Soldiers Angrily Speak Out about Being Blocked from Repairing Equipment by Contractors (substack.com) 146
Matt Stoller: Louis Rossmann is an important YouTube personality who talks about, among other things, the fact that big firms block their customers from repairing equipment so they can extract after-market profits with replacement parts. And he's very much noticed the Biden executive order, which calls for agencies to curtail this practice (as well as the FTC report on it). Rossmann did a series of videos on this order, one of which focused on the order calling for the Pentagon to stop contracting with firms that block soldiers from being able to repair equipment. He cited Elle Ekman's New York Times piece from 2019 on the problem. What's even more interesting than the video are the comments on it, from soldiers angry that they keep encountering this problem in the field. I pulled some of them and published them here.
the Contractors need an code red! (Score:2)
the Contractors need an code red!
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Did you order the CODE RED?
Need to fire the contractors (Score:3)
Require repairability and a full TDP in the contracts going forward. Excise the cancer.
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Require repairability and a full TDP in the contracts going forward. Excise the cancer.
That would require actual effort. Actually, that would require actual effort from those who know what the fuck they're doing when it comes to legal contracts.
That's too much work. Easier to deal with lawsuits and settlements instead. Especially if you're a mega-corp who keeps an army of lawyers on retainer for the fashion statement.
Prove me wrong in the 21st Century. I dare you.
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I was on a project once where the contractor was required to turn over full source code and everything else required for the customer to do "organic maintenance". It can be done.
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I worked on a project almost 30 years ago where we took delivery of the full source code, in Ada no less. After various career moves I've cycled back to the organization that took over that code and is maintaining it still. It's still being used alongside of a bunch of new contractor code. The difference working with the Gov't coders versus contractors is like night and day. Want something fixed in the Gov't code? "Oh yeah, I can have that in 2 weeks." With the contractors it's "write a contract mod, we
Re:Need to fire the contractors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Need to fire the contractors (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that repairability is a problem, and it can be improved. But how would you "require repairability"? Let's take a turbine as an example. When I was in the Navy, we had steam turbines; most ships now run on gas turbines (except for the nukes), but the issue is probably the same: you can't take apart a turbine beyond a certain point and fix anything. The processes used to attach the turbine blades to the shaft are not s.t. you could do on a ship or (I think) even in a naval shipyard. Likewise the gears that reduce the speed of the turbine shaft (thousands or rpms) down to the speed of a propeller shaft (tens or low hundreds of rpms): the gears are not something you can stock on ship, on a tender, or even in a shipyard. Maybe a shipyard , or a navy depot, could store a couple entire reduction gear assemblies, enough to repair one or two ships (they don't often fail, short of battle damage or sabotage); but not the parts to repair one.
The point is how to define repairability. Some things can be easily fixed, some can't. And short of having a list--an awfully long list--I don't see how you could define it in a useful way.
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IMO, when you can require is the removal of artificial restrictions.
I can give an example with cellphones. The fact that the phone is glued together and is difficult to take apart and the fact that to replace the battery you need to take the phone apart is acceptable, because it has some actual use (water resistance, allows the device to be smaller etc), same with the fact that it uses BGA chips which are difficult to replace.
However, making the software detect a replaced battery or screen and reject them,
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Electronics in the chips era is no longer repairable
Louis Rossman and others can replace broken chips on Apple laptops and cellphones. His problems are:
1. Software detecting a new battery/screen/etc and refusing to run
2. Circuit diagrams can only be obtained on shady sites (the diagrams were leaked from Apple).
3. He cannot buy some of the chips and has to resort to pulling them off donor boards, or in the case of a charging chip for some devices he has to buy an Apple power bank (that has the same chip), pull off the chip, throw away the rest of the power ba
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Sure it might not be possible for repairs to be done on the nuclear reactor of an aircraft carrier without taking it back to some location and putting the whole thing in dry dock for months but there are certainly a lot of cases where repairs could be done if it wasn't for the manufacturer not allowing it via contact or refusing to provide parts/tools/etc.
I'm glad I didn't have to deal with this (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder what the companies are going to do when they can't get veterans who have experience fixing the equipment and the necessary clearances to hire.
That's simple, they'll demand more money.
How many of you non-veterans are willing to travel to hot war zones to fix something?
That would be a matter of money.
Make no mistake, more people will die from this arrangement and the executives at these government contractors won't even care.
Re:I'm glad I didn't have to deal with this (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what the companies are going to do when they can't get veterans who have experience fixing the equipment and the necessary clearances to hire. How many of you non-veterans are willing to travel to hot war zones to fix something?
They've already encountered that problem and solved it with the depot system. If something breaks and a simple field-replaceable module swap doesn't fix it, stuff it into a C-130 and ship it back to the depot. The Air Force does that with whole planes these days.
Biden's order probably won't cause the armed forces to eliminate the depot system, either. Instead it will just be staffed from the ranks, rather than being full of contractors. It's a reasonable system, in theory. There's only so much that can be designed field-replaceable before you start compromising either the survivability or function of the equipment. After those options are exhausted, whatever it is really should be pulled out of the aforementioned hot zones and sent elsewhere to be properly repaired.
Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the depot system encouraged the already ridiculously greedy contractors to get even more greedy. The depots are at home, so it's easy to fill them with contractors, and then charge the government exorbitant rates, and when they got used to that, to have their engineers intentionally design overly complex systems and justify them to Pentagon procurement with the mantra, "The depot will fix it." Having wormed their way that deep, and worked out how to charge the government stupid amounts of money, the only thing left was for the cancer to fully metastasize and do some contract "engineering" to make using the overpriced contract repair mandatory.
Biden's executive order will give the Pentagon the cover they need to unwind the last step of all that rapacious greed. Before, the "proposal" was, "These are our terms, take it or leave it," and now Pentagon procurement will be able to say, "We're legally barred from accepting those terms. Try again." It will help.
But it still won't make the F-35 fly right.
How does the Taliban depot system work? (Score:2)
How do they go about fixing their weapons? What happens to a Taliban leader that is caught buying over priced weapons for their personal benefit?
And are they more committed to fighting for what they believe in than getting a good job with an arms manufacturer when they retire?
There is a certain natural justice that a group of minimally funded but truly committed fanatics can beat an uncommitted force with a virtually unlimited budget. Pity that the fanatics are evil.
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Define "weapon" ... as much as I'm not a fan of the AR/M16 design as long as it is kept clean they will go thousands of rounds without any worry of parts breakage. When the parts do break from use (not abuse, being blown up, shot, dropped out of a tank/apc/humvee/etc) they are likely to be springs that need replacing (ejector/extractor), or the extractor itself. Due to the modular design, the top half of any given M16/m4 can be put onto the bottom half of any other M16/m4 (2 push pins and done) so if a un
Re: I'm glad I didn't have to deal with this (Score:2)
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Re: I'm glad I didn't have to deal with this (Score:2)
Not New (Score:2)
Re:Not New (Score:5, Interesting)
I work with a guy that was an airman in the Navy. He tells stories like this all of the time. If even the smallest part broke on an aircraft engine, they replaced the entire engine. Broken hose? Replace the engine. Bolt came loose? Replace the engine.
Unless I misunderstand the role of an engine on an aircraft, it's a rather critical component. Is it possible that they swapped out the engine so the "broken" one could be repaired and then fully inspected offline? Sure, maybe it was just a broken hose or loose bolt, but did that affect anything else with/in the engine? Just sayin' ...
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Unless I misunderstand the role of an engine on an aircraft, it's a rather critical component. Is it possible that they swapped out the engine so the "broken" one could be repaired and then fully inspected offline? Sure, maybe it was just a broken hose or loose bolt, but did that affect anything else with/in the engine? Just sayin' ...
Isn't that what all of these manufacturers say?
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Unless I misunderstand the role of an engine on an aircraft, it's a rather critical component.
Yes. Which is why any decent combat aircraft has two.
Re:Not New (Score:4, Interesting)
Depending on what was broken, often it was cheaper and much safer to rip out the engine and send it to a place certified to fix engines. There are special shipping containers and everything that the engine neatly bolts into for transport. Normally you then take a certified repaired engine and slap it into place. As long as you have more engines than planes, no issues. Also, even if things did not break, you had to do the same thing if you put enough hours on the engine. Different number of hours had different requirements.
Reason why is you have to certify the engine works correctly. This is done by putting the engine in a test rig and well, testing it. Mostly computerized these days. It looks at temperatures on a bazillion parts of the engine, measuring fuel/oil/air intake and measuring the output (rpm, torque, air sampling, etc). It's not needed for every single engine repair, but lots of them. It's not cheap, but it's far cheaper than aircraft falling out of the sky. This applies to both military and civil aircraft.
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That being said, we did have a bad communication push-button in an EH-60(Quickfix) Blackhawk once. In order to
Jet mech here, ya didn't get the full story. (Score:5, Informative)
I was a USAF avionics troop (Phantoms, Broncos) then an F-16 A/B/C/C/D/CJ engine mech and crew chief. The engine is not discarded nor sent off to Depot (unless severely damaged to where only Depot can sort it), it is SWAPPED to keep the aircraft doing what it was fielded to do, produce training and combat sorties.
It makes FAR more sense to swap engines then have the engine mechs burn much more time rolling an engine back (much work can be done without complete removal) fixing/replacing a part, reinstalling the engine then tying up the aircraft for a ground test run which may or may not fix a problem! Aircrat are not automobiles and engine swaps have been standard throughout the aviation industry since it began.
In other news airlines don't perform heavy maintenance by grounding an aircraft, they swap engines then fix the busted motor while the bird makes money.
Rossmann and slashdot (Score:1)
Last year, One of the youtube videos of Louis Rossmann shows slashdot website on a thinkpad laptop, so he's probably a fan.
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* Louis enters room *
(Me) "Hey guys, look who's her..."
* Louis cuts me off *
(Louis) "It's about damn time! You guys have ANY idea how big that fucking money pot is by now? I'll be announcing the When-Will-Slashdot-Notice-Us pool winner tomorrow..."
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Rossman is old enough to remember when Slashdot was a tech site before msmash etc shat all over it chasing clickbait.
Rossman .... (Score:3)
There's no denying Louis Rossman is on the right side of this whole "Right to Repair" fight. But am I the only one who feels like he earned most of his YouTube fame with a lot of exaggeration and bragging about himself?
I mean, years ago, I had an issue with a high-end Macbook Pro that was pretty new (a little bit outside its factory 1 year warranty and didn't have AppleCare on it). It was a company machine that I received back from an employee. (It's been long enough now so I don't know if I recall all the details anymore? But basically, I recall it suffered some water damage because the user had it in a backpack along with a bottle of water that started leaking in the bag. It was still powering on and working properly, but there were water spots in the LCD screen where droplets had gotten in between the outer glass and the inner LCD panel.) I figured all it needed was some disassembly to ensure everything was dry inside and then a replacement LCD panel or top case assembly.
We normally just paid for Apple to service our broken Macs outside of warranty, because we could drop them off at a retail store only a mile away or so from the office, and turnaround time was usually really good. But this was right around the time when people had a lot of horror stories of Apple service people going ballistic about "water damage" (even if it was simply high humidity that changed the color of the little adhesive water sensors they put in products), and would start charging you to replace practically everything in a machine for it.
So a co-worker suggested I ship it up to Louis Rossman instead. I watched a few of his early YouTube videos and at first glance? It seemed like this was guy some sort of elite computer service guru, capable of repairing anything out there for a fraction of what manufacturers wanted. Plus, he was giving all these free workshop lessons out to people who wanted to come by his store and watch/learn. How could you not love it, right?
Well -- it went sour pretty quickly. I shipped the computer up there and then.... silence. Waited weeks and got no confirmation the computer was even received, other than the tracking number indicating it was delivered. Had a really hard time speaking with anyone when I called in. Got a secretary who didn't seem to know anything except that she'd "check with Louis when he got back". Finally, I heard from Louis himself - but only after more calls in and hassles. He had one excuse after another for not getting the computer looked at. Something about a bicycle accident he suffered and a flood in the shop when a pipe burst next door, plus a parts shortage and being busier than usual. Ok -- I could sympathize with all of that... but the kicker was, he wound up telling me the computer I shipped was completely dead/non-functional! Came up with a story about the water probably running down a certain hinge/ribbon cable and happening to short across two particular pins on the circuit board that would kill the machine. (Of course, sent me a whole thing he'd written up about the issue, basically ranting about Apple's "poor engineering" that leads to this problem, etc. etc.) Was promised he'd try to swap me out for an equivalent Mac that had been repaired... but that never materialized. Eventually just had to get them to ship it back to me. Was able to get Apple to repair it at a price maybe $400 or so less than a new one cost. (They essentially swapped everything in it with new parts.)
My point is? It just seemed to me like he created a lot of hype and fame for himself by criticizing the design choices of Apple (and other brands?), when one has to ask why he's not engineering circuit boards for computer-makers himself, if he knows so much about it. And in the end, his shop failed where Apple succeeded in resolving this issue. In fact, it's highly questionable whether his shop did more harm than good to this particular Mac.
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Sounds like you had one of the post-2015 machines, where they have the 50V backlight line next to a CPU signal line and there's no guard pin (ground) to protect, something they did have on the earlier models. As a consequence of this change it means that the newer machines have a higher likelihood of being damaged in a non-recoverable way if liquid gets on to that region. Not saying Apple has designed it wrong ( it is within design spec of the connector ) but rather that due to their choice to omit the gu
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He plays it up a bit for YouTube, that's for sure. But he does also have some good points and when you look at Apple's engineering it really isn't that great.
I think the issue is secrecy. They are so determined not to let new models leak that they can't properly test them like other manufacturers do. That means that the first few versions always have some major flaws. Keyboards that can't withstand normal use, lots of hinge problems and flex cable problems, some pretty marginal designs that are unreliable w
Anecdote (Score:2)
I think I see the problem with this nuke. (Score:2)
Maybe I should talk to it. Teach it phenomenology. Awhh, crap, it's philosophy has a layer of DRM.
Send your field tech (Score:2)
"Our equipment is broken and our own guys aren't allowed to fix it."
"Our location? Khe Sanh."
"You can tell your tech that we'll even pay the holiday bonus for the call-out. What with the Tet new year coming up."
let contractors fix them but (Score:3)
start making them go immediately out to the middle of the battlefield to fix things, not from the safety of their plants.
Yeah, but we Sailors never let that stop us! (Score:5, Insightful)
While in the US Navy, many of my systems were "module-level replacement only" and were not to be "locally repaired to the component level".
Pfft. When a failure causes a major reduction in the ship's capability, our duty was always to be "Haze Grey and Underway", the rules be damned. During one operation in the Pacific we had such a failure. Two in a row, in fact, with only one spare module aboard. I troubleshot the second failed module, identified the damaged component, and at our next port of call I went to an electronics store, bought the part, returned to the ship, installed it, and got our system up and running again. Our entire leadership knew better than to ask how the system went from a "failed state lacking parts" to "fully operational". The system failure had triggered emergency communications to Washington to get the module we needed.
Of course, when the replacement module finally arrived (by express helicopter delivery), I installed it. Then before returning the broken module, I removed the component I had replaced, and reinstalled the failed one. Any one at the repair/rework depot would see my obvious change. But I met the "letter of the law" to return the module in its failed condition.
It was also strange how Washington never asked how we managed to meet all operational requirements between when the second module failed and the replacement arrived. Nope, not a peep from them. It is the Captain's responsibility to accomplish the assigned mission, and higher authority seldom looks too closely at success.
This wasn't just playing a game: The failed modules are a vital part of the continuous improvement programs needed to ensure old or obsolete equipment is either improved or replaced before the loss of function becomes chronic. And also to ensure any repairs are thoroughly tested before being put into active military equipment. Which means the only equipment we ARE allowed to repair to the component-level is either old, low tech, or of little importance.
Re:Yeah, but we Sailors never let that stop us! (Score:4, Informative)
Our entire leadership knew better than to ask how the system went from a "failed state lacking parts" to "fully operational". The system failure had triggered emergency communications to Washington to get the module we needed.
Ever since the days of animal cavalry finally faded away a supply sergeant who is competent enough to know how to bend the rules without compromising the equipment in the process has been worth their weight in bullets. Now get it wrong.... swap an out-of-spec component in for the failed one and burn up the whole board and there will be hell to pay. Fortune favors the bold, but the bold had better be really sure about their multimeter readings.
The commissioned ranks learned very early after the advent of mechanized warfare to accept "impossible" success on the part of their non-coms silently... and trample all over the wise-ass who turns damage into destruction by breaking the rules incompetently. It's one of the few places in human endeavor where a functional meritocracy actually exists.
MILSPEC marketing buzzword opportunity (Score:2)
Feels like if the US government and armed forces mandated ease of repair, everyone selling stuff could then market it as 'military grade!!!'. Companies can still make cheap shit but anyone that wants to sell to the government, ever, has to meet this basic criteria. Feels like win/win/win to me.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funny, I just replied to a Covid-19 story about the whole "you can't change people". Yes people can change. They may not want to change. It may take a great deal of pain before the change. But as long as one takes a breath there's the potential for change.
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Exactly! Just inject someone with the vaccine and you can magnetize them! It's easy to change people.
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Exactly. People used to care about rights. But now that we have a vaccine that is freely available to anybody who wants it, people STILL don't mind being told to wear a mask. As much attention as is being paid to masks, you would think that the vaccine didn't work. But people happily roll over and don't complain when laws affect your body.
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Oh fuck off. The only limits libertarians and republicans want to put on the government are limits on the ability to regulate corporations so that corporations can fuck the entire world over for profit.
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All problems are unfixable when you deare them to be so from the outset.
Much military equipment is designed to be difficult to repair and maintain.
I remember the early night vision goggles that used a custom battery, just different enough from a standard 9v to make them non-interchangeable. The replacement batteries cost $30 each and had to be ordered with a 90 day lead time.
The military procurement officer who approved the device likely got a cushy job with the manufacturer when he retired. An officer is typically commissioned at age 22 or 23 and can retire after 20 years of
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Which Republicans over the last 40 years have been shrinking the size of government or cutting government spending?
Which other developed countries have non-government "free market" health care systems?
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Have you experience of those health care systems, or are you commenting based on memes?
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Well they do pay less and get better outcomes with longer life expectancies and nobody goes bankrupt....
It must be interesting to live in a world devoid of context, nuance or complex systems. Why are you even here when your world is so simple?
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Well they do pay less and get better outcomes with longer life expectancies and nobody goes bankrupt....
It must be interesting to live in a world devoid of context, nuance or complex systems. Why are you even here when your world is so simple?
You're the one living in a simple world. The vast majority of medical breakthroughs have been HERE, where the is a profit to be made from solving a problem. Your other "developed countries" benefit from the inventions and research that occurs in the United States.
Once you lefties manage to socialize the whole damn system, I wonder how much innovation there will be afterwards....
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:3)
So 330 million Americans should live day in day out under an inefficient, overly expensive and often times inhumane medical system because it might reduce "innovation"?
How much innovation? Over what amount of time?
Couldn't we look at what other countries are doing and take the parts that seem to work well and incorporate them into a better system here? Maybe figure out how to make things better and still maintain innovation?
You do know very few health systems are totally nationalized, most are still mixed s
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What use is a medical breakthrough if a lot of people who need it can't afford it and many of the ones who can afford it have to choose between treatment and bankruptcy?
If you compare US healthcare with that of any Western European country, you can see it's a shit show driven by greed rather than patient needs. It's undeniably more expensive and less effective than European healthcare systems.
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The vast majority of medical breakthroughs have been HERE, where the is a profit to be made from solving a problem.
You mean breakthroughs like oxycodone?
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Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
"Most Canadians (85.2 percent) aged 15 years and older reported being âvery satisfiedâ(TM) or âsomewhat satisfiedâ(TM) with the way overall health care services were provided, unchanged from 2005."
https://www.healthcare-now.org... [healthcare-now.org]
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I'm sure the government run health systems are awesome and ours is not.
Memes then. But I'm also interested in @defovil901's answer, unless you're a sockpuppet of theirs?
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Well... yes, it is awesome. I can actually be sure that I can get any operation I need without having to break the bank for it. I have health insurance, and not just because I can afford such a luxury but because pretty much everyone has it.
If you prefer it another way, fine, but this is something that is about as close as your guns is to you: You can get it when you wrest it from my cold, dead hands. Which this will hopefully allow me to stave off for a long, long time.
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Re: Nothing you can do (Score:5, Informative)
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I've designed some of those $500 tools. The reason they are $500 is that the government is only buying a very small quantity, so the non-recurring design and tooling costs must be spread across a low production volume. No one is making a fortune selling $500 toilet wrenches. This is why the 21 B-2 bombers cost about 2 billion dollars each. If the USAF had bought the initially planned 165, they would have been ~$750M each.
No.. The reason some of those tools are $500 is because they're purchased with a NUMBER.. So unless someone takes the time to match the number to the nomenclature, they'll never know. It's fraud on a grand scale. I'm talking from experience here. You don't order a hammer, you order item # 335398596 for $500. Well, that could be anything from an ejection seat to a screw.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:4, Informative)
Small orders that require adherence to a lot of specifications. Lots of regulations that need to be followed, and all of them cost money and time to implement. You need lawyers and contract folk with FAR experience. You need compliance specialists to deal with DDTC or BIS, if applicable.
To give a completely 100% factual example. That that $500 wrench. If it is entirely designed for a military purpose and has no direct civil application? Congratulations! It is export controlled. If you're unlucky, it's ITAR controlled. Showing the blueprints to a foreign national is a crime. Oh, and you cannot allow foreign nationals on the same network with anything ITAR related. So build a second network. An airgapped physically separated network is often cheaper, but you can do it logically if you have enough cash to burn.
If you think this sounds ridiculous, imagine when I had to explain it to people who made tailpipes. They started selling to the government, and made HMMWV tailpipes. That had a small notch in them to work with only military HMMWV's, it would not fit in the civilian market version. I had to explain that they needed a full compliance plan that was around a million or so. And they had to make a disclosure to the government because they had a Canadian national working for them. He wasn't even at the same location, but they couldn't prove he didn't access technical data relating to the defense articles. Mind, this was a literal bent tube of normal metal.
Source: I did export control stuff in the aerospace industry.
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I've work a bunch over the years at setting some of those prices. At a pretty small scale granted, but my experience matches slacktide and RevDisk experience matches mine a lot better than your vague 'it is just a number, scam!!!' rant.
Our price is also high. Why? We hav
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No one is making a fortune selling $500 toilet wrenches.
I don't think this statement is correct. We're not talking about mom and pop operations, since they don't have the connections to sell these products to the government. Take the largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, which has $66 billion in annual revenue (overwhelmingly in government contracts), a profit margin of 10%, and a CEO with a $18 million compensation [wikiage.org]. I would consider the $6 billion annual profit to be a fortune.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
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And, we don't get rich from it
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other factors that drive up the cost:
- guaranteed availability of spare parts for 25+ years
- complete traceability of the manufacturing process
- massive amounts of extra documentation (and specifications on how to deliver that, usually leading to lots of rework of any docs you already have)
- more stringent requirements for reliability requiring extensive testing
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Incorrect. Some problems are unfixable. This is one of them. Literally people have been complaining about $1000 toilet seats and $500 wrenches in DoD spending for 40 years.
"The guy on TV told me so with spittle flying out of his mouth!"
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Some problems are unfixable. This is one of them.
An obvious fix is to scale back on the size of the military. In hindsight, every war since WW2 was a mistake. The Iraq War was a debacle that destabilized an entire region. Afghanistan is collapsing as we speak, and everything we fought for there has come to nothing.
This is why Republicans ask for limited Federal government.
Republicans controlled the Federal government for 24 of the last 40 years. They expanded the government more than the Democrats did. At least with the Democrats, we don't have to listen to any sanctimonious hypocrisy.
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An obvious fix is to scale back on the size of the military. In hindsight, every war since WW2 was a mistake. The Iraq War was a debacle that destabilized an entire region. Afghanistan is collapsing as we speak, and everything we fought for there has come to nothing.
.
Korea and Vietnam were proxy wars. Better we fought those than fighting who we really wanted to fight. Fair point on Iraq and Afghanistan.
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So you're suggesting we give more latitude to the privatized healthcare that brought us the $8 aspirin and the $600 epinephrine?
It came out years ago that the $1000 toilet seat was often a $30 toilet seat and $970 to a black project.
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So how do you explain the $600 epinephrine?, pay to delay, and the many other scams to maintain and exploit an exclusive for big bucks.
They don't confine themselves to making it up from people with insurance. They'll happily dun someone who is uninsured for the full amount.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
How about Daraprim? $13 a dose to $750 a dose, and you take it for life. There's now an approved generic but at the time...no. Same exact deal.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
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That clearly demonstrates that one can, in fact, purchase an aspirin for $0.50 RETAIL at the most.
And you'd still look like the rube being robbed.
Wholesale aspirin on the world market is a few dollar per kilo and that is the pure uncut stuff. You can make about 10.000 100mg pills out of a kilo.
People in the US are being fleeced left and right by the pharmaceutical industry.
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Which point? That medicine in the US is so overpriced it is frequently inaccessible for large swaths of the population?
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That's a great reason to make the whole thing the government's problem. Once the high prices start cutting into the pork budget, we might actually start seeing corrective measures.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:5, Insightful)
When have Republicans ever asked to scale back the military?
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No, we don't like Republicans because they are in various proportions stupid, evil, and crazy.
Racist and sexist, whatever, none of that stuff is a concern for me as a cis white male. Idiots and Republicans (but I repeat myself) are a threat to every American regardless of identity.
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That is why things like Government run health systems are a bad idea
Yes which is why no other country in the world has government run health care . . . Oh wait no
This is why Republicans ask for limited Federal government
Bahahaha. You must know this is pure BS. Under multiple Republicans, government spending has not gone down; it just shifted to more military items because you know ‘Murica and apple pie
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Nah, I just don't like Republicans because they are pro-big goverment, just like the Dems, they just get their kickbacks from other industries. But frankly, whether your money is squandered on ineffective healthcare or ineffective military, what's the difference to you?
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
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Oh, so you are saying that our democratic form of government is not by the people, for the people? Okay. But you also have no answer except, "It can't be fixed?" Seriously? You almost sound like you are saying "do away with government," but that can't be right. I mean, how would "no government" fix this or any other problem? How would we protect ourselves from the powerful criminals who would run amuck the minute we let our guard down? I mean, these are the same guys who are buying up our government wholesa
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But if it is not by the people, for the people, who votes? Corporations can't vote. It's not like doing away with Big Government would stop criminals, just the opposite. They'd be happy at no longer having to bribe politicians. They would just take what they want by force.
So instead of answering my questions, you just resort to ad hominems and insults. Typical. I was actually hoping to engage you, because contrary to what you seem to think (not that I trust you to ever tell the truth) I am, at heart, an ana
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Stop allowing lobbyists and get rid of the corporations are people ruling.
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Nobody said it would be easy, whats your solution give up? There maybe unsolvable problems in this world, and this MAYBE one, but if society stops trying to solve it is DEFINITELY one. I for one want to make the world better, I may fail but at least I would of tried.
Re: Nothing you can do (Score:1)
Re:Nothing you can do (Score:5, Interesting)
The Government IS the problem.
Government isn't a problem, the problem is a few people who want with a deadly passion to arbitrarily rule over all other people. A government, specially one operating under a rule of law system, is a solution to that issue, as it provides an escape valve for all the people with such impulses while minimizing the side effects over everyone else. Get rid of governments and you end up with hundreds of psychopathic warlords and their followers fighting a non-stop barrage of civil wars until a handful emerge victorious and re-implement governments all over again -- except the new ones come without 200+ years of trial-and-error experience on how to run things with the bare minimum level of fairness, and relearning that stuff takes generations. Unpleasant ones, I might add.
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Big Government is the problem.
Maybe, but the Libertarian party needs to make its message more interesting to the center-aligned if it wants ever to stand a chance running against both both Big Government parties.
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Social programs should be an easy fix, though. If we simplify the requirements then determining eligibility should be pretty simple, and if we just give out cash benefits instead of restricting things like where money can be spent and
Retired AF equipment puke here, you're mistaken. (Score:5, Informative)
Your canned anti-government schizo rant is your call, but in the real military world (my bit was USAF aircraft maintenance) there is a WIDE variety of options but they should be made mandatory and be better facilitated instead of optional. How many years did you serve and in what technical capacity? BTW the old Arsenal system (widely deprecated but still vital) performs manufacturing and repairs cost-effectively in-house and has done that since the first arsenals. It's invisible to the general public but the general public know and care fuck all about such things.
For example the USAF Gold Flag program encourages base level techs (given their own dedicated facility) to devise repairs not even covered in technical orders and solving such problems is career-enhancing. Ours did board-level repairs on-base including replacing high failure rate soldered ICs with socketed parts, made custom tools in cooperation with the machine shop and much more.
https://www.military.com/daily... [military.com]
Gold Flag and other programs prove it's not INHERENTLY difficult to validate equipment (and aircraft!) repairs. Permit that and existing systems can do the work or find ways to get it done.
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Re: Nothing you can do (Score:2)
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Wow. So I have a song for you, its called Kill the Poor by The Dead Kennedys. Btw, most Jews that were killed were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, mostly living in poor villages.. but, ya know, you're allowed your delusional beliefs. GAWD BLESS AMURIKA.