The Navy's Flawed Bridge Technology Set the USS McCain Up For Disaster (propublica.org) 167
schwit1 writes: [ProPublica] outlines in detail the causes behind the crash in 2017 of the USS McCain and an oil-tanker that killed ten sailors and injured many others. It is a horror story of a bankrupt Navy upper management that seemed more in love with cool computer software and automation than making sure the Navy's ships and its crews can function efficiently and effectively in any situation. Moreover, the story suggests that this same upper management made lower level officers the scapegoats for its bad decisions, while skating free with no consequences. And worst of all, that same overly complex computer navigation system remains in place, with only superficial patches imposed in both its software and its user instructions.
This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
Same as it ever was (Score:5, Informative)
Does that surprise anyone?
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Does that surprise anyone?
Trump's new Space Force will be different. This time it's really needed and they're not in it to make money for themselves.
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It's not new. It's been around as a branch of the USAF for at least 50 years. All that's "new" is that it is run by a general who is NOT subordinate to the Chief of Staff of the USAF....
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Ok so it's dumb gotcha
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Moved it with a Sharpie, bigly saved!
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My fired?
Your momma's fired!
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The picture of the "touch screens" include an actual wheel used to steer the ship.
Technology didn't cause this problem. Poor training did.
Re:Same as it ever was (Score:5, Informative)
However, the technology was also a problem. Yes there was a wheel, but it was not the only control, and the touchscreens apparently were not very good at telling you what mode you were in. In this case they were switched so that the person who thought they were steering was controlling speed, the person who thought they were controlling speed had the steering, the two engines were not being controlled together (thus slowing down turned), and the commands for shifting control to the aft console were both confusingly marked AND had poor feedback on what mode the system was in.
Good design should compensate for poor training, making it as obvious as possible if someone is doing something wrong or what the state of the system is. Oh, and all their manuals were from an earlier version, so when they tried to look things up the answers were wrong.
Re: Same as it ever was (Score:2)
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No Widget Left Behind
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Shitweed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Shitweed (Score:5, Funny)
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but he could be good for this. Navy contractors need to design ship software so that President Trump can run one whole ship by himself. If he, alone, can save you, imagine what a team of trained sailors could do!
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I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but he could be good for this. Navy contractors need to design ship software so that President Trump can run one whole ship by himself. If he, alone, can save you, imagine what a team of trained sailors could do!
Navy ships run by tweets? Be careful what you wish for.
Sure... Dumpeacho the efficient snowflake... (Score:5, Insightful)
Had me going there until it started praising Dumpeacho as some kinda savior and warrior for efficiency.
They had to ask the navy to hide USS John S McCain and turned away and sent home sailors with its insignia.
Cause had that fucking sensitive snowflake seen any of that he might have thrown a tantrum or several.
Maybe falling overboard and polluting the ocean.
Then he tried defending that.
Then he lied none of it ever happened.
Incidentally, Dumpeacho isn't mentioned anywhere in the text. Neither is the federal government.
That slant is entirely a product of schwit1's [slashdot.org] shit-caked mind.
Opinions in article (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I'd be moderating that post flamebait, but while it looks like flamebait, it is is in fact on topic.
What the heck is Slashdot doing inserting "horray for Trump, he's cleaning up the government" propaganda into their articles?
I hope you're getting a huge pay-off from the RNC for this.
Oh, and for what it worth: no, Trump hasnot been "demanding from them [federal workforce] quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it." His basic concern about the federal workforce is one and only one thing: are they loyal to him personally?
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Re:Opinions in article (Score:4)
Since when . . .
Since 1992, when we temporarily exchanged the neo-cons for neo-liberals. James Earl Carter was the last president that I remember who could be called a decent human being. That's what the Democratic Leadership Council was all about, getting corporate-friendly candidates to the front of the party so that they could suck up the big corporate donations. Remember the 2000 election? At $100 million spent between the two parties it was the most expensive presidential election in history. Sixteen years later Clinton spent a frelling **billion dollars** to lose to a senile orangutan, how do you even DO that?
Re:Opinions in article (Score:4, Interesting)
Trump has increased drone strikes even more than Obama. We know this because Obama increased reporting of such extrajudicial renditions, and Trump used many more of them in his first year than Obama did per year on average. We don't know exactly how many he's done since, though, because Trump rescinded that rule.
Drone strikes are just war by other means. You claiming that Trump has kept us out of wars is like claiming that Vietnam wasn't us in a war because they called it a police action: pure fucking bullshit.
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You joking? The RNC *hates* Trump. But you knew that already.
Obama brought so much hope back to America that America voted for an outsider to undo everything he did.
The RNC and Democrats are not worried that Trump will be regarded by history as a terrible president. They are worried that he will be regarded as a great one.
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Obama brought so much hope back to America that America voted for an outsider to undo everything he did.
More than half of America voted for Hillary.
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More than half of America voted for Hillary.
You mean...More than half the VOTERS voted for Hillary. But the electoral college doesn't work that way.
After all, democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch. I'm glad we live in a republic, regardless of who gets voted in....
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You joking? The RNC *hates* Trump. But you knew that already.
For a guy they hate, they sure do fight to line up behind him and ride his coattail. If they really hated him, they would support impeachment to get Pence, who is your much more typical Republican, into the presidency. They've willingly hitched themselves to that horse.
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That's that pesky democracy, thwarting the wishes of the powerful once again. Trump is legitimately popular and those powerful white males are *afraid* of the voters. This is the system working as it was designed, a rare thing these days.
Don't fool yourself that they can't be two-faced, doing things to get elected while despising the voters that put them there. It's bipartisan and once in DC there's not much difference at all between D and R. Here's a great book that discusses what they think of us, a [goodreads.com]
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> That's the lamest piece of crap endorsement of Donald Trump posing as some kind of news I've seen.
"only Nixon could go to China" - Spock
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Should have done testing. (Score:5, Insightful)
The navy should have done testing with this touch screen crap much like NASA did. NASA came to the conclusion that buttons mounted on the side of the display resulted in far fewer input mistakes and thus avoided incorporating touchscreens. Frankly, the fact that the Navy didn't actually investigate what makes for a good interface is damning in it's own right.
Heads should roll not for the bad design but for refusing to acknowledge it's shortcomings which eventually costs lives.
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Just do like the rest of us do. Open a terminal window and drop into the command line interface.
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the fact that the Navy didn't actually investigate what makes for a good interface is damning in it's own right.
... sailors are cheaper to replace than astronauts... So yeah, it is indeed damning.
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... sailors are cheaper to replace than astronauts...
But when they fuck up and you lose the whole ship in battle because of a mistake then it's exceptionally expensive.
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Trump campaign ads masquerading as Slashdot storie (Score:5, Insightful)
You hear Trumpâ(TM)s tirade about windmills yesterday? Yeah, thatâ(TM)s the dude we need overseeing technology decisions.
Re:Trump campaign ads masquerading as Slashdot sto (Score:4, Funny)
Trumpkin detector's going nuts! (Score:2, Funny)
There's one crawling around nearby, maybe in the ductwork? Maybe in the sewer? No, it's schwit1! The article does not in fact contain the Trump blowjob scene from the summary!
THEY'VE PENETRATED THE EDITOR DEFENSES!
GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!
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I kind of hope this was a cleverly designed troll instead of just the shitty astroturfing that it probably is, because it's certainly worked if the comments are anything to go by.
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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by apathy.
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I've had submissions accepted fairly recently, they rewrite the whole thing and add fake quotes for you to have submitted, and make the main focus quoting the link.
So when weird shit shows up, you can be pretty sure either the editor wrote it, or it is from the link.
Oops (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like a Trump troll snuck in:
a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
Not shocking, I suspect the story submission queue is full of these sneaky propaganda pieces. Though it's an ironic spin given the Trump administration's well earned reputation for laughably shoddy work [washingtonpost.com], incompetence is more a job requirement than a firing offence.
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Work on your reading comprehension. The piece is from Propublica and isn't quoted, that's the named submitter you're complaining about.
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Work on your reading comprehension. The piece is from Propublica and isn't quoted, that's the named submitter you're complaining about.
I'm confused as to why you think I'm confused... I never tried to imply that Propublica was the "Trump troll" nor that the "sneaky propaganda piece" was their story.
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The user interface to an article about bad user interfaces is bad itself? Well, spank me with recursive irony. That web page does suck also in other ways. The illustrations get "stuck" and require a lot of scrolling before they move out of the way. You scroll and nothings happens for a while. JavaScript eye-candy toys they can do without.
On a different note, they should have simulators for such ships and require a certain amount of simulator hours for navigators. When they change features, send out guides
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This is actually pretty funny. The beginning of the last sentence makes him sound terrible until the last part about him demanding quality. This operators of this site are very much anti Trump. That means they didn't even bother reading the entire summary before posting.
Re:Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
And while I know it's the submitter who made the trump statements ( valid or not I don't know and I think it's most likely wrong ). the editors should have done the job of a cleaning up.
foo on you.
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The "editors" don't even check links.
This story is just a pure troll, because we've talked about this shit before, and there's nothing new in this article. So it's trolling us with a dupe, trolling us with an article about UI, and also trolling us with some Trump-related bullshit.
Re:Oops (Score:4, Informative)
Not shocking, I suspect the story submission queue is full of these sneaky propaganda pieces.
I'm not American and I don't have any skin in this game, but I do remember a time when Slashdot had at least two stories on the main page about Andrew Yang and the positive effects of his proposed policies at any given time. It seems only fair to grant the republicans the same level of exposure.
Re:Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump might be an idiot, but the press has shown that he was right about one thing: the press is his enemy.
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His one good piece of legislation was struck down by the courts. Require drug companies to publish the price of the drug during the ad.
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I do remember a time when Slashdot had at least two stories on the main page about Andrew Yang and the positive effects of his proposed policies at any given time.
That's because those policies had probable positive effects.
It seems only fair to grant the republicans the same level of exposure.
Yes, exposure. Not fellation. Let's talk about gerrymandering, or birtherism.
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But the navy can't admit that... (Score:2)
screenshots (Score:2)
Wellllll...... (Score:5, Insightful)
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In exchange for that secure position, you have benefits, a union, a pension and lot's of other features which are not available to the general work force. so it's a trade off.
In exchange for beatings, you get a whip? (Score:2, Flamebait)
> exchange for that secure position, you have benefits
Oh wow! I've never heard of BENEFITS at a private company!
You mean like health insurance? Wait - doesn't every company offer health insurance to all of their full-time employees?
> a pension
Yeah that 2.3% IRR sure beats the 50% match you get in a 401K! Or maybe 50% is more than 2.3%?
> a union
You mean the union that insists on making it impossible for me to get a raise for doing a good job? Whoopeee! Thanks Union, I'm really glad you made su
Re:In exchange for beatings, you get a whip? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The average total stock market return is 10% annually. That's what you'd hold in your 401k - most likely index funds. So your money is growing at 10% on average, higher some years, lower other years. EXCEPT the first year. The first year you get a whopping 50% plus whatever the market does.
Government pension rates (their internal rate of return) are figured compared to government bond rates. They are therefore in the low single digits. The government figures that since they can borrow money at 4.35% f
A worked example for the federal mandatory part (Score:2)
There are 50 different states and crap load of different pension plans, but let's look at the biggest one - the federal mandatory plan. This is actually one of the better ones. Federal employees are required to contribute to it, it's an automatic deduction. If your pay rate of $125K (because you're a top dog) requires you to put in $1,000 / year, after 40 years you'll get $50K / year until you die. Not bad, right?
The same $1,000 / year into boring ass index funds would produce more income *even with no ma
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Except almost nobody is going to hold their savings in such a risky investment such as a market index fund when it comes time to start taking money out at retirement. And closer to retirement they start moving their investments to less risky investments as you don't want to lose 10% of your retirement savings in the two years before you retire.
With interest rates the way they are today one would be lucky to get 2% back on their savings. Say you had saved $1M in your retirement fund. You would need to get ba
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"such risky investments as index funds" made me chuckle, though as I kept reading I realized you weren't being silly. You were bringing up a valid, though slightly outdated, idea.
In 1950, white men had a life expectancy of 67. Average retirement age was - 67. People didn't spend very long in retirement. According to the Stanford Center for Longevity, the average length of retirement in 1950 was eight years for men, 19 years in 2010. It's not unusual to spend 25 years in retirement today.
You're right th
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Right like no companies or government agencies have ever raided pension funds before. That pension isn't a guarantee.
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Wow, a union. Big fat lot of good that does. Had experience with the union for the IT workers of the Canadian Federal Government. I was about to be let go illegally (I would have become a permanent employee if I stayed in the position for more than three years but it's illegal not to renew your contract past three years if the position is still required). I reported it to the union and the response I got was that they could do whatever they wanted. They didn't care because they were going to get the "union
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My union spent three years assuring me that when they eventually finished the contract negotiations I was going to get a big raise, applied retroactively. They negotiated a salary cap instead, so no raise, and no possibility of a raise for at least the next three years. So I quit. Would love to have the dues back as well.
Re: Wellllll...... (Score:2)
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> We had an impossible schedule
> We beat it
> Guess why I don't work there anymore
Beeeecause you can't tell the difference between "impossible" and "apparently achievable, if you make the effort"?
Re: Wellllll...... (Score:2)
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Not all big government systems fail. Ever tracked a package with the US Postal Service?
Let me know when the Navy (or any other branch) is reorganized like the Postal Service to be self financing by its own revenue and therefore is under actual pressure to improve for the sake of operating efficiency.
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I don't think you want the US Navy to be self financing....
Re: Wellllll...... (Score:2)
USPS is hot garbage (Score:2)
Those idiots at the post office have delivered mail to me addressed to the wrong fucking COUNTRY. It wasn't a local fuckup either. The card was sent from many states away with international postage and ended up in my mailbox. This has happened twice now. One week the guy never bothered to show up at all. I know this from my street facing camera. My hippie neighbor finally bitched him out one day and said retire if you can't do your job.
I want universal healthcare but seeing shit like this and the VA hospita
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It all comes down to who you have to keep happy and what their priorities are. Sailors do not mat
Seems to be a conflict in top post and facts (Score:5, Insightful)
It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
Yet the article says:
Northrop Grumman, the Virginia-based defense contracting giant that developed the navigation system, defended it.
Trump has been trashing government workers. These are federal government employees. Northrop Grumman employees are not federal government employees. Trump has continued to preach the same old line that has been used forever, that government employees are evil and awful and contractors can do no wrong.
It's the system (Score:5, Insightful)
> same old line that has been used forever, that government employees are evil and awful
I used to work for the government. I was referred by a smart guy I know who worked at the agency and I was pretty good at my job, I think. I think you're misunderstanding the complaint, maybe on purpose, I don't know.
When I worked for a government agency, each year they announced the raise that everyone would get that year. Some years 0%, the best year was 2.5%. Everybody got tue same whether you showed up on time or not, whether you actually worked or you spent the day chit-chatting with co-workers. I took me about six months to get used to all the pointless chit-chat, standing around. At first it really got on my nerves, but I adjusted as I internalized the idea that my check would be the same whether we got anything done or not - it didn't actually matter, it wouldn't really effect me one way or the other.
Before long I got an offer from a private company that would double my take-home pay. After some successes there, in a couple years I got another offer that was a 50% bump. So three times as much as I was making working for the government - and I didn't work long hours at that job either.
The guy who brought me on at the government agency is now running his own company. Several of the employees there also had their own companies they were building on the side.
There were some good people working at the agency With the opportunity to make two or three times as much elsewhere, and no possibility of getting a performance-based raise working for the government, of course a lot of thr good people left. Three groups of people stayed behind and are still at the agency. The older people who were coasting toward govt retirement sat it out. Actually the guy I worked closest with recently retired. He had been counting down the days. Another lady comes to mind who didn't quit to work somewhere making twice as much. She really didn't know how to do her job well, so she may not have gotten offers. I assume some others didn't have the ambition enough to bother applying anywhere when they saw the rest of us heading for greener pastures.
The government gets some good employees, and has a system almost designed to ensure the really good ones won't stay.
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It's not the government per se, it's the unions and their rules. At least that's what I found when I worked in the government in Canada. It's all about making sure that everyone is treated fairly. Well, not everyone is the same. When I wrote a test for a job they were opening up some positions for the people already working there to give them promotions. They had to write tests and it was about their daily tasks. You had to write down UNIX terminal line commands to do simple things. One of them failed the t
What a sad bullshit story this is! (Score:5, Informative)
It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades
Trying to scapegoat the government for the very same class of upper management that killed 346 people in two plane wrecks. Public and private, upper management is sociopathic and deadly
And Trump got elected because he had no opposition.
Any faults to be found in the government are only a reflection of the people that carelessly and with great antipathy vote for it.
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"And Trump got elected because he had no opposition."
Is that the same "no opposition" that - until literally the day of the election - everyone (including, I suspect, Donald Trump) thought was an absolute certainty to win?
How can you rationalize uttering such a compete falsehood?
The Donald Trump Supporter as I am (Score:4, Informative)
Thinks this Trump support is a bit much over the top and un-necessary to the story.
Re:The Donald Trump Supporter as I am (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, it would be more correct to note that Trump is part of this same pattern of failure.
Why were the comments allowed (Score:5, Insightful)
These comments have nothing to do with the story, "This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it."
There are other comments that are not justified by the story, such as the accusation of general incompetence of government. In fact, most of the commentary has nothing to do with story. The story itself was interesting and informative. Is there a way to improve how comments are moderated?
The Navy isn't the only guilty example. (Score:3)
Allow me to slightly edit this Slashdot story:
"... It is a horror story of a bankrupt [pick a company] upper management that seemed more in love with cool computer software and automation than making sure the [said company's] [equipment and operations] and its [employees] can function efficiently and effectively in any situation. Moreover, the story suggests that this same upper management made lower level [middle management and supervisors] the scapegoats for its bad decisions, while skating free with no consequences. And worst of all, that same overly complex computer ["management"] systems remain in place ... This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire [pick a big, bloated, corrupt and error prone industry] for the past three decades, a pattern of failure ...".
In my industry of medicine, corporate takeovers of local hospitals have in various ways seriously damaged the delivery of competent healthcare, systematically degrading the capacity to deliver proper care by knowledgeable people, all in the interest of running not-for-profit public service organizations as if they were profit machines that benefit only the corporate overlords. All of this seems to come with an over-emphasis and misguided faith that everything can be computerized or subsumed by glitzy new technology, often with a direct chain-of-events in which the tech-for-tech's-sake expensive "solutions" sabotage real quality and value. The technology is there as a showpiece, or as a gratuitous self-indulgence of executives who only know life-as-a-videogame, or for the more nefarious reasons of using patients medical data to hustle unearned payments from the payors. Expensive technology wastes a lot of money to degrade competence and quality. And while this sounds cynical, it is, that does not make it untrue. When things do go wrong such that the hospital must acknowledge an unnecessary death, the executives deny problems, keep their jobs, and underlings get canned.
The same over-indulgent technology-is-a-toy attitude is cropping up every where. ...so they can be hacked by thieves".
Things that come to mind are:
- Boeing, MAX, and MCAS: "we don't need competent pilots or to train them, our computer program will solve everything; and, we blame the incompetent pilots who crashed our infallible planes".
- Modern cinema, e.g. Star Wars and CATS: "we don't need characters or a story, just a bunch of cgi special effects".
- Smart speakers and surveillance: "our product will watch your house and hear your words,
- Self-driving cars: "trust us, our cars will do the driving, go take a nap or read a book".
It would be nice if you have a good example, to append it as a comment, to make a catalog of such abuses.
When a technologist or engineer makes a new mousetrap that no one was asking for, perhaps it really is a worthy new concept. The market and users will figure that out. And, sometimes organizations have compelling needs to commission new technologies and machinery. Always though, executives and their boards of directors are supposed to maintain the mission, economy, and reputation of their organizations, and ensure the quality of the goods or services delivered to their customers, patrons, users. So, when they rely on technology for its own sake, becasue it is new or glitzy or expensive, without redundancy, backup and continued reliance on proven systems, quality, oversight, or an eye on their core mission or business, it is wrong, if not downright criminal at times. When these executives or trustees, who are fiduciaries of the shareholders or customers, spend money for shiny new toys at the expense of the shareholders and customers, they need to be held to account.
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I would say that genetic engineering is an example. We kept, and keep, hearing about how wonderful it's going to be for the world but all we get are crops that are good for the corporations. And those are having unwanted side effects of making the weeds resistant to the herbicides. Instead of reducing herbicide use as GMs were supposed to do, herbicide use dropped initially but is now more than what it has ever been.
When people get a new technology we are very bad at thinking through the consequences. Someo
Windows? (Score:2)
Is the navy still using Windows for its ship control software? I don't know one way or the other. I['m asking. Anybody out there got data on this?
Navy famously were using Windows some years back, resulting in a missile cruiser going dead in the water and getting towed back to port. Did they learn their lesson then, or does somebody now need to be hung from the yardarm?
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That was XP. They've upgraded, now the new ships have Windows for Warships. But the old ones still have XP.
They fixed the bug that affected the ship, but it probably still has the same systems today.
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So somebody needs to be hung from the yardarm. WTF is the Navy doing using proprietary software for military purposes?
how many other ships crashed? (Score:2)
not like it's the only one with that system. did the petty officers read the manuals a few times over and make sure their sailors did the same to understand it? did the officers drill with the system to make sure everyone had a chance to learn it?
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The likelihood is, it was running Windows. Because Navy guys are really, really stupid. Now you get a crash, it kills 10 sailors and causes a hundred million dollars worth of damage. There is a reason [wikipedia.org] the world's financial platforms just said no to Windows. That is because they have their own money at stake. The Navy on the other hand is using your tax dollars, so they use other metrics to make their decisions, such as the amount of bribery, hookers, booze, expensive meals etc they receive from Microsoft.
Inconsistent Vision (Score:3)
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The Aussies have mastered this high art form of government.
Is he really, though? Is he, reeeallly? (Score:5, Insightful)
> He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.
If that was what he was really doing, I really don't think y'all wouldn't be in such a pickle as y'all are right now.
I'm Confused (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the whole point of a navy was to get around the water without a bridge.
Oh no! (Score:2, Insightful)
One slightly pro Trump summary got through!
Battle stations! [little Naval tie-in for you there]
infatuation with latest and greatest (Score:2)
The boat I served on had Very Old Technology (TM), even for the time.
But it was also Very Tried and True Technology. It worked. It was very well known how to operate it, how to repair it. There had been years to work the bugs out.
The tasks were high tech, but the underlying tech was not the latest and greatest, and there was a reason for that.
Re:infatuation with latest and greatest (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest and greatest is great. But you keep the tried and true to fall back on. I learned celestial navigation because, in the words of my instructor, you're stupid if you go to sea without GPS. You're a fucking idiot if you go to sea depending on your GPS.
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Wtf (Score:2)
Pure populism (Score:2)
Look, I'm not s
That last paragraph is garbage... (Score:3)
I like Trump and fully intend to vote for him AGAIN in 2020... BUT...
That last paragraph is total garbage. Trump may be doing a lot of good things, but to make him into some kind of reformer who single handedly is fixing what ails the defense contracting industry is a bit much, even for me.
The problem with the bridge software on the McCain was actually a very minor one and involved a training issue where the people running the bridge didn't understand what the software was doing or how to be assured it was configured as they expected. It was more about the "Man Machine Interface" than about the Navy buying crap that didn't work. The software worked just fine, it just had a bad user interface and in a situation where seconds counted, it was taking minutes to figure out which set of controls where steering the boat.
Fixing these kinds of issues is not something a president can do, even indirectly, in 3 years. The major issue I see in defense contracting is the budgeting. Defense budget money *cannot* exceed 2 years by law, that means you cannot issue a contract that last longer than 2 years.
Large defense systems like a ship or aircraft take much longer than 2 years to design, build and commission so you have to negotiate and issue multiple contracts to purchase stuff like that. Then, consider that in the military, officers MUST advance in rank or you get shown the door and you are usually moving jobs about every 2 years. This means that a large weapon system procurement effort of 10 years will be a minimum of 5 contracts and have 5 or more officers leading the effort. With the people changing, it's no wonder the consistency of the end product varies widely.
Trump may be quick to throw folks overboard when they don't "produce" and it may be a good thing sometimes that he does this, but I hardly think he's fixing the military's ability to buy quality stuff by doing this. I also don't think it would have mattered to the McCain's issue. Trump is just one guy, and there is no way he single handedly can fix what ails the military's system for buying stuff. In fact, I personally think that Congress has more impact, by providing stable budgeting and priority setting on how the money is appropriated. The issue there though is lobbyists.. But that, is another story....
I am, by most folks standards, a ardent supporter of Trump, but that last paragraph is total garbage. Defense contracting has NOT been fixed because nobody can really fix it but Congress and they are not interested in trying. Besides, it's not as bad as it once was, say back in the 70's.. I don't see how Trump's throwing folks overboard helped this.
Re:That last paragraph is garbage... (Score:4, Funny)
You're entirely too rationale to be voting for Trump again.
You can't be serious (Score:2)
This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce.
Haha. The morons who by and large elected Donald Trump don't have a clue about about Government failures and successes; nothing beyond "If Obama did it it's bad."