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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.
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Soldiers Angrily Speak Out about Being Blocked from Repairing Equipment by Contractors

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  • the Contractors need an code red!

  • by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @03:11PM (#61586015) Homepage

    Require repairability and a full TDP in the contracts going forward. Excise the cancer.

    • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @03:53PM (#61586207)
      Good luck. A lot of this type of crap comes from Congress wanting to get jobs for their districts. So they bar the military from doing certain work they are more than qualified so they have to send it out to/bring in civilian firms to do it instead. I remember in the 80's they started making the Navy hire civilian guards for the base gates to replace Marines/SP because "jobs". I also remember going onto a base a few months after that went into effect and seeing the civilian guards standing there checking ID's/stickers and six paces behind each one was a Marine. Apparently the base CO wasn't thrilled with the change and that was his way to make sure everyone knew it.
    • by mcswell ( 1102107 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @10:18PM (#61587157)

      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.

      • 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,

      • by jonwil ( 467024 )

        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.

  • by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @03:15PM (#61586025) Journal
    I got out in the early 1990s and I am so glad I never had to deal with this crap. What's funny is that a lot of the people doing the repairs are veterans who learned to repair the equipment before this bullshit. 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?
    • 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.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @04:41PM (#61586417)

      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 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.

        • 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

    • We already send civilian contractors into "hot zones" and have done so for many many years now. The alternative is called the "draft lottery"
      • Most if not all of those civilian contractors come from the military as veterans. They worked on the systems that preceded the ones of the in the field and have experience fixing similar systems. But, now, the current service members aren't getting any experience because they aren't allowed to work on anything. When they get out, they won't be qualified for the positions that open up. You can't get a job that requires experience repairing a system if you aren't allow to repair it because of restrictions by
  • 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.
    • Re:Not New (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @03:40PM (#61586141)

      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' ...

      • by thona ( 556334 )
        There is also the "war and training" thing. Getting the plane up back into operation may be critical - an engine repair can take TIME, including tests. Swap out engine, get plane fighting again, while the workshop handles repairs. And actually testing it may require (or be a lot better) on a stand, not while it is in the aircraft.
      • 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?

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        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)

        by RevDisk ( 740008 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @10:48PM (#61587209) Journal
        I worked at a place that also repaired engines. You would be correct.

        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.
    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      I was a 33W & 33Y in the Army a long time ago. We could troubleshoot and replace single components(cap, resister...) and so on in the older equipment. The newer radio equipment was all boards and modules. You would have to trace the signal at test points in each module to see which module is busted and replace the board or module. Its very rare that you would have to replace case and all.

      That being said, we did have a bad communication push-button in an EH-60(Quickfix) Blackhawk once. In order to
    • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @04:56PM (#61586465)

      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.

  • Last year, One of the youtube videos of Louis Rossmann shows slashdot website on a thinkpad laptop, so he's probably a fan.

    • * 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..."

    • Rossman is old enough to remember when Slashdot was a tech site before msmash etc shat all over it chasing clickbait.

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @05:23PM (#61586545) Journal

    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.

    • by inflex ( 123318 )

      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

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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

  • One of my coworkers serviced UAV turbines during his military service. For anything more complex than changing the oil they were required to crate it up and ship it off to a contractor for repair.
  • Maybe I should talk to it. Teach it phenomenology. Awhh, crap, it's philosophy has a layer of DRM.

  • "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."

  • by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @09:03PM (#61587007)

    start making them go immediately out to the middle of the battlefield to fix things, not from the safety of their plants.

  • by BobC ( 101861 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @11:59PM (#61587323)

    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.

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:19PM (#61589255)

      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.

  • 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.

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