behind-the-scenes
| clusterfuck.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It varies from system to system. The HH-60 Pave Hawk, for
| example, (USAF variant of the UH-60 Black Hawk) is well
| understood and on a regular maintenance schedule like you talk
| about. However, the USAF contract didn't require Sikorsky to
| hand over tech data and, instead of purchasing it, the USAF
| program office essentially reverse engineered a large portion
| of it.
|
| Go to the JSTARS, the maintenance is almost entirely done by NG
| (which also bit them, they fucked up the work on one and caused
| it to be grounded overseas after the issue caused a fuel tank
| rupture during midair refueling).
|
| There's also been a rush during Iraq & Afghanistan to push out
| small-run proprietary systems into the field for specific
| purposes, which also creates complications. Even if permitted,
| many of these systems end up being unmaintainable in the field
| due to the lack of maintenance tech data since it isn't
| required by the contract and lack of experience with the
| systems due to their relative novelty.
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| Makes sense.
| mcguire wrote:
| How much of that work is repair of existing components versus
| wholesale replacement of larger assemblies?
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