Saturday, March 4, 2023

The Emperor N'a Pas de Vêtements

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Spent the last half of the week in DC for a long overdue meeting.  Won’t bore you with the details*, but we’re finally talking about some of the problems we’re having with one of the systems of systems I’ve been working to bring to the Fleet, one that's on the verge of delivery to our sailors.  It’s been well known by most in the mission-area circles I run in, but it’s sort of been this unspoken thing- a bit like the Emperor has no clothes- we’re finally admitting that the guy is buck naked and we’ve all been duping ourselves.  We haven’t really been lying to ourselves, but that emperor, despite being a terrible leader, is the only one we have, the only one we’re going to get, and we just have to accept him.  The alternative is to kill him off, but then we’d be left with no leader whatsoever.  What we’re discussing is what clothes he needs- admitting he’s not the right guy for the job, so we’ve got to turn him into that person- what will it take to dress him up right so he can be effective and do the damn job.  

I realize I'm being very cryptic, but I'm trying to keep this at a level that will keep the intel censors happy, and the bad guys from learning too much.  However, you can probably substitute many government programs for "Emperor" and the unnamed system.  I'm frustrated both as an analyst and a tax payer.  If you've read my previous posts, you might understand what I'm talking about.

The problem has been bad for a decade, poor funding, low interest in making it better, continual cuts from big Navy and Congressional marks on the program that have stripped him down to an ugly naked dude that nobody likes.  It's also taken a LOOONG time to get here.  They also tied these systems of systems to a lemon of a ship- one that never should have been procured in the first place, or at least not without the shipbuilder getting a serious ass-whooping when we discovered that it too had a bunch of problems.  The Navy tried to be transformational, but all they did was accept a ship with a primary characteristic (speed), that has never really been a necessary attribute for a modern ship.  That’s not to say a fast ship isn’t good, but that’s all it did well.  A least until it needed to be fixed since the ship would crack, or the gearing between the propulsion system and water jets crapped out.  

The system of systems was originally going to be given to the Strike Group to provide some capability in case a threat was staring them in the face, but the Avengers weren’t around to help.  Then the Navy decided those guys were getting old and that small limited capability for the Strike Groups would be the replacement for the highly capable Avengers.  They also decided they’d pair it with that ship, forcing our hand and ensuring a couple Congressional districts would keep building ships, and certain unnamed defense contractors** would rake in money they didn’t deserve.  I say that because the performance out of those systems never met our requirements (so they lowered the requirements).


Just so you know, I haven’t been working on those programs directly, just advocating for the needed capabilities, until I was blue in the face.  I tried, year after year to document and get action on our concerns, but others wanted to protect that emperor and ignore his parading around au naturel.  We had other bigger emperors to deal with, Fighters for us and all our friends, big bad Boomers, rakish destroyers, and a new floating airport- all of which had problems of their own.  No money could be spared for a mission area that wasn’t nearly as sexy, so they ignored the fact that not having that capability keeps everyone at home.

So, this week we admitted that clothing was needed, and we picked out some new duds, but we’ll see if Amazon has them in stock and if Dad is going to throw some allowance money at us.  I’m not too confident, but at least they're listening.

On a similar note, we held these meetings at the Center for Naval Analysis in Arlington VA.  Not sure what a think tank like that brings in annually, not really producing anything as far as I know, but reports on our capabilities, assessments on our shortfalls, and a list recommendations for us to act on, or not as is often the case.  But based on the high-end look of that building and the amazing facilities inside, clearly, they charge the Navy a very pretty penny.  Lots of greenish-blue glass, slick steel cabling and glistening hardwoods, with break out rooms and comfy chairs that would make the Air Force jealous.  It wasn’t just that building, but every one of them in Arlington VA were of a similar bent, with plenty of high end stores all around.  DC is just oozing with money apparently, and all of it coming from your pockets of course.  Maybe not every penny, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those troughs are at least partially filled by drainage from the great big govt spigot.   

Yes, I'm clearly a bit cynical about the whole thing.  I can't really blame the Navy- they knew we were buying shite, but big programs that keep Congresscritters happy are what we get our cash for, and they forced us to make due with the meager budgets they gave us.  A lot of good could be done in my mission area with the pocket change from one of those fighters, or the couch cushion money from that airport (budget dust it's sometime called).  So, I have to find my job satisfaction- not in being successful integrating a great system in the Fleet, but what I find in my bank account every two weeks.  I've been doing this work for 13 years and while I can't say I'm burned out, I am frustrated.  I'm looking for something a little different- maybe in the same command, maybe in a similar one, but only if the opportunity is right, if a little more paycheck is available.  I'm good at my job and I'm well regarded, but 13 years has culminated in something I'm not all that satisfied with, so it's a good time to start looking around.


*Actually, I did bore you with details, but I really meant that I had to keep it at the appropriate class ifica tion for this forum.  

**One of which that's near and dear to our host- no offense Sarge. (Not his program though)

30 comments:

  1. Do we still have more Admirals than warships? Being a Miguel de Cervantes fan, I do admire Don Quixote.

    To modify an old saying nobody is so deaf to reason than folks whose paycheck and kickback depends on it.

    But I respect people that still try to reason with folks.

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    1. More Admirals than warships? Warships are complex things these days, maybe more managers are needed?
      Then again it might just be Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy.... probably the Iron Law.

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    2. To be minutely fair, the Navy is making due with the budget we're given. It's a huge one, but when we're forced to suspend needed shipbuilding and keep ships limping along with underfunded maintenance, while paying for subs that are part of our strategic deterrence capability, which should be a national defense bill vive a Navy one, we can't do it all.

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    3. Yes, we have a surfeit of admirals, an excess of generals armee and air forcee. And a corresponding excess of lesser command levels. The modern military does somewhat imitate your typical modern American business vis-a-vis "Office Space" with multi-managers for each worker.

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  2. In the end, every bureaucracy appears to be working for the other side.

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    1. Not necessarily for them, but our inefficiency definitely helps them.

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  3. Don't even get me started ...

    Twenty-plus years, what do you mean it's not done yet?

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    1. In 1996 the CNO visited our CV and said our airwing would be conducting MCM. No program ever dies though, so now 27 years later, we're still waiting. Check back with me in 2 years. They should deploy by then.

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  4. When you aren't getting the answers you expect, check your premise. We think our .gov is there to protect us. It isn't. We think the military wants the best weapons to defend us. They might, but then again, they might not. The managers may just want a glitzy whiz-bang or a favorite lollipop. And the .gov is in the power and influence biz. So money moves to constituents and lobbyists, as that is the most important issue, not a viable, workable weapon or system. Making the most expensive, single use rocket is important to the contractor. Having a huge job force that reliably votes to keep supplying said rockets is important to the representatives. That the rocket can't perform it's function isn't even in the conversation. Thank God, there are men like you have your head screwed on right. A voice.... crying in the wilderness....

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    1. One reason the military exists is to fight and win our nations wars, but the primary reason is to employ our nations workforce.

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    2. Which could be done by building actual working and efficient equipment, updating equipment, fixing base housings, rebuilding facilities, providing the military with what it needs, not some pixie-dust wunderweapon. (Like the new Army rifle caliber, which has almost the same penetration and wounding characteristics of the caliber it is replacing, just 20x more expensive... but lots of ex-generals and ex-colonels working for think tanks and manufacturers swear we needed this, instead of just, well, carrying 7.62NATO caliber weapons.)

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  5. Tuna, although not nearly at the level of importance and criticality you are working at, this happens in my line of work as well. Being "in the trenches" as it were, I and my immediate colleagues can often see the problems months or even years before they reach critical mass. And then when critical mass is reached, suddenly there is a flurry of activity as "everything has be done now - right now" - eating up time, the component we can never get back. It is all quite frustrating. We (the royal we) are often our own worst enemy.

    The apparent affluence does not surprise me, although it does disgust me. Like most capitals (imperial or otherwise), all wealth flows to the center. As Franklin put it, "The King's cheese is half wasted in parings: But no matter, 'tis made of the people's milk".

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    1. As we did, but there was barely enough money to procure the weak systems we were developing, and none at all to improve them while in development.

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  6. Someone (with the background), mebbe a couple or three well-meshed authors (a la Niven/Pournelle), needs to write an updated, good tale (series perhaps?), a scifi set in a far future/alternate universe today in Russia/China/Israel, detailing the bumbling bureaucracy in the politics?/money of war; someone with a wicked sense of humor.

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    1. I'm not sure this story would make the Amazon bestseller list though.

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    2. John Ringo. Start with "Live Free or Die" and there are two more in that series. The battles are as much against the organizations as against the aliens. Then there are other series.

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    3. There is a sci-fi short story of a bureaucrat fighting the bureaucracy (that I can't find for the life of me). Basically, an insect radiation sterilizer urgently needed on a planet to combat an infestation had a lower priority than the Governer's booze supply. He reassigns the instrument to the highest priority, bumping the alcohol. An assistant questioned the decision and was told that by the time someone catches the mixup, the scientists will have the unit, used it, and it will have solved the insect problem.

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  7. "The alternative is to kill him off, but then we’d be left with no leader whatsoever. "

    Ever notice how much better things run when the boss goes away? In some cases no leader isn't a bad thing.

    "However, you can probably substitute many government programs for "Emperor" and the unnamed system. "

    Those darned toilet seats again????

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    1. Yeah but then we'd be without any system whatsoever. Too big to fail? Maybe, because getting a new replacement would take just as long as this one did to get to the fleet. It can be improved, it will just take money.

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  8. Try standing up a new branch of service while all of those kinds of issues are going on. We just killed our emperor in one of our circles, as he'd been naked for more than 10 years, and was never going to get clothes.

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    1. Not a lot of love for either mission area.

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  9. It was later in my working career when someone explained features do not equal benefits. The gentleman went thru a list of requirements on a program and showed only two out of ten had any significant benefits to the end user, yet the other eight were 60% of the cost. At least two were DARPA vaporware that were not technically feasible without obtaining alien technology. Yet the money still flowed, if more slowly, to a dead end project to contractors and subs. Don't get me started on Not Invented Here versus COTS.

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    1. Plenty of hand-waiving, fairy-dusting, and unobtainium in govt programs and strategy.

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  10. I spent 10 years at NASA contractor working on the Space Station program during the design phase, and our Emperor was building the power system using 20kHz AC.

    Not 50Hz for the Euros, 60Hz for US, or even 400Hz for the aircraft community. In a mad hyper-focus on reducing inductor masses we were trying to built a 75KW power system using a frequency never before used for power distribution outside Tesla coils, much less in space. No flexible cables? No space-rated connectors? No thought of harmonic noise in the crew areas? We HAD to rate all those problems as minor in our proposal where the rest of the project rated them as critical.

    AC design finally died when *the* die-hard advocate at the Lewis Center retired. Back to tried and true 160VDC power.

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  11. Unfortunately, going on the record with either saying a program won't work, or for leadership to accept and admit it, is really tough to do.

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  12. Read yesterday somewhere that ADM Rickover was always aboard for sea trials of new nuke subs, on the principal that it was his program and he approved everything and was willing to be there to suffer the consequences if anything failed.

    That should be the model for anyone in the mine warfare business. Every ship can be a minesweeper, once. Whomever is running an abysmal MIW program for a decade with zip, zero, nada to show, needs to be the forward lookout on the first warship to sortie from Sandy Eggo or anywhere else. Perhaps that would inspire some ingenuity, and ability to cut thru some BS and tell "higher" they are not only nekkid, but underendowed, and need to support efforts to make the gosh darned program WORK, because their butts should be on board as well. While every ship can be a minesweeper, once, we don't have enough ships, or maybe the bad guys just don't need as many mines.

    Or, maybe an appeal for "greater diversity in program support to included red headed step children" might be helpful these days.
    JB

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    1. Yes, Rickover demanded perfection, and it cost (well-spent) money. On one sub, the shipyard could not certify tubing of the proper specs were installed. He ordered every piece of it ripped out and replaced to spec. He required that a full-scale mockup of every different sub design (and the engineering spaces of nuclear surface ships [this was before CAD and VR, but they are just not the same]) built, to ensure that they were workable and could be repaired. Daringly he required that any shipyard worker could call a "red flag" encountering a potentially serious problem. One welder did (an action not to be taken lightly). He was welding in an impossible place, requiring a mirror and two bends in the rod. He bent the rod and it broke. Tried a second rod, it broke. That alloy rod was not supposed to break like that. He called in a "red flag", stopping all welding in the shipyard until the issue was resolved (by Rickover's people, not management). Turned out that a significant number of the welding rods supplied by the manufacturer were mixed lots.

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    2. I would say the danger in the nuclear field is far more risky than MCM, one ship versus entire cities at risk, so I get his demand for adherence to perfection.

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  13. Lest you think this exists in only .mil worlds, back in the day when I worked for the local PD there was a 5 year cycle for new pistols even though the old pistols worked perfectly well and were still available, but, no, every 5 years (or so) a new consultant (paid butt-loads of cash for time and for per diems) would wander through and drop a recommendation for new pew-pews. Of course, they'd always find out after the new pistol purchase program that the consultant and consultant's agency got kickbacks from the pistol supplier. Duh.

    And then there is the leeching effect of hiring other consultants at kings' wages and kings' per diems all the time when said consultant monies could just as easily and more effectively been funneled to salaries and basic improvements like new office chairs actually designed for office workers (not the least, your chair and desk were designated by your level of position in said organization. So the lowly staff assistant who does all the work is crammed into a small desk with a crappy cheap chair with only one monitor while the pointy-haired boss has an escort carrier-sized desk with a really comfy chair and 3-4 monitors and fans and all sorts of stuffs.)

    Ah, but what would government be without an entrenched bureaucracy that feeds itself on the moneys of the serfs and peasants that said bureaucracy is supposed to support and not rule over?

    Sorry you are being ground-down by the system. Your job and current 'profession' is a noble and just job and profession, and should stand higher up in the order of things than more 'sexy' or more 'politically connected' things.

    I hope you find some happiness soon, by position or profession change if necessary.

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  14. Thank you Beans. I'm not unhappy, as I am well regarded and do it well, but the lack of positive results is what frustrates the hell out of me. As to your first sentence, it's probably the same with any dot gov or dot anything to do with our tax dollars.

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