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Dissecting a $231 Million High-Tech Boondoggle
The L.A. Times takes to task the U.S. Congress, the Obama administration, and various military agencies for their combined role in supporting the expenditure of vast amount of money on a system called the Precision Tracking Space System. All told, according to the paper, the PTSS program -- which was to have provided early warning of missile launches, and precision tracking of the missiles themselves -- ended up blowing through more than $230 million before being cancelled. After talking to defense experts and reviewing hundreds of documents, the Times comes to what probably sounds like an easy conclusion for any big-budget military program that never reaches operation: it shouldn't have even left the drawing board.
Follow the money
who got paid? this passed congress in 09 so who voted for it? eventually the cronyism will show itself
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
it's good that they cancelled the project. the only thing left is for everyone involved to pay back the money they took... with interest. to be fair, they can have the rest of their lives to pay it back.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
For government projects, isn't $231M "never leaving the drawing board"?
We are in scores of trillions of dollars in debt, and this is just one example of the reason. No accountability and no expenditure limits. Layer upon layer of bureaucracy and we keep throwing money towards the problem.
In addition to all the other comments about $231 million being chump-change, recognize something else about advanced technological research: sometimes it doesn't pan out.
That doesn't mean that we should never try to research new things though. Not everything can be discovered the way the Japanese like to do it, through hundreds of small polishes to an existing working design. Sometimes you need to think big to make a real breakthrough.
I would also put this story and some of the kneejerk responses to it in the category of "why the US isn't as successful as it once was". If the 60s were like today, with anti-science teabaggers controlling half of congress, would we have made a manned mission to the moon? Especially given that every one of those missions could easily have ended in disaster?
No people. Even the vaunted Solyndra failure came out of a program that overall had a better success rate than most private funding, and in the end, not only advanced technology, it made a considerable profit for the taxpayer. The willingness to scream and cry and throw tantrums by the anti-technology/pro-fundamentalist haters, every time some risk doesn't come out out 100% perfectly, is a cancer on the body politic. And we're sinking due to the over caution that results.
large uncontrolled budget, with unlimited spending increases, and zero common fiscal sense.
In terms of military budgets, $230M is nothing. We have other boondoggles that have burned through a thousand times that. In fact, this program is such a trivial amount, I suspect it is being emphasized to distract people from the real waste. The F35 program burns through $230M every three days.
A typical republican budget plan.
This program was proposed by the Obama administration, and passed by congress with plenty of votes from both parties.
large uncontrolled budget, with unlimited spending increases, and zero common fiscal sense.
In terms of military budgets, $230M is nothing. We have other boondoggles that have burned through a thousand times that. In fact, this program is such a trivial amount, I suspect it is being emphasized to distract people from the real waste. The F35 program burns through $230M every three days.
A typical republican budget plan.
This program was proposed by the Obama administration, and passed by congress with plenty of votes from both parties.
And then defunded by the Republican House in 2011 & 2012. Had it been proposed by a Republican, it would have been funded til the 2nd Coming of Elvis. 230 mil over 5 years, all in? Hell, that's coffee and donut money for the Pentagon.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
millions or billions. if not, let's stop right here.
According to the document the manufacturing contract was awarded between the establishment of the office to oversee a non-existing program and a requirements review. It also took two years to set up the administration of the program and these administrators are now merged with another office.
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so you are saying the republicans killed this boondoggle, yet you are going to make the claim that they only did it because...obama?
is there anything, anything at all that is obamas fault to folks like you??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Yes they were voting against absolutely everything back then because...obama - please try to keep up.
Spite is a very childish way to run an opposition and shows utter contempt for the country but it can be effective at times.
Actually the F-35 is on schedule. All the basic flight testing is done and most of the weapon testing, except for the gun (which is scheduled to be operational well before the F-35 gets to FOC), has been done. In fact the F-35B is currently in IOC, which means that the USMC (in the case) is currently having actual Marines maintain the jet to figure out how to maintian the aircraft if needed make modifications based on those experiences.
As far as not beating MIGs, it was never designed to do that. The JSF design heavily favors strike side of the equation, anyone that has actually followed the program should know that. In fact if any so called aviation experts were shocked that the F-35 wasn't as good as other dedicated fighters (which includes the F-16 which was designed originally to be dedicated fighter), they aren't much of an aviation expert. The F-22 was meant to be the dedicated fighter, and F-35 was meant to be primarily for strike missions, the specs and the size of the internal weapons bays make that pretty clear.
As far as ballistic missile defense, the current missile defense strategy isn't designed to prevent MAD. So anyone complaining that it can't handle the Russian ICBMs with multiple decoys and counter measures is attacking the system for a capability it was never meant to have. It was meant to protect against a rogue state like Iran or North Korea launching their not as complex ballistic missiles. Sure their capabilities can increase, but so can the system. We didn't go from primitive airborne rockets to laser guided missiles that have the ability to hit moving targets over night. BMD is no different.
Actually the program was created in 2008/2009, while the Democrats controlled everything- the House, Senate, and White House. Additional funding was added later by the Democrat-controlled Senate while Republicans argued against it.
http://graphics.latimes.com/mi...
Our previous Labor government spent more than a billion dollars refurbishing junked helicopters, none ever left the ground. Corruption la grande.
As a tax payer, I'd like my money back, but I suspect that there are no consumer protections built into that lucrative racket, are there?
--Udo.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
It can't fight, it can't run, and it's afraid to get wet. The F-35 is a piece of shit that's going to cost us over 1.5 trillion dollars.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
That's about half a bubble off. Nobody expected the banks to just give away money. They were expected to accept slightly more risky loans on starter homes. Slightly more risky, but not so much that they would lose money.
In many cases, the banks set the loans up to fail rather than simply risking failure. That is very much on them. They also made the loans on McMansions. I don't mean starter homes that now cost more due to demand, I mean ginormous houses on teeny little lots. That too is on them. It was relentless. My father in law moved during that time and when he went to get a mortgage on the new home, they poured on the pressure to take a larger loan and get a bigger house. Fortunately, he was a sensible man and insisted on a more affordable mortgage, but he had to insist. That had nothing at all to do with Clinton. It wasn't a starter home, his credit was good and he made decent money at a stable job.
This continued unabated for 8 years under Bush as well. In spite of warnings from SOME Dems in Congress.
With a few notable exceptions, nobody Democrat or Republican seems all that interested in punishing the criminals or using new regulations to stop them from doing it again.
Most of the banks were bailed out to get them over their cash shortage. As a thank you, they made loans even harder to get, doubled down on robosigning, and dumped the money into commodities and executive bonuses.
I often make a point that the US is very deranged about justifying military vs civilian expenditures. If anything civilian expenditures are subject to excessive cost benefit analysis, nimbism, and reflexive rejection. Plus pie an the sky libertarian thinking (AKA private enterprise always spends the tax payers money more wisely then the government). When it comes to military spending all that goes right out the window.
Bam, no more anything.
Repeating the same thing won't make it anymore true.
Repeat after me, the F-35 wasn't designed to have air to air combat as a primary requirement. If it was, it would look a lot like the F-22, large wings, small internal weapons bays, and a large engine. Instead it was designed with a large internal weapons bay which eats up the available wing area, and a more moderate engine. No one complained that the F-117 couldn't beat a fly in ACM. Honestly I think if the DOD decided to name it the B-35 or the A-35 it would solve a lot of issues, but it would severely limited the export-ability as the allied nations want multi-role aircraft. And frankly the F-35 isn't a horrible fighter, it just can't hold a candle to the dedicated fighters (like the F-15 and the F-16) built for the fourth generation.
I've mentioned in another comment that stealth aircraft can get wet. Yes encountering rain in flight damages the RAM, but that is considered a cost of doing business, you want a stealth aircraft you have to deal with the replacing the RAM periodically.
As far as the other issues those are normal. They did articles similar to this during the flight testing and IOC phase of the F-22 that resulted in SecDef Gates killing the program over the objections of the US Air Force that it would leave them without enough of front line fighters to do their mission. It is almost like they knew that the F-35 wasn't an air to air fighter, oh wait maybe they did because they read the freaking contract years ago. Heck go back long enough you will see the same complaints about the F-15, and the AIM-120 both programs that once finished were quite capable. And that doesn't mention the flight control issue with the F-16 that was only discovered years after it entered service and killed at least one pilot.
As far as the cost overruns, that doesn't surprise me. Every new aircraft is more expensive than the last. Add in all the new shit being developed for the F-35, many of which are actually brand new you are going to have overruns.
In Canada we mostly created a long gun registry. The idea was to basically keep a record of what guns were where. Before it was cancelled it had cost 2 billion dollars to create.
I want you to think about that. There are 33 million Canadians. So assuming every Canadian has 10 guns we are talking 330 million gun records distributed among 33 million owner records and then assuming that we are all police with varying levels of access let's assume 33 million admin records. So assuming 5K per gun record and something similar for the user and admin records, we are talking about 2 Terabytes.
Unless we were to have started to store high resolution photos of all those guns we weren't talking about something that is much of a system at all. A few call centers, some extra security... Can anyone figure out where the 2 billion could possibly have been spent?
One could argue that at the time storage cost more but not 100,000 times more.
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The F-35 was conceived as a relatively affordable fifth-generation strike fighter..... .....Strike fighters are dual-role tactical aircraft that are capable of both air-to-ground (strike) and air-to-air (fighter) combat
operations.
Repeat after me... you're full of shit if you're trying to tell people a strike fighter, specifically designed to have TWO roles...air-to-ground and air-to-air combat capabilities are not designed for air-to-air combat. As for not being able to replace the F-15 or F-16.... planes that it was SPECIFICALLY suppose to replace.... you're right, it can't, and i think that pretty much defines it as a worthless piece of shit.
And you can get your panties in a wad and suggest that, for some reason, you know vastly more about it than i do... which might be true.... but what i'm saying isn't my opinion, it's the TEST PILOTS opinion..... and i'm pretty sure he knows more about the fucking flying brick than you do.
They still haven't gotten the HUD to be usable for night flight (so i'll add can't be flown after dusk to the list), the electronics is still shit, and the software is barely north of vaporware... unless you want software that can keep it in the air and not much else. Good luck with that. And as far as wet, i mean in a storm.. you know, where they're not entirely sure it won't just fucking explode from a lightning strike. The good news is it has one of the most powerful jet engines ever in an aircraft... the bad news is, it has to have it because it's a heavy piece of shit, and even with that engine, a floating bathtub has more maneuverability. Good news for the vendors though.... all the extra wear and tear from the engine will mean more money in their pockets fixing that fuck up.
You've got a hardon for the plane, i get it. But it's still a piece of shit that's too fucking expensive, and can't do a damn thing it was supposed to be able to.
Cost overruns don't surprise people... but that's the point, maybe they should. Maybe that's the level of attention that we need. People talk about government waste, then give a pass to things like this because they seem to think the military can do no wrong. The military industries know that, and they know they can leech untold amounts of money from taxpayers. It's an obscenity.... this 237million, and the 1.5trillion for the F-35; neither of those projects should ever have been funded.
And yah know what, i am repeating the same thing i've said before... because it is true; and anyone that's been paying attention anything in the last decade or more could see it all over the media, tech magazines, and congressional hearings.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
> The F35 program burns through $230M every three days.
Indeed, $230 million will buy you maybe two F-35s -- with money left over for a nice dinner. Of course that's if you believe the current cost projections for the USAF version(why would anyone do that?). The Navy and Marine corps models come with more cup holders, wi-fi and simulated leopard seat covers. They cost a bit more.
And all the models are priced without engines.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Whee it is fun talk to people that have no idea about aviation.
I never said that it couldn't do air to air. Simply that when the contract was drawn up that stealth strike was their primary concern, as they already had a contract program that concentrated on air to air. As far as the test pilot report, the test pilot knew that the F-35 didn't stand a chance against the F-16 (as the YF-16 was designed to be the best dog fighter in the sky and the F-16 still retains much of that capability), he was just surprised about how quickly it bleed energy with the current version of the flight control laws, and hoped that the updated version (which should be hitting the test articles soon) would help with that.
As far as the rest of your post you are basing it on a report that is over 18 months old. Have you considered that in 18 months that they might have much of those issues fixed? There are still issues remaining with notable ones being, the gun's computer code needs to be completed, the 360 degree sensor system is incomplete, and the flight control laws need to be finalized.
Bush didn't sit idly by. From a 2008 article:
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Yes, the banks made loans that would "fail", to use your word. Why did they suddenly start doing that? Why did banks, all of the sudden, start handing money to people who couldn't repay? Two reasons. First, because it had been arranged that bad loans, loans that would fail, would still be profitable.
The noble intent of the dems was to encourage (and force) banks to make loans to people whom they thought "should" be able to own a home, because it would be more fair if everyone could own a home. That's a noble goal. By artificially making that profitable, they have the banks the opportunity to make make money by writing bad loans. When banks got a new opportunity to make money, they sure did so. You can sure blame the banks, they knowingly wrote loans in which a high percentage would fail, since they were assured they'd make money anyway. You assign blame to them, but then what?
You can approach in a solution in either of two ways. They didn't make these bad loans before, when writing a bad loan meant that they lost money; so you can go back to that, you can say "if you write a bad loan, that's on you, you lose your own money". But then you can't also force them to make bad loans. Alternately, you can double down. You can write more laws to manipulate the market further. But remember, laws manipulating the mortgage market are what started the whole mess. Yet another law will surely have further unintended consequences. Then you need another law or three to fix those side effects.
Again, the intent is noble and good, yet when you start artificially manipulating markets on a national scale their will be side-effects. Unintended consequences will happen.
Libertarianism is not an economic model but a political ideology. I am a Libertarian. While I'm not overly fond of the term, I don't have time to give you an eduction this morning. So, suffice to say, I'm often referred to as a "Socialist Libertarian." See the first four or five paragraphs on Wikipedia, it's actually authored fairly well.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This is just how we do socialism in America. Our ruling class got really scared of communism so they spent most of the 50s, 60s and 70s pounding it into our skulls that socialism == bad (especially while we were children). But there were quite a few that broke ranks (FDR, Eisenhower, etc) and wanted to keep the economy from sinking back into the Pre-WWII world of winner take all and insane inequality. The Military Industrial Complex with all it's waste was the solution. This way wealth gets moved around without the icky after taste of socialism...
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Why did banks, all of the sudden, start handing money to people who couldn't repay?
Once upon a time in America, banks kept their mortgage loans on the books indefinitely. The good, the bag and the ugly. This meant that quality of the borrower was supremely important for the health of the bank. This was before the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which made banks very conservative and very boring. And then Wall Street got the bright idea of buying mortgage loans, packaging them up, and selling them as Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's). The mortgage loans came off the books to become someone else's problem and the banks no longer cared about the quality of the borrower. This process got taken one step further when outfits opened shop to manufacture this stuff as quickly as possible. What was previously an obscure corner of Wall Street became the heart of the economy.
Once upon a time banks didn't sell their loans, that's true, but not really relevant because that was prior to Fannie Mae - in 1938. By the 1970s, most mortgages were probably sold at least once, not kept on the issuers books. Mortgage-backed securities aren't a new thing. Assigning top credit ratings to low tranche ones was new.
It's also disingenuous to suggest that Glass-Steagall, which FORCED commercial banks to sell off their mortgages if they wanted the diversification of MBS, had prevented it. Quite the opposite.
> while Glass-Steagall was in effect, banks were BORING AS HELL for 50 years of economic stability. What happened after Wall Street got the rules changed: the savings and loans scandals in the 1980's, Enron in the 1990's
I hate to be the one to point this out, but Glass-Steagall was repealed at the end of 1999, allowing banks to begin expanding into investments in the mid 2000s. The problems you pointed out were while Glass-Steagall was in full effect.
If a missile launched from another country, would I want our military to track it really good?
My answer: YES !!
Is this because I am a tea party republican?
I suggest to you it is not. In that event I could see Debbie Wasserman-Schultz wishing very dearly we had better missile tracking capabilities.
So why does the media resent military R&D all the time?
Political assumptions that have nothing to do with the wishes of ordinary voters.