This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

...nothing compared to Its insipid slime tracks....

"Little...thing"...wait for it...

You haven't seen much then, eh? Seriously, this ain't nothing compared to some of the things out there. I just worry whether or not they're going to give them a fair chance or if they're going to sink to the shock and awe factor that makes these niche communities so skittish to begin with.

Definitely a cross between dipshits and innocent negligence. Their little celebration made me embarrassed for my species (though I am everyday), but if something is fragile and priceless, at least put up a sign. Their ignorance of the formation is nothing compared to the willful destruction of the environment humans do every day around the world.

I don't think they'll let the U.S. default now, nor do I think they will not raise the debt ceiling (But, again, who knows?). If they do, however, raise the ceiling, it will be another indication that there is no more capping the debt, it will grow and grow until the country has no choice but to default.

Interesting to remember, back at the beginning of the Reagan years, fiscal conservatives were "crying" about the debt being $1 trillion. That's nothing compared to what it is today. And it was Reagan (by way of his "Reaganomics") who decided that there was no problem with increasing the debt.
Writes Murray Rothbard (in 1981), in an article about how the U.S. should just default on the debt:

"Perhaps the most absurd argument of Reaganomists was that we should not worry about growing public debt because it is being matched on the federal balance sheet by an expansion of public 'assets'."

(I wonder what he would make of today's $16 trillion+ in U.S. debt?)

Predictably, as soon as Reagan went on a spending spree, fiscal "conservatives" stopped being so (not unlike the 'leftists' who stopped being anti-war as soon as Obama was elected).

It should also serve us to remember that it was the Democratic party that first considered itself the party of fiscal responsibility, at least with regards to Jefferson, Jackson, and Van Buren who all had a conscious plan to defund government but eventually failed for various historical reasons.

"It is for all these reasons that the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (who, contrary to the myths of historians, were extraordinarily knowledgeable in economic and monetary theory) hated and reviled the public debt. Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson."

Fun fact, Nothing Compares 2 U was recorded two years before Miley Cyrus was born. Sinéad was 24 at the time. Miley is currently 20. Sinéad is ugly as shit now.

End of fun fact time.

The "Nothing Compares 2U" video:


vs. "Wrecking Ball" video:

That's nothing compared to the po...
the TV shows I've seen.
Uh...
Ever watched "Jackass"? They swim in poop.

Wha, huh???...Sorry, I'm still playing this game
(http://nigoro.jp/ja/games/rose/) someone showcased in sift talk years ago, along with JFK Reloaded every morning with coffee!

BTW, that last battleaxe is nothing compared to the queen grandmother..

Not as good as:



He rode through the streets of the city,

down from his hill of high,

O’er the wynds and the steps and the cobbles,

he rode to a woman’s sigh.


For she was his secret treasure,

she was his shame and his bliss.

And a chain and a keep are nothing,

compared to a woman’s kiss.


For hands of gold are always cold,

but a woman’s hands are warm.

You want worse treatment of IP? Check out what happened with Simcity 5.... this is nothing compared to that.

Actually this is amusing popcorn entertainment

Probably the closest RTS games I can think of to this scale are things like the Total Annihilation series (loads of units) and the spiritual successors Supreme Commander and Supreme Commander 2 (loads of units and a large difference in scale between some of them).

There's nothing comparable to the Battle Cruiser in this clip, but there are units that are hugely different in size, like the Ultralisks shown here.

Fragility? Hmm.

In any case, I'm certainly biased for it, because I think people should have the option to choose. The same way I think drugs should be legal, but still regulated. Right now the "drug industry" outside of medicine is like the wild west, and the porn industry is near the same. They should have checks and balances in the same way that other industries have, and honestly they should have significantly more of them, because of the nature of the business. This is nothing compared to what the illegal drug industry goes through - ever seen the results of Mexican Cartels? That stuff ain't pretty either.

She is calling for illegalizing it completely, and that's just stupid.

I don't think my bias is as big (hmm, which word is correct instead of "big"?) as hers and not to the extent that people should feel the need to invalidate my arguments, but that's not really up to me to decide.

When I say that "she's biased" it is to call attention to the fact that I think her bias should be considered when evaluating her point. She is doing these two
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion

And while I don't doubt that's she's been through hell and back, her data is not all the data.

I agree that this was not conveyed when calling it "biased" as I intended, so I'll retract that and stand corrected.

Oh yeah, that's nothing compared to this.
http://videosift.com/video/Singing-Bird-Pistols