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Aerospace military industrial stagnation under the airforce seemed pretty bad, from a lay observer, even knowing that NASA's derelict space flight capabilities

Aerospace military industrial stagnation under the airforce seemed pretty bad, from a lay observer, even knowing that NASA's derelict space flight capabilities before SpaceX are ostensibly a civilian domain. I would trust the airforce and their corporate owners to be able to launch hundreds of ICBMs in a nuclear counter attack, or throw a lot of lead and explosves at goat hearders. But would you trust them to be able to develop novel offensive and defensive capabilities that could counter China and Russia in space?

techdragon 4y ago
The stagnation is real bad. They don’t develop stuff anymore. They pay companies absurd amounts to actually do the innovation. The Military Industrial complex has sort of given itself a case of gout or diabetes… the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development”. Which is how we get things like the F22 and the Bradley… they fulfil a design brief and channeled millions of government dollars around the country making lots of people happy… except the people that had to make use of them for their job of defending the country… They contract out satellite designs to firms that developed standard busses based of mil spec rating commercial innovations and then spent decades launching them at whatever cost they got charged by a duopoly of commercial vendors so incestuously linked that they were legally required to merge as the simplest outcome of suing each other for stealing secrets from the other one. It really did need this sort of shakeup. And unfortunately the Cyber domain does too, but that’s in even worse shape since it’s spread across everything and has a weird estranged relationship with the “black ops cyber” (both offensive and defensive) world of stuff going on at the NSA that seems to have permanently limited the scope of Cyber into a whole weird thing.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development” For what it's worth, the counterpoint: Government-led purchases of military products have led to colossal cluster-fucks like the F-35 where everyone and their dog seems to have been allowed to specify inputs and throw around stuff mid-project, throwing everything off course. Here in Germany, the same issue has been blamed on virtually all of our military purchase scandals and issues. In contrast, Rheinmetall just presented their new KF51 Panther tank [1] which they developed fully on their own as a response to the Russian T-14 Armata, which means it is expected to be in serial production in 2024-2025 while the "collaboration project" KNDS (between French Nexter, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall) is expected to be in production in 2035. This fits into Chancellor Scholz' recent announcement of a Zeitenwende in military investment, of which a huge part will be to buy what the industry already has ready and tested instead of wasting time and money on bespoke solutions. [1] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/militaer-verteidigung/id_92323270/kf51-panther-dieser-panzer-soll-den-leopard-2-abloesen.html https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/militaer-ver...

techdragon 4y ago

The stagnation is real bad. They don’t develop stuff anymore. They pay companies absurd amounts to actually do the innovation. The Military Industrial complex has sort of given itself a case of gout or diabetes… the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development”. Which is how we get things like the F22 and the Bradley… they fulfil a design brief and channeled millions of government dollars around the country making lots of people happy… except the people that had to make use of them for their job of defending the country… They contract out satellite designs to firms that developed standard busses based of mil spec rating commercial innovations and then spent decades launching them at whatever cost they got charged by a duopoly of commercial vendors so incestuously linked that they were legally required to merge as the simplest outcome of suing each other for stealing secrets from the other one. It really did need this sort of shakeup. And unfortunately the Cyber domain does too, but that’s in even worse shape since it’s spread across everything and has a weird estranged relationship with the “black ops cyber” (both offensive and defensive) world of stuff going on at the NSA that seems to have permanently limited the scope of Cyber into a whole weird thing.

mschuster91 4y ago
> the companies grew by delivering what the military wanted, then gradually it became “your so good at giving us what we want, we’ll just let you sort it all out, just make sure it can do XYZ” … and thus the disconnect grows with the users now mostly cut out of the design loop except for limited feedback towards the end of “product development” For what it's worth, the counterpoint: Government-led purchases of military products have led to colossal cluster-fucks like the F-35 where everyone and their dog seems to have been allowed to specify inputs and throw around stuff mid-project, throwing everything off course. Here in Germany, the same issue has been blamed on virtually all of our military purchase scandals and issues. In contrast, Rheinmetall just presented their new KF51 Panther tank [1] which they developed fully on their own as a response to the Russian T-14 Armata, which means it is expected to be in serial production in 2024-2025 while the "collaboration project" KNDS (between French Nexter, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall) is expected to be in production in 2035. This fits into Chancellor Scholz' recent announcement of a Zeitenwende in military investment, of which a huge part will be to buy what the industry already has ready and tested instead of wasting time and money on bespoke solutions. [1] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/militaer-verteidigung/id_92323270/kf51-panther-dieser-panzer-soll-den-leopard-2-abloesen.html https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/militaer-ver...