4 ms·

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 undocume

by ethbr0 5y ago

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.

exporectomy 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    > 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.
    - webmaven 5y ago
      > 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. Israel's derivatives (the Galil family) diverge enough from the AK-47 that it is difficult to completely exclude the AKM as a source of inspiration. Although the design was derived from the Finish RK62 (itself derived from the Polish version of the AK-47), The first Galil prototypes actually used stamped parts like the AKM before (mostly) switching to milled parts. OTOH, the very earliest models of AK-47 also had stamped receivers, so there's that.
  - spiritplumber 5y ago
    Obligatory Nicholas Cage speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99XlWQ9KsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99XlWQ9KsA
- ethbr0 5y ago
  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.
lupire 5y ago
Why is military dependent on private corporate manufacturers? Do we want private corporations controlling the military?
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  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.
- quesera 5y ago
  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.
  - IX-103 5y ago
    Just to clarify this point: This is an intentional decision by Congress and followed by the US military wherever possible. Interesting story - the military has research labs that design stuff. They design a prototype satellite and ground station. The government gives each of the designs to two contractors (because they can't just sell it to themselves). One contractor finishes the satellite in time for launch. The contractor with the base station has nothing. The military "borrow" the prototype ground station for a few years (and maybe asks for a few more prototypes to get built that they can "borrow"). Finally, a few years later the contractor delivers their ground station (which is somehow bigger, uses more power, and less reliable than the prototype it was based on), so the military returns the prototypes to be scrapped and buys the new ground station.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  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.

by ethbr0 5y ago

exporectomy 5y ago

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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  > 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.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > 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. Israel's derivatives (the Galil family) diverge enough from the AK-47 that it is difficult to completely exclude the AKM as a source of inspiration. Although the design was derived from the Finish RK62 (itself derived from the Polish version of the AK-47), The first Galil prototypes actually used stamped parts like the AKM before (mostly) switching to milled parts. OTOH, the very earliest models of AK-47 also had stamped receivers, so there's that.
- spiritplumber 5y ago
  Obligatory Nicholas Cage speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99XlWQ9KsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99XlWQ9KsA
ethbr0 5y ago
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.

lupire 5y ago

Why is military dependent on private corporate manufacturers? Do we want private corporations controlling the military?

animal_spirits 5y ago
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.
quesera 5y ago
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.
- IX-103 5y ago
  Just to clarify this point: This is an intentional decision by Congress and followed by the US military wherever possible. Interesting story - the military has research labs that design stuff. They design a prototype satellite and ground station. The government gives each of the designs to two contractors (because they can't just sell it to themselves). One contractor finishes the satellite in time for launch. The contractor with the base station has nothing. The military "borrow" the prototype ground station for a few years (and maybe asks for a few more prototypes to get built that they can "borrow"). Finally, a few years later the contractor delivers their ground station (which is somehow bigger, uses more power, and less reliable than the prototype it was based on), so the military returns the prototypes to be scrapped and buys the new ground station.
Nasrudith 5y ago
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.