5 ms·

We don't have time machines and so can't re-run the experiment. I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who lived through this time are complementa

by ggm 2y ago

We don't have time machines and so can't re-run the experiment. I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who lived through this time are complementary. It's certainly true the strategic arms processes and nuclear submarine engineering benefited in a long term view. I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line Be The Best You Can Be was really met, or if Rickover achieved what might be more akin to crystallography "local optimum" where there are better peaks out there, but this one is mine. (To borrow another army concept) Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine construction is woeful. We're on the brink of being ripped off having prepaid for access to Virginia class subs soon, and AUKUS subs in future. We expect to be told we cannot have Virginia class subs ever, we cannot have longterm crewing or command ever, but we can host them retained in US HANDS and we can continue to pay for them. Not that Rickover made that happen, but whatever his lessons are, the US submarine building industry doesn't seem to have learned then, or be able to apply them.

dylan604 2y ago
> I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line Be The Best You Can Be was really met Why would an army saying be relevant to an Admiral in the Navy?
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Rickover famously asked Jimmy carter in an interview: "Did You Do Your Best?" Carter replied: "No, sir, I didn’t always do my best." And Rickover asked "why not?" This significantly impacted Jimmy Carter and eventually became the title of a book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/645520.Why_Not_the_Best_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/645520.Why_Not_the_Best_ I think GP is probably pattern matching a bit too much. It's plausibly connected, but I doubt it.
  - hitekker 2y ago
    Yeah, feels like lazy pattern-matching. The top-level reply mixes context across decades and doesn't support its criticism with concrete evidence. IMHO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover article is a much more balanced take.
nostrademons 2y ago
He died in 1986, so everything in the Virginia program happened well after his death. His forced retirement in 1982 was largely because he made a lot of political enemies by making a stink about General Dynamic's flaws in workmanship on the Los Angeles class. His whole management style was to push for accountability and sweat the details. I think what you're country is seeing is general flaws in quality for basically everything American-made these days. Which, if I'm being totally blunt, are because Americans are lazy and don't care about quality and basically do the minimum that won't get them fired. Hell, I started my career caring about quality and craftmanship and now I do the minimum that won't get me fired too, because there's no point busting your ass for some lazy manager up the chain to take credit for it.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Rickover's final testimony to congress in 1982 speaks about this: Corporate Power A preoccupation with the so-called bottom line of profit and loss statements, coupled with a lust for expansion, is creating an environment in which fewer businessmen honor traditional values; where responsibility is increasingly disassociated from the the exercise of power; where skill in financial manipulation is valued more than actual knowledge and experience in the business; where attention and effort is directed mostly to short-term considerations, regardless of longer-range consequences. Political and economic power is increasingly being concentrated among a few large corporations and their officers - power they can apply against society, government and individuals. Through their control of vast resources, these large corporations have become, in effect, another branch of government. They often exercise the power of government, but without the checks and balances inherent in our democratic system. With their ability to dispense money, officials of large corporations may often exercise greater power to influence society than elected or appointed government officials - but without assuming any of the responsibilities and without being subject to public scrutiny. Woodrow Wilson warned that economic concentration could ''give to a few men a control over the economic life of the country which they might abuse to the undoing of millions of men.'' His stated purposes was: ''to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried in our hearts.'' His comments are apropos today. Summary: https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/rickover.html https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/rickover.html Full testimony: https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics%20of%20Defense%20Policy%20-%20Adm.%20H.%20G.%20Rickover%20Part%20I%20(1110).pdf https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...
cjs_ac 2y ago
The AUKUS deal is just Australia shovelling money at the US and getting four fifths of fuck all in return, but that's purely for political reasons.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah it's basically paying the US for protection. I don't blame them though because they do have a whole country full of about 15 times as many space-constrained citizens next door (Indonesia)
  - willvarfar 2y ago
    That calculus must change with the new administration
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Yes, just like it does with the EU. And yes we didn't spend so much on defense as Trump says, but(!) America never really wanted us to be too powerful. They were really happy to play top dog, obviously the more powerful we are as EU, the more viable a geopolitical opponent we are. The US have never really been too happy with nuclear capabilities in Europe and this is the main thing that deters agressors like Russia. Even the UK's is largely built by the US like the Polaris missiles.
- piokoch 2y ago
  Yup, this is how collective security system works. It is far from perfect, but it managed to keep the World in more or less peace for pretty long time. We had wars, sometimes bloody, but still local once. The corner stone of this system is nuclear weapons nonproliferation. This is, on one hand, unjust - why Australia cannot have its own nuclear arsenal and not be dependent on USA to give them protection? But on the other hand, though, think what would happen if we didn't have proliferation and every second African country had nukes (e.g. Yemen Houthis, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Algeria, etc.). How Algeria would resolve, say, Algerian-Spanish their territorial dispute if Algeria had nukes and Spain did not? This system is certainly not perfect, but it worked, we'll see if it will work in future.
hayst4ck 2y ago
> I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who lived through this time are complementary. History is written by those who remain in power and Rickover was a man who embodied speaking truth to power. His career was largely ended when some corporate powers he spoke truth to finally punished him for his opposition. > but whatever his lessons are Rickover was very forward about his lessons: https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm Near the end of his career he mainly wanted to spend time promoting his own philosophies, however his anti "power" message was obscured via political spectacle and threatening corporate power ensured that those that wrote the history books made sure his accomplishments and philosophy faded into obscurity.
- yodon 2y ago
  Fantastic article on leadership - thanks for linking to it
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    I would just make sure that you read this article to complement it: https://quietwarriors.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/admiral-rickover-and-the-cult-of-personality.pdf https://quietwarriors.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/...
    - sgarland 2y ago
      I had not heard of Captain Schratz until now, but what I did find of him [0] makes me think that he may have had it out for Rickover: > During [the 1960s], Schratz believed, he lost his opportunity for major command because he published a facetious story in 1963 about Vice Admiral H. G. Rickover's burial plans. Furthermore, he either is unaware of, or elides parts of stories that would refute his implications: > Having achieved brilliant success with the pressurized water coolant system in the Nautilus installation, innovation in other types of plants was stifled. The USS Seawolf plant, developed in tandem with Nautilus, utilized liquid sodium as coolant, promising much smaller and more compact reactors. Because of limitations in metallurgy, the system was unsuccessful. The program was scrapped, and its obvious superiorities were never again reexamined, even after twenty years of further progress in nuclear technology. The S2G reactor used in the Seawolf (SSN-575, not SSN-21) was, to quote Rickover, “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” First of all, you're running liquid sodium as a coolant; famously, sodium and water are not friends. Second of all, this choice now puts a hard limit on the time you have at sea to be shutdown for emergent repairs, maintenance, etc., because if the plant temperature drops below (or even near, realistically) the melting point of sodium (admittedly fairly low, at ~98 C), you're now stuck. So I think it's less that the "obvious superiorities" were left alone due to fear of Rickover's wrath, and more because no one wants a cantankerous and potentially explosive reactor in the middle of the boat they're operating. Similarly: > When nuclear power was adapted to surface use for large combatants such as aircraft carriers and missile cruisers, new systems apparently were not examined. For instance, a smaller and more efficient combination of nuclear power for normal cruising plus an overdrive of conventional gas turbine plants for high speed use had been proposed but was not investigated further. The Enterprise (CVN-65), the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was fast. Really fast. During initial sea trials, she outran her escort [1], which had a listed top speed of 34 knots. And she can maintain that effectively indefinitely. I see no reason why other proposals _should_ be investigated. But it's this line that really paints the picture: > The cult of personality and the dominance of the Rickover program tended increasingly to isolate the nuclear Navy officers from the real Navy. "the real Navy." And there we have it. A bitter officer, angry that he was passed over at even a chance for nuclear command, lashing out at the fact that the organization's newest shiny toys got all the attention. It was and I'm sure remains a common complaint while I was in that nukes stay in their own world, that they don't participate in general work like stores loads (which is bullshit; I definitely did my share of them), etc. Our retort was always "I'll trade my $5/day propay for your schedule," and no one ever took us up on it (propay is the method by which the Navy gives additional pay for certain jobs; all nuclear trained personnel get $150/month extra, with qualified supervisors getting $450/month extra – also, there are non-nuclear personnel who receive more, like the Assistant Navigator). During my time at Electric Boat while my boat was being built, I was frequently in shift work. Navy nuclear shift work is ostensibly 8 hours, with 3 shifts, but by the time you factor in pre-shift training, pre-shift brief, shift handover, post-shift cleanup, and any other administrative actions deemed necessary, it's about 12 hours. 12 hours a day (or night, more accurately – I was on the midshift), 7 days a week, for months. Zero days off. The non-nuclear personnel, in contrast, were not in shift work, and since all of their equipment didn't exist yet, their job mostly consisted of showing up to the building we had assigned, puttering around for a few hours, and calling it a day. And yet, their leadership would harangue us during the brief time we spent passing each other for petty details like boots not being shined, uniform being wrinkled, etc. So yes, nukes generally develop a hatred of non-nukes, while the non-nukes often regard nukes as being elitists. > Nuclear enlisted men never stand nonengineering watches, rarely if ever help load stores and weapons, never have mess-cook duty. As a result, second-class petty officers from the "front end" pull mess-cook duty, serving nuclear-trained third class from the engineering department. Not only do we not stand non-engineering watches, if we try to qualify for them, we're told no, because "it would demoralize the other watchstanders," quoth a non-nuke Chief to my buddy when he went for the final checkouts on a non-nuke watch station. Apparently demonstrating that someone's job is actually incredibly easy, and they're just not that great at it is mean. We absolutely load stores; see previous comment. We absolutely do not load weapons, but then again, nor does anyone else who isn't in the weapons department. This is an absurd strawman. Finally, while I'm sure it depends on the command, on my boat, nukes had to crank (mess duty). Joke's on the crew, though; we viewed it as a vacation. You mean all I have to do is wash dishes and listen to music, or serve food a few times a day? Sign me up! Also, at least on submarines, rank doesn't really matter. Generally, E1-E6 can all talk shit to each other, and if you're good at your job, you can talk shit to O1-O3 and get away with it, maybe at most getting a reprimand from the Engineering Officer (who is an O4). In fact, even the nukes would be delighted when we got a JSI (Junior Staff Instructor; some students who graduate the final part of training are extended an offer to stay for 2 years as a sort of initial shore duty, and as part of this, they frequently manage to hit E-6 by the time they're at their first command) who was too big for their britches. I distinctly remember a fully qualified E-2 A-Ganger (auxiliary mechanic, non-nuclear) yelling at our brand new non-qualified E-6 to stop reading a book and qualify something so he'd be useful. The guy tried pulling the "you can't talk to me like that..." card, which was immediately shot down by everyone around him, including the nukes. Your ability, which is formalized in your qualifications, is the only thing that matters. I'm not denying that Rickover was abrasive, nor that he had little to no regard for the chain of command, Naval tradition, etc. Nor am I saying he didn't have his ethical problems – he absolutely did, especially near the end of his career. However, IMO he had good reason for his beliefs, he created a legacy that still stands, and he advanced the USN into the 21st century. [0]: https://www.usni.org/press/oral-histories/schratz-paul https://www.usni.org/press/oral-histories/schratz-paul [1]: https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/2686352/the-legend-of-the-uss-enterprise/ https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/...
mmooss 2y ago
> Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine construction is woeful. It was great for the War on Terror era, when submarines were only useful against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS aircraft carriers. :) Spending money on subs, which includes staffing, operating, and maintaining them, was a waste. Now the US needs to build capacity, which takes time. It turns out that getting the next AI startup moving is faster than building new nuclear submarine manufacturing facilities, training workers, creating supply lines, and building subs. MVPs generally are not good for submarine warfare.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > MVPs generally are not good for submarine warfare. I've heard enough stories that makes me feel like there are plenty of examples of the PoC rushed to production level experiences with various military equipment.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    To address it seriously: If they rush the PoC, the result is more problems and in life-and-death, national security situations, and people complain. If they are more careful, people complain about the beaurocracy holding back the military, with all their requirements for proper specifications, testing, etc. It's a pendulum many people in tech deal with. But I resent seeing officials, who know better, taking one side or the other in order to always criticize the people doing the hard work of managing these very complex, often cutting-edge projects. At one point, for at least some projects, the Department of Defense elimated the professional managers and had military officers manage their projects directly. What could go wrong?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by ggm 2y ago

dylan604 2y ago

> I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line Be The Best You Can Be was really met Why would an army saying be relevant to an Admiral in the Navy?

hayst4ck 2y ago
Rickover famously asked Jimmy carter in an interview: "Did You Do Your Best?" Carter replied: "No, sir, I didn’t always do my best." And Rickover asked "why not?" This significantly impacted Jimmy Carter and eventually became the title of a book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/645520.Why_Not_the_Best_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/645520.Why_Not_the_Best_ I think GP is probably pattern matching a bit too much. It's plausibly connected, but I doubt it.
- hitekker 2y ago
  Yeah, feels like lazy pattern-matching. The top-level reply mixes context across decades and doesn't support its criticism with concrete evidence. IMHO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover article is a much more balanced take.

nostrademons 2y ago

He died in 1986, so everything in the Virginia program happened well after his death. His forced retirement in 1982 was largely because he made a lot of political enemies by making a stink about General Dynamic's flaws in workmanship on the Los Angeles class. His whole management style was to push for accountability and sweat the details. I think what you're country is seeing is general flaws in quality for basically everything American-made these days. Which, if I'm being totally blunt, are because Americans are lazy and don't care about quality and basically do the minimum that won't get them fired. Hell, I started my career caring about quality and craftmanship and now I do the minimum that won't get me fired too, because there's no point busting your ass for some lazy manager up the chain to take credit for it.

hayst4ck 2y ago
Rickover's final testimony to congress in 1982 speaks about this: Corporate Power A preoccupation with the so-called bottom line of profit and loss statements, coupled with a lust for expansion, is creating an environment in which fewer businessmen honor traditional values; where responsibility is increasingly disassociated from the the exercise of power; where skill in financial manipulation is valued more than actual knowledge and experience in the business; where attention and effort is directed mostly to short-term considerations, regardless of longer-range consequences. Political and economic power is increasingly being concentrated among a few large corporations and their officers - power they can apply against society, government and individuals. Through their control of vast resources, these large corporations have become, in effect, another branch of government. They often exercise the power of government, but without the checks and balances inherent in our democratic system. With their ability to dispense money, officials of large corporations may often exercise greater power to influence society than elected or appointed government officials - but without assuming any of the responsibilities and without being subject to public scrutiny. Woodrow Wilson warned that economic concentration could ''give to a few men a control over the economic life of the country which they might abuse to the undoing of millions of men.'' His stated purposes was: ''to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried in our hearts.'' His comments are apropos today. Summary: https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/rickover.html https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Articles/rickover.html Full testimony: https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics%20of%20Defense%20Policy%20-%20Adm.%20H.%20G.%20Rickover%20Part%20I%20(1110).pdf https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...

cjs_ac 2y ago

The AUKUS deal is just Australia shovelling money at the US and getting four fifths of fuck all in return, but that's purely for political reasons.

wkat4242 2y ago
Yeah it's basically paying the US for protection. I don't blame them though because they do have a whole country full of about 15 times as many space-constrained citizens next door (Indonesia)
- willvarfar 2y ago
  That calculus must change with the new administration
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yes, just like it does with the EU. And yes we didn't spend so much on defense as Trump says, but(!) America never really wanted us to be too powerful. They were really happy to play top dog, obviously the more powerful we are as EU, the more viable a geopolitical opponent we are. The US have never really been too happy with nuclear capabilities in Europe and this is the main thing that deters agressors like Russia. Even the UK's is largely built by the US like the Polaris missiles.
piokoch 2y ago
Yup, this is how collective security system works. It is far from perfect, but it managed to keep the World in more or less peace for pretty long time. We had wars, sometimes bloody, but still local once. The corner stone of this system is nuclear weapons nonproliferation. This is, on one hand, unjust - why Australia cannot have its own nuclear arsenal and not be dependent on USA to give them protection? But on the other hand, though, think what would happen if we didn't have proliferation and every second African country had nukes (e.g. Yemen Houthis, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Algeria, etc.). How Algeria would resolve, say, Algerian-Spanish their territorial dispute if Algeria had nukes and Spain did not? This system is certainly not perfect, but it worked, we'll see if it will work in future.

hayst4ck 2y ago

> I've read biographies of Rickover and not all people who lived through this time are complementary. History is written by those who remain in power and Rickover was a man who embodied speaking truth to power. His career was largely ended when some corporate powers he spoke truth to finally punished him for his opposition. > but whatever his lessons are Rickover was very forward about his lessons: https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm Near the end of his career he mainly wanted to spend time promoting his own philosophies, however his anti "power" message was obscured via political spectacle and threatening corporate power ensured that those that wrote the history books made sure his accomplishments and philosophy faded into obscurity.

yodon 2y ago
Fantastic article on leadership - thanks for linking to it
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  I would just make sure that you read this article to complement it: https://quietwarriors.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/admiral-rickover-and-the-cult-of-personality.pdf https://quietwarriors.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/...
  - sgarland 2y ago
    I had not heard of Captain Schratz until now, but what I did find of him [0] makes me think that he may have had it out for Rickover: > During [the 1960s], Schratz believed, he lost his opportunity for major command because he published a facetious story in 1963 about Vice Admiral H. G. Rickover's burial plans. Furthermore, he either is unaware of, or elides parts of stories that would refute his implications: > Having achieved brilliant success with the pressurized water coolant system in the Nautilus installation, innovation in other types of plants was stifled. The USS Seawolf plant, developed in tandem with Nautilus, utilized liquid sodium as coolant, promising much smaller and more compact reactors. Because of limitations in metallurgy, the system was unsuccessful. The program was scrapped, and its obvious superiorities were never again reexamined, even after twenty years of further progress in nuclear technology. The S2G reactor used in the Seawolf (SSN-575, not SSN-21) was, to quote Rickover, “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” First of all, you're running liquid sodium as a coolant; famously, sodium and water are not friends. Second of all, this choice now puts a hard limit on the time you have at sea to be shutdown for emergent repairs, maintenance, etc., because if the plant temperature drops below (or even near, realistically) the melting point of sodium (admittedly fairly low, at ~98 C), you're now stuck. So I think it's less that the "obvious superiorities" were left alone due to fear of Rickover's wrath, and more because no one wants a cantankerous and potentially explosive reactor in the middle of the boat they're operating. Similarly: > When nuclear power was adapted to surface use for large combatants such as aircraft carriers and missile cruisers, new systems apparently were not examined. For instance, a smaller and more efficient combination of nuclear power for normal cruising plus an overdrive of conventional gas turbine plants for high speed use had been proposed but was not investigated further. The Enterprise (CVN-65), the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was fast. Really fast. During initial sea trials, she outran her escort [1], which had a listed top speed of 34 knots. And she can maintain that effectively indefinitely. I see no reason why other proposals _should_ be investigated. But it's this line that really paints the picture: > The cult of personality and the dominance of the Rickover program tended increasingly to isolate the nuclear Navy officers from the real Navy. "the real Navy." And there we have it. A bitter officer, angry that he was passed over at even a chance for nuclear command, lashing out at the fact that the organization's newest shiny toys got all the attention. It was and I'm sure remains a common complaint while I was in that nukes stay in their own world, that they don't participate in general work like stores loads (which is bullshit; I definitely did my share of them), etc. Our retort was always "I'll trade my $5/day propay for your schedule," and no one ever took us up on it (propay is the method by which the Navy gives additional pay for certain jobs; all nuclear trained personnel get $150/month extra, with qualified supervisors getting $450/month extra – also, there are non-nuclear personnel who receive more, like the Assistant Navigator). During my time at Electric Boat while my boat was being built, I was frequently in shift work. Navy nuclear shift work is ostensibly 8 hours, with 3 shifts, but by the time you factor in pre-shift training, pre-shift brief, shift handover, post-shift cleanup, and any other administrative actions deemed necessary, it's about 12 hours. 12 hours a day (or night, more accurately – I was on the midshift), 7 days a week, for months. Zero days off. The non-nuclear personnel, in contrast, were not in shift work, and since all of their equipment didn't exist yet, their job mostly consisted of showing up to the building we had assigned, puttering around for a few hours, and calling it a day. And yet, their leadership would harangue us during the brief time we spent passing each other for petty details like boots not being shined, uniform being wrinkled, etc. So yes, nukes generally develop a hatred of non-nukes, while the non-nukes often regard nukes as being elitists. > Nuclear enlisted men never stand nonengineering watches, rarely if ever help load stores and weapons, never have mess-cook duty. As a result, second-class petty officers from the "front end" pull mess-cook duty, serving nuclear-trained third class from the engineering department. Not only do we not stand non-engineering watches, if we try to qualify for them, we're told no, because "it would demoralize the other watchstanders," quoth a non-nuke Chief to my buddy when he went for the final checkouts on a non-nuke watch station. Apparently demonstrating that someone's job is actually incredibly easy, and they're just not that great at it is mean. We absolutely load stores; see previous comment. We absolutely do not load weapons, but then again, nor does anyone else who isn't in the weapons department. This is an absurd strawman. Finally, while I'm sure it depends on the command, on my boat, nukes had to crank (mess duty). Joke's on the crew, though; we viewed it as a vacation. You mean all I have to do is wash dishes and listen to music, or serve food a few times a day? Sign me up! Also, at least on submarines, rank doesn't really matter. Generally, E1-E6 can all talk shit to each other, and if you're good at your job, you can talk shit to O1-O3 and get away with it, maybe at most getting a reprimand from the Engineering Officer (who is an O4). In fact, even the nukes would be delighted when we got a JSI (Junior Staff Instructor; some students who graduate the final part of training are extended an offer to stay for 2 years as a sort of initial shore duty, and as part of this, they frequently manage to hit E-6 by the time they're at their first command) who was too big for their britches. I distinctly remember a fully qualified E-2 A-Ganger (auxiliary mechanic, non-nuclear) yelling at our brand new non-qualified E-6 to stop reading a book and qualify something so he'd be useful. The guy tried pulling the "you can't talk to me like that..." card, which was immediately shot down by everyone around him, including the nukes. Your ability, which is formalized in your qualifications, is the only thing that matters. I'm not denying that Rickover was abrasive, nor that he had little to no regard for the chain of command, Naval tradition, etc. Nor am I saying he didn't have his ethical problems – he absolutely did, especially near the end of his career. However, IMO he had good reason for his beliefs, he created a legacy that still stands, and he advanced the USN into the 21st century. [0]: https://www.usni.org/press/oral-histories/schratz-paul https://www.usni.org/press/oral-histories/schratz-paul [1]: https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/2686352/the-legend-of-the-uss-enterprise/ https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/...

mmooss 2y ago

> Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine construction is woeful. It was great for the War on Terror era, when submarines were only useful against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS aircraft carriers. :) Spending money on subs, which includes staffing, operating, and maintaining them, was a waste. Now the US needs to build capacity, which takes time. It turns out that getting the next AI startup moving is faster than building new nuclear submarine manufacturing facilities, training workers, creating supply lines, and building subs. MVPs generally are not good for submarine warfare.

dylan604 2y ago
> MVPs generally are not good for submarine warfare. I've heard enough stories that makes me feel like there are plenty of examples of the PoC rushed to production level experiences with various military equipment.
- mmooss 2y ago
  To address it seriously: If they rush the PoC, the result is more problems and in life-and-death, national security situations, and people complain. If they are more careful, people complain about the beaurocracy holding back the military, with all their requirements for proper specifications, testing, etc. It's a pendulum many people in tech deal with. But I resent seeing officials, who know better, taking one side or the other in order to always criticize the people doing the hard work of managing these very complex, often cutting-edge projects. At one point, for at least some projects, the Department of Defense elimated the professional managers and had military officers manage their projects directly. What could go wrong?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]