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Your statement is offensive because it's a blanket generality. Maybe if you had said "the government has difficulty attracting top engineering talent because of

Your statement is offensive because it's a blanket generality. Maybe if you had said "the government has difficulty attracting top engineering talent because of any number of reasons, including workplace culture, comparatively low pay, etc"...Then that's a point worthy of discussion.

fma 11y ago
F35 is made by Lockheed Martin, a private company, not the US government. The only people involved from the government side would mostly be management paper pushers or engineers who do IV&V work (independent verification and validation). Basically just check boxes that say LM completed XYZ and passed testing.
- engi_nerd 11y ago
  Yes, I'm very aware of who makes the F-35. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and operator of the Final Assembly and Check Out (FACO) in Fort Worth, Texas, where the majority of F-35s will be made (all but two to date have been made in Fort Worth, but the other two FACOs in Cameri, Italy, and Nagoya, Japan are now building F-35s). Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are the other two major players on the team. And you are not quite correct on who the people involved on the government side are. There are management paper pushers, but every engineering team has government engineers working side by side with their contractor counterparts, and the program has been run that way from the start. They do far more than just "check boxes". They have helped with the design and testing all the way through the program.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > every engineering team has government engineers working side by side with their contractor counterparts I'm curious about the government engineers and their roles: Do you mean aeronautical and other engineers who do the core development and design work? Or do they monitor, provide customer input, ensure quality, and do other oversight of the contractor's engineers? Or something else? Also, whose payroll are they on? Defense Contract Management Agency? Some other Dept of Defense group? Air Force?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - engi_nerd 11y ago
      The short answer to every one of those questions is: yes. There are government people who were involved with design work from the beginning. There are also engineers who directly participate in test/evaluation (not just in the supervisory roles, either, I mean engineers who are actually doing tests). And there are also those who are in a supervisory role. There are DoD people (from all kinds of agencies), there are DCMA people, people on active duty in the military... With a program this big and that has already lasted over 15 years, the answer is going to be "yes".
      - hackuser 11y ago
        Thanks for responding and sharing what you know.

fma 11y ago

F35 is made by Lockheed Martin, a private company, not the US government. The only people involved from the government side would mostly be management paper pushers or engineers who do IV&V work (independent verification and validation). Basically just check boxes that say LM completed XYZ and passed testing.

engi_nerd 11y ago
Yes, I'm very aware of who makes the F-35. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and operator of the Final Assembly and Check Out (FACO) in Fort Worth, Texas, where the majority of F-35s will be made (all but two to date have been made in Fort Worth, but the other two FACOs in Cameri, Italy, and Nagoya, Japan are now building F-35s). Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are the other two major players on the team. And you are not quite correct on who the people involved on the government side are. There are management paper pushers, but every engineering team has government engineers working side by side with their contractor counterparts, and the program has been run that way from the start. They do far more than just "check boxes". They have helped with the design and testing all the way through the program.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > every engineering team has government engineers working side by side with their contractor counterparts I'm curious about the government engineers and their roles: Do you mean aeronautical and other engineers who do the core development and design work? Or do they monitor, provide customer input, ensure quality, and do other oversight of the contractor's engineers? Or something else? Also, whose payroll are they on? Defense Contract Management Agency? Some other Dept of Defense group? Air Force?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - engi_nerd 11y ago
    The short answer to every one of those questions is: yes. There are government people who were involved with design work from the beginning. There are also engineers who directly participate in test/evaluation (not just in the supervisory roles, either, I mean engineers who are actually doing tests). And there are also those who are in a supervisory role. There are DoD people (from all kinds of agencies), there are DCMA people, people on active duty in the military... With a program this big and that has already lasted over 15 years, the answer is going to be "yes".
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Thanks for responding and sharing what you know.