Pentagon Wars - Bradley Fighting Vehicle Evolution

Reading this “We weren’t sure LCS was executing the missions it was designed for,” Commander of Naval Surface Forces Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener said in January 2022. “And so we … went out to the number of fleet commanders and said, ‘Alright, what do you want it to do? And what missions do you want it to execute based on the environment we’re in now?’” reminds me of this excerpt from a movie: Pentagon Wars - Bradley Fighting Vehicle Evolution ▶ this video From the movie "Pentagon Wars". Bradley Fighting Vehicle design and development. Any design engineer will love this scene.

Watch the "Pentagon Wars - Bradley Fighting Vehicle Evolution" video: ▶ this video It's a great example of how trying to design a product that works well for every stakeholder in every scenario leads to a Frankenstein of a product that doesn't work well for anybody. This happens all too often in government (typically military) contracts.

Agreed, but more specifically here is the 10 minute video which best distills the whole movie. It's worth watching: ▶ this video

It's a lateral move. Recall that the US is updating their nuclear stockpile[0]. This is not expanding the stockpile, but neither is it reducing it. The F-35 was created to be a one-size-fits-all solution invented by the same bureaucrats who invented Full Stack Developer or the Bradley[1] with exactly the same results. If you're talking Doomsday clock, well there is a certain country actively stating they are willing to use nuclear weapons in an ongoing conflict that you might want to consider to contextualize (which itself requires further contextualization all the way down the rabbit hole) [0] link [1] ▶ this video

Modularity and abstraction come up against some limits when different customers have incompatible domain models, and thus different ideas of what your product ought to be. While I've seen its historical accuracy questioned, something about this satire from Pentagon Wars still resonates: ▶ this video

I think you better gave examples of government being inefficient. But also I was to add that there are places that do milk the government. Both of these can be true. It's not homogeneous. But you're right that we should be more nuanced and it's good to have an insider perspective. For a more funny example of your point, I like The Pentagon Wars' Bradley tank evolution ▶ this video

> a jumbled mess of different priorities that everybody resents Sounds par for the course. Link to Pentagon Wars: ▶ this video

Your argument overlooks the many examples of utterly wasteful military spending that happens even against wishes of the military itself because the spending itself really is the focus over the actual military effect. So we could easily compromise between our PoVs and let you have all the military might you want - even if US might already peaks over the next few countries together (and looking at Afghanistan, Iraq, how is it even used?) - but you could still cut a lot of the pork. I think things might get a bit crazy in the next century with climate change creating a lot of additional pressure, so I don't mind living in a well-armed Western Bloc, but that does not mean I have to ignore the incredible waste. I remember a Youtube summary/satire about the Bradley vehicle development, as an example for how it works (although it really shouldn't): ▶ this video --- and that is before senators get involved who are concerned about getting and keeping spending for their state.

> The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-its-kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks. > No real surprise that it didn't work out. For a humorous presentation of this, watch the movie Pentagon Wars : ▶ this video

There's a dated but entertaining dramatization of this failure from the movie Pentagon Wars: ▶ this video .

There's a whole movie about it if you haven't seen it: ▶ this video unless this was an intentional reference, then, whoosh

This is a not a new problem. There is a classic comedy scene of the Bradley fighting vehicle's problematic design process here: ▶ this video