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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 an

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.

extrapickles 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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?
  - toast0 5y ago
    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.
  - penagwin 5y ago
    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.
  - Li7h 5y ago
    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.
    - Meph504 5y ago
joe_the_user 5y ago
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.
- dmcclurg 5y ago
  I thought this was the purpose of warrant officers. By design, they have a separate hierarchy and charter for all intents and purposes. Sure, you don't get paid as much as the private sector, but you do get a lot of autonomy and mastery. There should be plenty of people who want to accept this challenge.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
snarfy 5y ago
> unfortunately people like that don't want to take the pay and lifestyle cut When we are already paying $30k for a $20 part, we can afford to pay them market rate.
vxNsr 5y ago
> 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. This is the part that's making less and less sense to me... we are paying the going rate, just indirectly, in fact we're paying more than the going wage to cover the overhead of using a contractor. why has it become so hard for the federal government to pay a proper wage directly?
jl2718 5y ago
Downrange it’s a different story. When I tried to deliver a giant tech support contract to the 101st when they rolled in, the commander told me to deliver the equipment with root, and keep the support out of his theater. I gave him my team’s analysis, and they did everything from scratch just like they trained for. When I went with SF, the comms sergeants and EOD rewired everything in the RF stack based on intel and mission requirements. There was no other way to respond to change in time. Also, a big part of our job was to hack together solutions for partner nation equipment, mostly again the mobile RF stacks that needed specific un/declassed waveforms loaded for joint ops. The contracts were not fast enough, even the spook shops, although they did bring interesting toys.

extrapickles 5y ago

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 5y ago
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?
- toast0 5y ago
  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.
- penagwin 5y ago
  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.
- Li7h 5y ago
  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.
  - Meph504 5y ago

joe_the_user 5y ago

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.

dmcclurg 5y ago
I thought this was the purpose of warrant officers. By design, they have a separate hierarchy and charter for all intents and purposes. Sure, you don't get paid as much as the private sector, but you do get a lot of autonomy and mastery. There should be plenty of people who want to accept this challenge.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

snarfy 5y ago

> unfortunately people like that don't want to take the pay and lifestyle cut When we are already paying $30k for a $20 part, we can afford to pay them market rate.

vxNsr 5y ago

> 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. This is the part that's making less and less sense to me... we are paying the going rate, just indirectly, in fact we're paying more than the going wage to cover the overhead of using a contractor. why has it become so hard for the federal government to pay a proper wage directly?

jl2718 5y ago

Downrange it’s a different story. When I tried to deliver a giant tech support contract to the 101st when they rolled in, the commander told me to deliver the equipment with root, and keep the support out of his theater. I gave him my team’s analysis, and they did everything from scratch just like they trained for. When I went with SF, the comms sergeants and EOD rewired everything in the RF stack based on intel and mission requirements. There was no other way to respond to change in time. Also, a big part of our job was to hack together solutions for partner nation equipment, mostly again the mobile RF stacks that needed specific un/declassed waveforms loaded for joint ops. The contracts were not fast enough, even the spook shops, although they did bring interesting toys.