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> I used to do development for a DOD project. At the outset of the project, it's often not clear what you're trying to do will even work. It might not even be c

> I used to do development for a DOD project. At the outset of the project, it's often not clear what you're trying to do will even work. It might not even be clear what you should be trying to do. Doesn't this just sound like the contractor promising things it can't deliver? This seems like one of the major endemic problems, especially with ridiculously advanced projects like this. R&D is R&D. Contracts are contracts. Research, by nature, fails often. Contracts, by nature, are expected to succeed. You can't (or rather shouldn't) sign a contract for something that you don't know you can do, let alone whether you can do it within the time / money limits. To me, that seems borderline fraudulent, and is a form of lock-in. The clients don't know they're getting screwed, but when they finally do know, it's too expensive for them to switch contractors and they're stuck with you. Obviously it's partially an incentives issue - it's economically rational for companies to do that. It's also probably a rational career move for officers to pitch a super-mega-awesome device that doesn't exist yet but sounds awesome. So that needs to change. What happened to trying before buying? I have a sense that this used to be the case pre-WW2 but I don't really have any proof to back that up.

rayiner 12y ago
The issue is that the U.S.G. is the only buyer for most of this stuff, or tightly controls who else buys it through export restrictions. So if the government wants technology that does X, Y, and Z, it has to pay someone to develop it. Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of its only customer wanting to buy it? And everyone knows that. A DOD contract isn't a purchase order for 10,000 iPhones. It's a joint-venture where the government foots the R&D risk to get a product that doesn't exist yet. It's actually a lot like when Apple gets Foxconn to build iPhones. For stuff like its aluminum manufacturing process, Apple takes the R&D risk, because there aren't a bunch of other customers wanting to buy these products to Apple's spec.
- makmanalp 12y ago
  > Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of its only customer wanting to buy it? Ok, so that's a fair point, but we don't really owe these companies a viable business model. What happened to funding DARPA and NRL and Lincoln Labs and other places instead of private companies for the research portion? What happened to funding real research instead of funding an amorphous combination of research and delivery? Those two things could still be separate. We could have a ton of competing research designs, and when some of them yield working prototypes, /then/ we can decide whether to pour hundreds of billions into building them. > It's a joint-venture where the government foots the R&D risk to get a product that doesn't exist yet. You're suggesting this is more kickstarter than amazon, basically. Which is fine. But if the government was 100% aware that there was risk, why aren't they hedging their bets like any sane investor should? It sure looks like they went all-in on the F-35, for example.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > Ok, so that's a fair point, but we don't really owe these companies a viable business model. The U.S.G. doesn't owe them anything, but if it wants these weapons, it needs to offer its contractors a viable business model. > What happened to funding DARPA and NRL and Lincoln Labs and other places instead of private companies for the research portion? DARPA doesn't really do research. It manages R&D grants to private companies. Lincoln Labs is also a private entity. And in any case, they do more blue-sky stuff, not applied development. > We could have a ton of competing research designs, and when some of them yield working prototypes One of the early steps of the F-35 project was to issue contracts for two competing designs, one from Boeing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32) and one from Lockheed-Martin (which ultimately became the JSF). Each one cost $750 million.
  - monknomo 12y ago
    Most government agencies that do 'research' funnel grant and contract money to private entities. Having scientists or building things directly is 'communism' and we're against that. After all, a government employee manages to be both expensive and incompetent, so why not save money by hiring contractors to do their work? /s I think going all in on the F-35 has to do with the some kind of power struggle between the air force and the army. The F-35 is the air force's baby, but it's a ground support role, which means the army is the organization that benefits from it. It's ground support as the air force prefers: fast, stealthy, light, in-and-out and not as the army prefers: slow, heavily armed, lingering for hours. As far as I can tell, the air force doesn't really care to do ground support the way the army would prefer. I assume they resent the idea that they're a support organization and not the principal actors. I don't know, maybe it's tied up in the old idea that pilots are the knights of the skies? Of course, I'm no expert - everything I know I learned here: http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-misrepresents-combat-records-campaign-retire-10/ http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-misrepresent... here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-budget http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-... and here: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fallows_chart/35e182a0b.png http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fa... http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/ http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-trag...
- deleted 12y ago
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snowwrestler 12y ago
Research and contracts are the same thing when it comes to new weapons development (which is what the F-35 is). That's why the Pentagon OKs cost-plus contracts. They know from the outset that what they want might not be possible.

rayiner 12y ago

The issue is that the U.S.G. is the only buyer for most of this stuff, or tightly controls who else buys it through export restrictions. So if the government wants technology that does X, Y, and Z, it has to pay someone to develop it. Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of its only customer wanting to buy it? And everyone knows that. A DOD contract isn't a purchase order for 10,000 iPhones. It's a joint-venture where the government foots the R&D risk to get a product that doesn't exist yet. It's actually a lot like when Apple gets Foxconn to build iPhones. For stuff like its aluminum manufacturing process, Apple takes the R&D risk, because there aren't a bunch of other customers wanting to buy these products to Apple's spec.

makmanalp 12y ago
> Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of its only customer wanting to buy it? Ok, so that's a fair point, but we don't really owe these companies a viable business model. What happened to funding DARPA and NRL and Lincoln Labs and other places instead of private companies for the research portion? What happened to funding real research instead of funding an amorphous combination of research and delivery? Those two things could still be separate. We could have a ton of competing research designs, and when some of them yield working prototypes, /then/ we can decide whether to pour hundreds of billions into building them. > It's a joint-venture where the government foots the R&D risk to get a product that doesn't exist yet. You're suggesting this is more kickstarter than amazon, basically. Which is fine. But if the government was 100% aware that there was risk, why aren't they hedging their bets like any sane investor should? It sure looks like they went all-in on the F-35, for example.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Ok, so that's a fair point, but we don't really owe these companies a viable business model. The U.S.G. doesn't owe them anything, but if it wants these weapons, it needs to offer its contractors a viable business model. > What happened to funding DARPA and NRL and Lincoln Labs and other places instead of private companies for the research portion? DARPA doesn't really do research. It manages R&D grants to private companies. Lincoln Labs is also a private entity. And in any case, they do more blue-sky stuff, not applied development. > We could have a ton of competing research designs, and when some of them yield working prototypes One of the early steps of the F-35 project was to issue contracts for two competing designs, one from Boeing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32) and one from Lockheed-Martin (which ultimately became the JSF). Each one cost $750 million.
- monknomo 12y ago
  Most government agencies that do 'research' funnel grant and contract money to private entities. Having scientists or building things directly is 'communism' and we're against that. After all, a government employee manages to be both expensive and incompetent, so why not save money by hiring contractors to do their work? /s I think going all in on the F-35 has to do with the some kind of power struggle between the air force and the army. The F-35 is the air force's baby, but it's a ground support role, which means the army is the organization that benefits from it. It's ground support as the air force prefers: fast, stealthy, light, in-and-out and not as the army prefers: slow, heavily armed, lingering for hours. As far as I can tell, the air force doesn't really care to do ground support the way the army would prefer. I assume they resent the idea that they're a support organization and not the principal actors. I don't know, maybe it's tied up in the old idea that pilots are the knights of the skies? Of course, I'm no expert - everything I know I learned here: http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-misrepresents-combat-records-campaign-retire-10/ http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-misrepresent... here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-budget http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-... and here: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fallows_chart/35e182a0b.png http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fa... http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/ http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-trag...
deleted 12y ago
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snowwrestler 12y ago

Research and contracts are the same thing when it comes to new weapons development (which is what the F-35 is). That's why the Pentagon OKs cost-plus contracts. They know from the outset that what they want might not be possible.