19 ms·

>The government isn't just paying for the trash can. >They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design. It's economic investment in people a

• pixl97 3y ago
  War is messy when it comes to free market... Pentagon: "Oh hey, I need special bolt X" FreeMarket: "Sorry, was too expensive to make that here so we're making special bolt X in China" Pentagon: "Um, but we are shooting China right now" FreeMarket: "Don't worry I can get a production line setup in 3 months for 100 million dollars" Pentagon: "But I need special bolt X TODAY!"
  • Joker_vD 3y ago
    During the first World War, the French and the English found out that building (and then operating) new state-run munition factories was faster and cheaper than buying munitions from the privately-owned firms, and the production quality was also better, too. Something to do with competence transfer or something.
    • hayd 3y ago
      Presumably the draft also helped. Outside of war-time, I'm extremely sceptical state-run factories can compete with the free market..
    • pauldenton 3y ago
      What happened with Winston Churchill politically after WW2? Did his war economy footing translate well to peace time?
  • ilyt 3y ago
    gets some bunch of machinists in a room full of lathes and starts cranking now all of them make silicon valley money off their skills just because of how bloated military contracting is*
    • adolph 3y ago
      Maybe given the history of things the concept of “Silicon Valley money,” in terms of margin, was set by very generous terms from the Cold War era military procurement. The first initial public offering from Silicon Valley was in 1956 for a company called Varian, that sold microwave tubes for military applications. https://diginomica.com/who-are-we-kidding-silicon-valley-was-built-on-the-business-of-war https://diginomica.com/who-are-we-kidding-silicon-valley-was...
      • red-iron-pine 3y ago
        Aye, SV was a hub of Navy research and activity since before WWI. Moffett Field, the early version of NASA, and Stanford all made it a thing long before some 90s dotcom asplosion.
    • pc86 3y ago
      Why should Silicon Valley people be the only ones to make Silicon Valley money off their skills? There's nothing inherent or ontological about tech that demands the money it does. It's needed, and the money is available, so that happens. If you know how to work a lathe, and the money is available, you deserve to be able to get it.
• hospitalJail 3y ago
  Only thing I'll mention is that tools wear out. Not that it justifies the price. So the design may not need to be maintained, but if the company supplying the material goes out of business, someone needs to confirm the new material specs will work on the tool.
• kodah 3y ago
  Sure there is. Anyone who has served an had to fill out an Equipment Repair Order (ERO) has seen the every day screw or bolt that costs over $150. I was really annoyed by this at my shop and asked S-4 (supply) why this was. What it comes down to is that when military vendors sell a plane, radio, tank, etc to the military they aren't selling one product. They're selling a product list (called an SL-3). Each product on that list must be specified, routinely tested (eg: certain amount each batch), and then manufactured. As time goes on, the screw is used in less things that are in production so the batch sizes for production are reduced, which inflates the overhead test cost. A lot of products have pretty interesting test standards; for instance we had a truck that after every significant change had to be blown up a minimum of four times. The base truck was $400k and then the equipment inside - which was the actual configuration that was being tested - cost millions per vehicle. I think the military could benefit from part standardization and longer lifetimes on component production.
  • abeppu 3y ago
    > I think the military could benefit from part standardization and longer lifetimes on component production. Years ago in a history class it was asserted that in WWII, because the US had a greater degree of part standardization (I think they were talking about stuff that could be used across multiple tanks and truck models) than the Germans, the US supply lines for keeping everything running could be more effective. A German vehicle was more likely to be out of commission for want of a part. I'm not sure if that's true, or how difficult part standardization is in complex modern equipment. But when the Russians are possibly harvesting chips from home appliances, and when we're all acutely aware of how tangled global supply chains are, I wonder if there will be a push for greater standardization from a strategic motivation rather than a cost one?
    • giantrobot 3y ago
      > I'm not sure if that's true, or how difficult part standardization is in complex modern equipment. Part standardization isn't just bolts and major assemblies but also things like test stands, jigs, and everything else needed to repair something. Every repair bay needs for example a shop crane. Every division will have X number of shop cranes all their maintenance units. If there's a particular model shop crane that works with every engine for every vehicle in the division that's awesome. They just need X shop cranes. But then they get assigned a new type of truck. Its engine is bigger and better than the old model. Unfortunately the existing shop cranes are too small to handle lifting this new engine. Now the division needs a mix of shop cranes and enough where every motor pool has every shop crane necessary to fix any vehicle that comes in.
• jimmyswimmy 3y ago
  > I call bullshit on that. There is no "maintenance" on that design, it was already done and paid for. It's a trashcan, it doesn't require specialized tooling to the cost of $50k. That's far above "make the tools to make it from scratch" price. There is no "economic investment" needed here to keep the tech of making trash cans alive. To understand this you have to appreciate a few things. First, these are military-grade trashcans. That sounds ridiculous, but there are a whole range of MILSPEC standards that must be followed to deliver anything to the military. Certain materials cannot be used, certain vendors can't be. Second, there's always design maintenance. C'mon, this is a site of programmers. People here understand the reason you'd maintain software: redoing your old, working C code in Rust; upgrading applications designed for XP to run on Windows 10, etc. TFA quotes the E-3 Sentry, a design based on the 707 from late 1960's. The trashcan design needs to be updated! Certainly material sizes and quality are substantially different, rivet part numbers have changed, coatings have changed. Dealing with changes means substantial time qualifying the new parts. Third is the issue of scale. If you're making a million cell phones you can sell them at the low price of $1k each; but if you make just one it might cost $1B. Here, we're talking trashcans. If you build a thousand, you hire an engineer to oversee the design requirements and master machinist, and then a small army of machinists and assemblers to make the parts, and a quality guy to inspect them, and some other guy to do the documentation. How many of those guys do you need if you make just one or two? Well, not as many, just the most expensive ones. Hand waving here: we're going to make 10 trashcans. I'll bid 40 hours of engineering time, 80 hours of machinist, and 40 hours of quality/paperwork guy time. Assuming realistic numbers for those guys, you're talking about maybe $30k (don't forget to include overhead costs, which are more than you think they are). I'd guess a couple $k of parts, but just realized I forgot machine time, paint shop time, incoming material quality inspection, etc., etc. Amazingly, though, if you only bought one trashcan, the price doesn't change all that much. Most of that machinist time is setting up. So, gosh, I mean, there's a lot here. And Boeing is more expensive than I am, and has more processes and procedures. And they know how to make these trashcans in a way that fits the aircraft. These aren't COTS parts, and they'll never be, because in general, COTS parts have short lifetimes. The B-52, for example, has been flying since forever and it's still being upgraded. There aren't a lot of mainstream items with service lives like that. You know where the military gets great prices? Where there's a substantial dual-use application: guns, bullets, computers, office desks, building HVAC units, etc. They can buy from the mass market. As long as they don't want excessive service lives out of them, they'll pay the same price as you. It's when they want something special that costs extra, same as you or me.
• cushychicken 3y ago
  This shows very little hands on knowledge of how the US government actually works, how it pays for the contracts it writes, or the costs of making physical goods. For example: as other more level headed folks with actual knowledge of contract fulfillment have mentioned, this might have been a T&M or cost plus procurement. In which case, there's very little opportunity for the profiteering that most of my replies have stridently claimed is obviously occurring - with zero evidence beyond "There's NO WAY it could be that expensive!!" I get that I'm trying to argue with the emotions of a bunch of people with a lot of antipathy towards the US government, and that's ultimately a losing battle. End of the day, you can be mad about this if you want, but this is the way it is, and it evolved that way for reasons, and some of those reasons are to encourage second order effects - beyond merely procuring plane trash cans.
  • sfn42 3y ago
    I don't think the antipathy is against the government, i think it is against the obscenely rich people who own these companies, and to a degree the companies themselves. I also think the excuses made here are dishonest. It doesn't keep people employed, it doesn't fund innovation. It goes into some billionaire's bank account, gets invested in whatever and pushes them up some list of top 100 richest people in the US. The profits don't go to employees, they don't cause more hires. They don't create jobs. The trash cans are already designed, they're probably already manufactured as well. They're not going to hire anyone for this, they're just jacking up the price because they can so why the hell wouldn't they? Just like they jacked up the price of insulin not to mention general healthcare and medicine and everything else recently. The rich have one objective, it is to get richer. They will hide research that goes against that interest. Oil companies knew CO2 was bad nearly 100 years ago. Teflon producers knew teflon was bad decades ago. Until someone makes them stop, they will not stop. Because money. Corporations literally do not give a single ounce of fuck about anything except money. If they do something that seems selfless it's because seeming selfless is in their interest (money). Like how Patagonia made record sales of their "Don't buy this jacket". If you ever fins yourself thinking a corporation is giving a shit about something that doesn't make them more money it's because you're not seeing their angle.
  • adolph 3y ago
• crote 3y ago
  The crucial part is that it is a trash can for a Boeing 707. The first one flew in 1954, and the last one rolled out of the factory in 1994. So they are either paying for someone to keep it in a warehouse for at least thirty years, paying to keep a trashcan factory around for seventy years, or paying someone to essentially reinvent the wheel and hand-build the damn thing. One-off items are expensive, and one-off aviation items doubly so.
• mortify 3y ago
  > it was already done and paid for. It's a trashcan, it doesn't require specialized tooling The government doesn't spec "a trashcan." They create size specs, water-tightness ratings, material durability, etc. The exact spec they provide may be met in 90% of areas by an existing trash can, but that won't do. If there are requirements for some level of waterproofing, you can't just seal it or even mold it from a single piece of material, you have to PROOVE it. It has to be tested and usually adhere to an existing standard so you're going to design several trash can, submit them for approval and use the best one that passes. It's mind-numbingly tedious to build anything for the government.
  • dendrite9 3y ago
    Boeing pays at least on business I know to essentially have a complete label printing line with staff available to run it. Each label must be hellaciously expensive when they need one but my understanding was that some(all?) are part of the certification for airworthiness. So a missing or damaged label can ground the plane, which is far more expensive than the label.