US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

The Problem still would have been there only it would be Airbus getting paid for it.
If the boom had not met USAF specifications they never would have accepted the ones they have or paid for it. If it had been the contractor Boeing would be on the hook for the $55.5 Million. The Problem came about after a review of the specs determined the issue. Because the Boom fit the established design specs the Air Force was at fault.

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Pmichael said:

lol, Boeing would have been picked even if they sold them refurbished Douglas DC-1 planes. It's one of those cases of lobbyism, which was also a net loss for the US aerospace industry.

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Air Force Brat said:

While you may be right technically? really the KC-46 should have been a very low risk project from a friendly domestic partner?? that's why I always have to chuckle when posters assume that aircraft development is linear. Assuming progress has been, is being made despite no evidence of progress, as I continue to remind everyone, aircraft development is NEVER as simple as one might suppose on the surface....

Anyway, its good policy for the US to buy American!

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Pmichael said:

If only they went with Airbus for the tanker.

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Air Force Brat said:

While you may be right technically? really the KC-46 should have been a very low risk project from a friendly domestic partner?? that's why I always have to chuckle when posters assume that aircraft development is linear. Assuming progress has been, is being made despite no evidence of progress, as I continue to remind everyone, aircraft development is NEVER as simple as one might suppose on the surface....

Anyway, its good policy for the US to buy American!

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Jura said:

was now clicking through 'tanker news' back to Mar 26, 2017
as
USAF Finally Accepts Its First KC-46A Tanker, But The Design Still Needs Years Worth Of Fixes

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I'm not going to follow this 'low-cost, low-risk solution' any more LOL

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Jura said:

Mr. Roper, "an Oxford-trained string theory physicist" ...

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Military weapons procurement probably doesn’t pop up in casual conversation at your dinner table. Rules governing it are as complicated as the modern war-fighting systems we build, making it a field that literally requires its own university at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Should you choose to slog through the 5,000-page “how-to” manual for military purchasing, you’d get a close-up look at the sclerotic process used to build supersonic fighters and stealth bombers. It would seem more suited to a Monty Python skit than as a recipe for building a world-class military.

In previous job assignments, the two of us met frequently around a small Senate conference table filled with people devoted to fixing our crippled acquisition process. One of us on staff in a reform-focused Senate Armed Services Committee and the other running the Pentagon’s premier prototyping office, we brought unique perspectives to a team that ultimately gave birth to a

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called Section 804. It’s been a pleasant surprise to find ourselves now responsible for implementing it as senior leaders in the Air Force.

The beauty of Section 804 is that you could describe it on a bar napkin. It establishes a series of common-sense reforms: Begin prototyping earlier, nearly a year and half earlier than under the old system; give engineers more time for testing and troubleshooting; and keep flawed concepts from entering production and operations — a whopping 70 percent of any program’s total cost.

But aside from this fiscal common sense, “flying before buying” is accelerating weapons delivery for the men and women who fight our wars. The old slow-lane buying process demanded a mountain of Pentagon paperwork before the first dollar was spent and the first piece of metal bent. The Section 804 fast lane requires the same paperwork but phases it alongside early design and testing. Hanging up business suits in favor of lab coats and hard hats marks a return to an earlier age when the Air Force streamlined weapons development during the height of the Cold War. And Section 804 is producing results that would make our founders smile.

They’d also smile because we’ve delegated unprecedented decision authority over these programs to our officers and their civilian counterparts in the field, putting power at the edge where real work happens. We challenged them to find and trim 100 years of schedule “fat” induced by overthinking processes, unnecessary paperwork and risk aversion to sometimes necessary incremental failures. The schedule fat has been cut in less than a year. According to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, running an Air Force program might be the best job in government right now.

In certain quarters of the Pentagon and Congress, resistance persists. “Too much, too fast or too soon” are concerns easily voiced in government. From where we sit, however, there’s an unmistakable culture shift — centered on speed with discipline — that is accelerating aircraft, satellites, weapons and software development. The airmen leading them should be applauded, not harangued. Less than one and a half years into implementation, it is far too early to abandon a successful experiment, as some are now proposing. Radical change is precisely what the acquisition slow lane needed.

With the nation’s new focus on great power competition with China and Russia, the 804 reforms are more necessary than ever. China and Russia are not going to wait around for our laborious acquisition process as they quickly develop new capabilities. We need to field our cutting-edge technology when it is still cutting-edge.

When the two of us sat around those congressional conference tables debating how to fix our glacial weapons-buying practices, neither of us could have envisioned the incredible improvements that these common-sense reforms have ushered in.

The Air Force is returning to its roots of designing, building and fielding cutting-edge systems using the same old-school mindset that put the Apollo astronauts on the moon. We know defense acquisition will probably never capture the public’s imagination like the space race, but we hope that “smart” fighters, networked swarming weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles and “transformer helo-jets” now under development make you proud of the Air Force that’s soon to come. Now — thanks to Section 804 — it is coming to a base near you. Soon.

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Jura said:

what the heck is this, should I perhaps link 1933 Buy American Act here?! instead I'll tell you this:
the Hell will freeze before the Pentagon buys European aircraft

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Pmichael said:

The joke was that the A330 MRTT was basically finished while Boeing's offering was a paper tiger (compare the dates of the first flight). The risk involving getting the KC-45 into service was way lower than the KC-46, even ignoring that the EADS/Northrop Grumman plane was the plain better one.

Also Airbus would have shifted the entire production of the A330 freighter line into the USA, a massive amount of jobs which didn't materilize.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

... the Martin B57 British.


...

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Jura said:

Today at 4:43 PM
I used an auxiliary verb "will"

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Considering the list I have given it seems to do that often.

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