"US Armed Forces are building an OGRE!" Topic
16 Posts
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Parzival | 21 Feb 2022 7:42 a.m. PST |
link Mk. I? I've played this game. It does not end well… |
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART | 21 Feb 2022 8:24 a.m. PST |
Just wait 10yrs for Toyota or some other company to de-bug the robot driver idea and save gazillions by buying off the shelf hardware. That's why we can't afford nice things anymore. |
DesertScrb | 21 Feb 2022 8:53 a.m. PST |
Do you want Skynet? Because that's how you get Skynet! |
pzivh43 | 21 Feb 2022 10:21 a.m. PST |
Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Except Skynet. Skynet will kill you. |
robert piepenbrink | 21 Feb 2022 10:43 a.m. PST |
This is modern US Army procurement. They'll spend twice the budget and kill the project at or before prototype. Or it will go into production at some worse multiple of the current cost estimate, but kids with Swiss army knives will be able to disable it. And either way, every general associated with the program will go to work for the contractor at eye-popping wages. Why do you think the Army drives Ford/Carter era AFVs, and the USAF is still in Reagan era fighters and Eisenhower era bombers? The modern DoD can no more buy cheap effective equipment than the CIA can keep a secret or perform analysis. I don't know exactly how and when this ends, but the crash will still be audible two centuries or more down the road. |
Parzival | 21 Feb 2022 12:14 p.m. PST |
The simplest step: Change the payment structure for all government projects from cost plus accounting to a set bid cost, delivery time, and requirement standards/expectations. Cost plus accounting results in excessive charges, as it encourages the supplier to increase the cost of the project in order to increase the profit. Think of it this way: Cost plus is basically "We will pay you the cost of the project, plus 50% profit." Okay then, if the cost is 1,000,000, you get paid 1,500,000 and make 500,000 profit. But if you can drive that cost up to 10,000,000, you get paid 15,000,000 and make 5,000,000 profit. And since all your costs are covered, you can inflate the project with needless managerial staff, expensive components, inefficient procurement processes, "crucial" staff conferences (read "parties") in various locations that only coincidentally happen to have major resort facilities, golf courses, and other entertainment venues. Hey, it's all part of the "cost." You can do all this because your company isn't actually spending a damn thing on it itself. What the government needs to do is instead either establish an amount it will pay for a given service/product or accept bids. Then the contractor can decide whether it's worth it or not to go for the contract, and can establish the percentage of profit it's willing to accept and the amount of money it's willing to invest in that development. And then, to keep things on the up and up, make the CEOs and Boards of Directors themselves criminally liable for any shortcuts. Maybe with firing squads as the ultimate result. That'll clean things up real quick. It will even clobber the practice of hiring retired high ranking officers, because they become a drain on profits rather than a boost to them. |
dapeters | 21 Feb 2022 1:26 p.m. PST |
robert piepenbrink & Parzival but that's not free enterprise? The defense industry needs that extra income so that they can buy senators and congressman who will funnel research dollars into their coffers, make sure we the contracts keep coming to them alone lobbyist don't come cheap. They need to give generals and admirals money so that there is the appearance of legitimacy. |
Jlundberg | 21 Feb 2022 2:22 p.m. PST |
Problem with contracting is that the initial specs are usually not especially useful. The money is in milking the changes |
robert piepenbrink | 21 Feb 2022 2:44 p.m. PST |
Actually, apart from the corruption, the problem is the conflation of R&D with production. Wade through all our procurement disasters, and almost without exception, they result from saying "build 1,000 units of X, which we don't know how to build yet--and by the way, we're not sure what we want it to do yet." That way lies the F-35 and the Gerald Ford, among many others. No sane company would place a bid without some way to avoid being billed for the Army's indecision. Hand companies a prototype or a set of blueprints and say "How much for one--or ten thousand--of these?" and the prices are going to be fairly honest. Either do the R&D in house with DARPA, or pay for R&D separately before you do the RFP for production and you're OK. But we no longer do things that way, because (a) we're a bunch of blithering incompetents, (b) there's not as much corruption in such a system, of (c) both. My money is on C. So we're safe. If the Israelis started to build an OGRE, then I'd be worried. |
robert piepenbrink | 21 Feb 2022 2:57 p.m. PST |
Which leads back to OGRE. Has anyone ever done OGREs with national characteristics? The British OGRE with no speed or range, the Russian OGRE with a bad transmission? The Italian OGRE with no worthwhile armor? The "late war" German OGRE of tremendous killing power, but so slow and unreliable it usually doesn't make it to the battlefield? And the American OGRE which is 50 years old--probably a II or III--and reconditioned and upgraded, because they keep killing the next generation projects? People call FTL drives unrealistic, but I'd say they're a lot more likely than an army or navy with well-designed, reliable equipment and everyone on the same sheet of music. |
Covert Walrus | 22 Feb 2022 6:16 p.m. PST |
"Optionally Manned" If I recall correctly, OGRES were *never* able to carry a crew, although smaller combat vehicles had a limited self-control ability to fight and respond if the crew were knocked out. An AFV with a crew but also able to do routine tasks without one, such as picket duty and area patrol? That is a BOLO Mk1 to Mk3 specification, or more commonly, a Troll. Not at the OGRE stage yet. |
Oberlindes Sol LIC | 22 Feb 2022 8:42 p.m. PST |
"I see tremendous synergies as we seek to leverage our core capabilities in integrated…" What could possibly go wrong? |
robert piepenbrink | 27 Feb 2022 8:59 a.m. PST |
Apart from the language abuse, you mean? |
joedog | 27 Feb 2022 4:50 p.m. PST |
"If I recall correctly, OGRES were *never* able to carry a crew" Keith Laumer's Bolos (the probable inspiration for the Ogre) could have crewmen, but did not need them. |
Parzival | 01 Mar 2022 2:04 p.m. PST |
I would say that the Ogres never carried a crew, and probably could not carry an internal crew. But when something is that big, it *can* carry a crew… not that the crew probably wants the ride, thank you very much. Soldier (looks at radiation levels detected from Ogre): "No, we're good. Thanks. Need a bit of exercise anyway. Little walking never hurt anyone. Good for the heart. You can go on. We're fine. Seriously. Thanks."
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Aleator | 12 Apr 2022 7:33 p.m. PST |
Didn't the Chinese Ogres turn out to be manned? |
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