Delete comment from: Elements Of Power
RE: Second, you mention alternatives twice and you are invoking the '50s when there were multiple contractors with many designs to keep Boeing honest. That model is correct but breaks down when either purposefully or as collateral damage DoD precludes alternative designs and even alternative contractors from the mix.
Your phrasing reflects more of your own biases than acquisition ethics and laws of either now or in days of yore. It also reveals a limited understanding of the concept of ‘alternatives’ as I expressed it. Perhaps that is my fault for not making it clear, so let me expand on the point to note that by ‘alternatives’ it is meant alternative courses of action which may or may not involve the same type of weapon system, family of weapon systems, families of weapon systems or even tactics and strategies in the application or objectives of weapon systems to meet or retire a military need.
RE: Ref "ignorami": does that include the GAO, all of whose evaluations of the F-35 program have been far more accurate than those of the program itself? Does it include the guys who wrote the QLR from within the program, which was fodder for the kind of Sweetman articles you evidently felt compelled to ridicule? Does it include the people within the program who write the last SAR, the analysis of which Bill was pilloried for without anyone factually refuting his claims in a 400 comment thread on Ares?
1. ‘Ignorami’ refers to anyone with a strongly-held and vociferous opinion on a topic that has little to no knowledge (depth or breadth) on that same topic.
2. On ‘defense’ topics, the GAO a political tool that has never NOT ‘found’ precisely what it was sent in to look for. Based upon literally thousands of GAO reports I have had to consume and multiple experiences with GAO teams in the field. I concluded long ago that the GAO operation (again, as far as defense topics go) could be replaced by a one page form for the politicos to fill out, one junior college ‘Creative Writing’ instructor and a small staff of admin to do the word processing and publishing. The ‘Creative Writing’ position could be eliminated with a large enough list of synonyms for ‘Risk’ and ‘Uncertainty’ plugged in to a random word generator. The GAO ‘predicts’ NOTHING -- They are “Texas Sharpshooters”: http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2011/04/f-35-and-texas-sharpshooters.html http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2011/04/ragin-hedge-baby-on-loose.html
3. QLR was not from ‘within the program’. It was a CYA drive-by. http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2012/01/sweetman-goes-all-in-on-f-35-qlr.html
4. The SAR is a political accounting and CYA document of varying degrees of accuracy, depending upon how risk averse the OSD deputy is in office, and the political capital the SecDef allocates for the purpose of defending it. It reflects as much about the state of things outside a program than in it. Even with all the external factors, what is too often most remarkable about the SAR is the distortion of what is in the SAR by whoever wants to use it as a weapon for good or (usually) evil.
5. RE: ‘400’ Comments on Ares blog. Birds of a feather flock together. ‘echo chamber’ . Your appeal is called the ‘bandwagon’ fallacy, or more traditionally: argumentum ad populum. But if you followed the links in #2 above you would have seen why all ‘400’ would not be ‘right’.
Apr 22, 2012, 1:57:44 AM
Posted to The B-52 Turns 60: What IF? (Part 3)