Such timing – this appeared the morning I was turning in my government laptop and ID. I began my 21 years of contractual servitude for DoD on the Joint Tactical Radio System, first in a supporting lab environment and later when the Joint Program Executive Office (to consolidate/coordinate the various service efforts) was stood up, working under the chief engineer. JTRS was about replacing single-purpose radios built on custom hardware with multi-purpose software-defined-radios (SDRs). This was not a fundamentally bad idea. I should note that this predates all smartphone technology, which embraced the SDR concept without ever going near the DoD’s “standard” for SDRs, the Software Communications Architecture (SCA)*. As it turns out, you can do a lot of signal processing in programmable processing units, be those general purpose, DSPs or FPGAs (the latter two being programmed with tools other than generic programming languages). Smartphones would end up bypassing all of those in favor of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) because they are far less power-consumptive (and therefore produce less thermal waste and longer battery life) and, when manufactured by the million**, are much cheaper than the reprogrammable parts.
It turns out though that RF systems still have to do RF things, like transmitting and receiving – and that comes with demands that really can’t be met in software, right out to the antenna and including filters and amplifiers. Once you start into the physical components, you’ve lost a lot of the flexibility that software has to offer. That’s without even getting into the esoterics of military radios – encryption, hardening against jamming, etc. – that you will never find in a commercial product. So let’s stipulate, this isn’t easy when you want a product with more capability and reliability than a cheap Chinese ham radio (which happen to work pretty well for their intended use). I’ve got a Yaesu, and Baofeng is even cheaper. I carry a Harris radio (cost about $1500 per) for my fire company and public service radios (which use foreign sourced components) still are nowhere near the level of military.
OK, so it’s hard, just at some fundamental technical levels. Being DoD that’s just the beginning. Now you have to account for Congress providing funding, and everyone within Army agreeing to what should be bought, and for who; then you throw in coordination with the other service branches and allied nations with their militaries. Oh, and in the infinite wisdom of defense acquisition, you take the systems life cycle and break it apart giving responsibility over each part to different commands with no single over-arching authority (below say the service chief of staff). So the “program manager” doesn’t really own the entire life cycle, just one piece; whereas under almost any private sector development the PM is god (and his career lives or dies with the success of the program). The DoD PM is an officer doing a rotation, 4 years, and is in and out without regard to the long term success (or failure) of the program. In short, you could not devise an implementation of the systems life cycle more prone to fail if that was your express intent. That any program ever delivers functioning product, it is in spite of the government’s approach.
All of which leads to the linked story about buying radios as a service.
What makes this approach peak stupidity is the failure to understand why any tech product – mostly software – was ever offered “as a service” in the first place. It was not for the benefit of the customer, it was to create a better income stream for the software vendor after realizing markets get saturated. It’s a business model not a technical solution and the major beneficiary is the seller. In the 20 years I’ve been playing this game, the people running things – civilian and uniform leadership – have gotten progressively stupider. I say this not because I’ve met all of them and measured them up, but because having seen the preceding government program fail, they take failure as the starting point for the next one and wonder why they are not succeeding. If you haven’t clicked on the JTRS link above, there is ample discussion on just that. From the exposure I’ve had to other programs (after all, radios are carried by dismounted soldiers, installed in trucks, tanks and other ground vehicles as well as in aircraft – fixed and rotary wing) there are very, very few exceptions.
Here’s the basic premise that every one of the idiots operate from – we want a thing, and business sells things. All we have to do is tell business what we want, and what we will pay, and it us up to business to give us that***. If they tell us that the thing can’t work the way we want, or that it can’t be produced for the price we want – we will just go find a business that will! And some business will, because that business will fall into one of two categories. The first is incompetence – they simply are as dumb as the government people. This of course doesn’t end well. The second is a business that says yes when they know the truth, but they have the ethics of a leech; we’ll bleed you for all we can, all while telling you what you want to hear and how with just a little more money we can make it work. At the end of this, the DoD has blown the budget, and schedule, all to hell and with even worse luck get hauled up in front of Congress for a spanking. Even if the people themselves aren’t dumb, they are dumbed down by the groupthink and the fact that promotions and pay increases don’t really depend on success of the work you are doing. The smartest that don’t leave eventually become cynical burnt-out shells of human beings, knowing the futility but simply running the clock out ****.
This is the abbreviated and condensed version of what is wrong. I may eventually circle-back (no, I’m not a lying red-head) and go a little more in-depth on some parts. It can be as stomach-curdling as the worst that SugarFree might throw at you, because it ain’t fiction.
* – The Software Communications Architecture was a document that on the very first page said “this is not an architecture”. Rarely has a government document been more honest. It was essentially a design pattern (for you software geeks that remember that) and it was the wrong pattern for the application. This apparently was written by some computer science guys, not electrical engineers.
** – Contrast the multiple millions of any given smartphone model with the Army’s “vast” inventory of 350,000 radios of various flavors. One USAF Colonel learned this painfully in the early days when he went to an SDR conference and bragged about the hundreds of thousands of units the U.S. government would be buying, only to be very dryly informed that wasn’t even rounding error for unit sales of cellular phones.
*** – I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that vendors will implement a standard, or some feature, just because the government wants it – all at no additional cost. I can only be thankful I never consumed exactly what it was that all these people had consumed that had rotted their brains.
**** – Are you looking at me?
I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that vendors will implement a standard, or some feature, just because the government wants it – all at no additional cost.
That’s hilarious. I’ve seen the reality from the contractor side, if you’re dealing with the government, you have to double the basic price just to deal with all the BS they’ll put you through.
If you ever read the book Pentagon Wars, it was not humor. The decision to make the TV adaption into very black humor made it much more tolerable, but sadly takes the real sting out of the story.
I worked on some dual-use stuff, but I’ve managed to avoid the defense side of our business for 38 years.
I bless this post with the fires of The Great Firster. Firstmen.
I don’t know how you did it for 20 years. Just reading the article made me want to throw things!
Congrats on the retirement, though!
Prior to my govt servitude, I had gone through almost 2 years of non to marginal employment. So I was grateful for a steady paycheck, and that paycheck grew over time, to the point that I couldn’t command the same money anywhere else. It’s a bit like having a golden dildo.
It’s no fun having it up your ass, but you can’t just throw it out.
Thank you for such a beautiful description for us FedGovs….cause that about nails it.
🤨
A PRC and KY is all I need.
Swallwell? Is that you?
I never worked JTRS. I have worked with people on that project. Double Think is a prerequisite for working on any government procurement project.
As an old microwave guy that somehow got pushed sideways into Logistics I can appreciate your apprehension. I got bumped sideways as tube equipment was replaced by solid state. I am very happy to have left Sam’s Finest before computerized stuff appeared and all the 3-4-5 lettered were created to massage paper.
CAN I GET A FIRSTALLUJAH!
This was not a fundamentally bad idea.
Famous last words.
Electric powered combat vehicles is a fundamentally bad idea. That hasn’t stopped the Army from seriously considering it.
You would think that there would be a filter there – hey, bad idea. But there isn’t.
it should also have low co2 ammunition
You could probably get a research grant for that.
Hayek needs to hook up those rail guns to a solar panel.
At my first job out of college the program needed a fiber optic data system. This was in 1979 and fiber was still in its infancy. Our requirement was to provide 200MHz bandwidth through a 1000 meters of fiber. Not a single vendor placed a bid (they couldn’t meet spec) with one exception, Harris Fiber Optics. Once they had the contract in hand they immediately demanded several million dollars for R&D. Why? Because no one can push 200MHz down a kilometer of fiber!
Always kind of admired the audacity.
L3 gobbled Harris up (or merged) and currently is our backbone for telecommunication infrastructure. They are absolutely atrocious.
One of my all-time favorites from The Far Side
Oooohhh!
A classic.
In the 20 years I’ve been playing this game, the people running things – civilian and uniform leadership – have gotten progressively stupider. – maybe it is your fault you were bad luck to the DoD
My wife was nervous at the prospect of giving up the regular paycheck, she asked me if there was any condition that I’d continue working. I said, yes, there is – to be given the authority to shut down any program and fire any people without anyone having recourse to over-rule my decision. I then laughed and said no one has that position, nor should someone have it – but it would work for me.
I would be a kind and benevolent overlord.
All shall love me and despair.
Looking back, my entire career (with a few short exceptions) was working for the DOD/DOE. The last ten or so served to cement my hatred of the FedGov.
I’ve often remarked, “In my next life I’m going to choose my political philosophy before I choose my career!”
I worked adjacent to procurement, at TRAC, doing analysis of various systems. I had the reverse midas touch.
In the three years I was there , nothing I touched escaped without being cancelled. And they all deserved their fate.
Although ‘Strike Force’ eventually morphed into the Intermediate Brigade Combat Team, which then became the Stryker Brigades.
Is it possible that the Army has a super secret super high tech radio technology and all these programs are a smokescreen to hide that?
We used to joke that we were a counter-intelligence effort, because no foreign intelligence analysts could possibly believe the stupid things we were doing.
Good enough for the Russians!
https://defence-blog.com/russian-soldiers-uses-chinese-portable-radios-during-kremlins-invasion-of-ukraine/
I’m reminded again of the yet again delayed Boeing Starliner program versus SpaceX. I’m sure the difference in the payment structure for the program has nothing to do with the difference.
Well, this is interesting: U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT: No Loss of Second Amendment Rights for Welfare Fraud, since there’s no history and tradition of stripping the right to arms for such nonviolent regulatory crimes.
Did the Third Circuit just declare the ATF unconstitutional?
*Edit Fairy grant wish
I close tags gud!
HALP EDIT FAERY!
Failure to close tags, however, *is* a valid reason to deny someone’s 2A rights.
I go to box, I feel shame.
Obligatory.
Also obligatory.
JHTF I am shit today with HTML
Also obligatory.
Reading through that and the original rulings, burn them all down. Glad to see some good news here but how the courts acted prior is absolutely trash.
Can I get harder? No, I cannot.
But the government did create the internet.
Well, Al Gore did.
As a Field Radio Operator, I was one the other end of this process for a few years. The crappy mainstay PRC-77, the finicky and unbelievably heavy 105 (supposedly emp resistant), and the awesome new (34 years ago) PRC-113.
Had to carry a 105 on a forced-march once, I thought I was going to croak. After it was over I was lying in the mud next to our Humvee. , My boss – the regimental air officer who drove- joking complains to the Colonel that he broke his radio operator.
,em>Electric powered combat vehicles is a fundamentally bad idea. That hasn’t stopped the Army from seriously considering it.
,/em>
As I recall, one of the appeals of diesel engines is they will run on virtually anything.
Even at night.
The other nice thing about diesel is that is doesn’t typically explode and burns slowly. So if your vehicle is hit, you have a chance to get out alive. Batteries with that much energy are a whole different story.
A fire that burns hot and can’t be put out is probably a bad idea for a combat vehicle. But hey I’m just a dumb civilian with a technology degree.
The safest spot in an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier is right next to the full fuel tanks in the hull.
The armor in those vehicles is almost negligible in a hostile environment. Good for near artillery blasts and small arms and not much else.
A full fuel tank ups the protection level to rpg and heavy machine gun.
Diesel is stable enough to have a small bomb go off and survive.
True story:
Years ago, Pater Dean gave me a call and asked if I wanted to go in on an oil well in the Texas Panhandle. One of his cronies was well connected and just one of those people who makes money, and had told him that he was going in on this well and that Pater Dean could get in on it, too. Well, investing in a to-be-drilled well, even at a very small percentage, is a six figure proposition, and was outside my risk acceptance zone, so I passed (as did Pater Dean).
Of course, the well came in, bigly. At one point it was throwing off enough cash every month to repay the investment. It was also some of the cleanest crude oil anyone had ever seen. You could put it directly into a diesel engine and it would run just fine, like you had filled it up at the gas station.
I’m tempted to blame the keyboard. It’s old.
Injudicious
The 15-member commission found that Scherer “unduly chastised” lead public defender Melisa McNeill and her team, wrongly accused one Cruz attorney of threatening her child, and improperly embraced members of the prosecution in the courtroom after the trial’s conclusion.
The commission, composed of judges, lawyers and citizens, acknowledged that “the worldwide publicity surrounding the case created stress and tension for all participants.“
Regardless, the commission said, judges are expected to “ensure due process, order and decorum, and act always with dignity and respect to promote the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
“In limited instances during this unique and lengthy case, Judge Scherer allowed her emotions to overcome her judgement,” the commission said in its report to the Florida Supreme Court, which will make the final decision.
Wasn’t there just a discussion bout the effects of female incursion into the legal/judicial system?
“Reprimanded”.
Howsabout, fired?
Now do the J6 Judges.
Speaking of only getting so erect, the Biden admin is flailing in the Missouri vs. Biden case.
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/01/10/new-discovery-in-missouri-v-biden-flaherty-directing-censorship-for-white-house/
The judge is having none of their BS spin, and they have admitted that the emails (as seen in the twitter files) are real. Man, even the “office” of Frau DOKTOR Jill Biden, she wolf of the DNC, was in on it.
I would be surprised if anyone is held responsible (seems to be my mantra lately). But the discovery, and having many of them say on record that the First Amendment only covers what they say it covers, is valuable. The other encouraging thing I see is that all the other candidates besides Biden are on the right side of this issue.
I doubt anyone will be held responsible, as even though violating an amendment is wrong legally, I don’ think it is against the law criminally. But, as you say, and this is the most important part from that point of view, it forces the gov’t to stop and when they don’t they loose money and create case law.
On the other hand, if you could make the case that some of these people conspired to violate a person or persons civil liberties, then you would be gold. Ain’t gonna happen with Garlands DOJ, sadly.
I doubt that most of the other candidates would stay on the right side of the issue if you handed them the current massive federal censorship machine.
“Frau DOKTOR Jill Biden, she wolf of the DNC”
I did not need the mental image of Frau DOKTOR Jill Biden, she wolf of the DNC, in dominatrix gear in my head, thank you very much.
I did not need the mental image…
Because it was already there?
Hilarious.
Wow. Didn’t see that coming.
https://sports.yahoo.com/pga-tour-agrees-merge-saudi-135548874.html
Golf is that last sport I still watch. LIV events are a lot more entertaining than the slow slog of most PGA tournaments and the level of talent is generally a bit higher.
Family members of those that perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have protested the league, including outside of events. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were from Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, was born in the country. It has been concluded by U.S. officials that Saudi nationals helped fund the terrorist group al-Qaida, although investigations didn’t find that the Saudi officials were complicit in the attacks.
Well yeah, our government knew that the entire time and still attacked other countries.
Of all the ways we have helped the Saudis over the past 2 decades, golf tournaments are a weird thing to focus on.
WTF is going on in Arizona?
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2023/06/05/hobbs-vetoes-hoffman-bill-banning-the-filming-of-porn-in-k-12-classrooms/
The fruits of not having done something about election integrety long ago.
Ding ding ding!
I looked at the bill, apparently it was about more than just shooting porn. There was also this:
A. AN OFFICE, BOARD OR COMMISSION OF THIS STATE OR A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE SHALL NOT EXPOSE MINORS TO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIALS AND SHALL PROHIBIT ITS CONTRACTORS FROM EXPOSING MINORS TO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIALS.
That’s pretty vague and possibly covers legitimate activities, like providing legitimate sex ed materials. This part is probably why she vetoed it.
It also banned filming in any taxpayer funded building. Not sure what taxpayer funded building encompassed. Maybe she films her activities with her husband in the governors mansion. Tacky but shouldn’t be against the law. As FB stated it was it was a vague law and probably should have been vetoed on that ground.
It’s tiresome but it works to outrage the base. Pass some broad ambiguous bill and if anyone votes against it or vetoes it make it out to be a very specific common sense bill. It s like a reverse motte and bailing legislative tactic.
Are you saying some of the bills are rather hyperbolic?
Keeping it real I see.
IMO, you’re being far too gracious.
Maybe, but regardless it was good decision. It’s as if someone wrote a “commonsense gun control bill” limiting everyone to buying one bullet a month and when it’s vetoed the opposition who wrote the bill said “What’s wrong with limiting the number of bullets a person can buy?” And of course, you just want people to die.
Well, maybe some people…
The Commonsense Firearms Act –
a: All members of the militia must own and maintain 1 long arm, and 1 side arm able to accept standard military ammunition types.
b: All localities where militia members reside must maintain facilities for the practice with these arms.
c: States and Localities may not ban the possession or purchase of any arms by members of the militia.
d: The militia is defined as all adult citizens not currently incarcerated.
e: there will be no penalty for failure to abide by clause a,
f: officers and elected officials of a locality which fails to abide by clause b are guilty of a felony punishable by no less than 10 years incarceration.
g: officers and elected officials which failure to abide by clause c are guilty of treason and shall be put to death.
I would expand d to also on probation. You may not be in prison, but your sentence isnt over yet.
Fatty, you are giving her way too much credit.
Somehow, we managed to get by for decades in this country without sexually explicit material in schools. First, of course, is that’s not, and never has been, where children learn about sex. Second, the sex ed stuff we saw back in the ‘70s was anything but sexually explicit, yet it did the job to the minimal extent it needed to. Given the extremity of what is going on in some schools now, I don’t know that anything but an extreme reaction will accomplish much.
Fatty, you are giving her way too much credit.
Maybe, but this still looks like a bait and switch to me. There’s no reason they couldn’t have been separate bills.
It’s hilarious but I wouldn’t think there is much to worry about.
12 year old kids are concerned about porn being made in their class room? C’mon, gimme a break.
Remembering back, there was little chance of any of my teachers making salable porn anywhere.
I remember Miss Gilbert (11th grade history) would have been a contender.
Thinks back…Miss Archuleta (2nd year Spanish) would have a fantastic OnlyFans
Mademoiselle Marie my 7th grade French teacher…
My high school German teacher would not have made shitty porn.
Boooooo…..
Mine banged a student.
I’ve been dealing with the COTS programs in the DOD for most of my career. They might buy the same devices as a automaker, but require a great deal more of upfront testing. Then they pay 5-10X more per part, because they will buy volumes closer to sample quantities for automotive customers. The COT sounds good on paper, but most electronics manufacturers don’t want the be tied to the terms or a gov contract.
This sounds like good business until you wan to discontinue or change a product after making it for 5-10 years. Nope, you need to keep that sucker in very low volume production for the next 20 years.
At least in my corner of the government ‘COTS’ is “Commercial, Off The Shelf”, Is the usage the same here? (I guess I’m confused by “The COT” reference later on)
COTS is commercial off the shelf. COT is a typo.
Who had ebola on their Next Pandemic bingo card?
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/marburg-genocide-or-nothingburger/
Such amazing fuckery.
*raises hand
Are we going back to ebola? I thought we were gearing up for m
onkeypox as the next one again.Focus group testing has inconclusive on a unified narrative path. Maintain doom/fear narrative rotation as planned UFN
They already announced there will be a “next pandemic”, we’re just waiting with baited breath for the title and release date.
Smallpox is another possibility. We do seem to have bio-labs everywhere in Africa and Eastern Europe. Maybe they are competing for deadliest gain-of-function.
Nah, it’s bird flu.
https://en.mercopress.com/2023/06/06/fbi-s-most-damaging-spy-found-dead-in-his-cell
Did he think that by getting information that could lead to Hillary’s arrest, he could blackmail the government into letting him go?
Elon Musk knows how to extract maximum cash from taxpayer pockets.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-confirms-all-tesla-model-3-vehicles-qualify-7500-tax-credit-2023-06-06/
Unlike other manufacturers he has the ability to source batteries from multiple supply locations and suppliers.
Ah yes, good old Jitters.
That program came into existence just about the time I left the RF/Microwave industry. I somehow knew it was going to be a clusterfuck.
Fun fact: the original service-based acquisitions were called clusters. Cluster 1 was the ground vehicle (and rotary wing aviation) i.e. Army and Marine Corps. Cluster 2 was SOF, Clusters 3 and 4 were Navy and Air Force and Cluster 5 was Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Factor (embedded). The JPEO JTRS’s first action, and I mean the VERY FIRST ACTION was to rename everything and dump the cluster nomenclature.
https://www.cato.org/blog/nearly-third-gen-z-favors-home-government-surveillance-cameras-1
I am guessing it actually has more to do with thinking you’ll be a YT or TikTok star like a Big Brother of social media.
Even more shocking is blacks and Hispanics also are around a 1/3 too. Groups that should have the most mistrust of its government clamor for more government.
JFC
I’ll go to war over that.
Tell them that marijuana is still illegal at the federal level and run the poll again.
Nice…
They won’t care. Look at how many people post pictures of illegal shit and share it publicly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc… already.
If anything, I think they would use it as a taunt…come to South Central LAPD…
The number goes down as one is more educated until you hit post-graduate degree. Then it goes back up to just under the high schoolers poll number.
The percentage of blacks is astounding, 33%.
That’s beyond stupid.
Another reason I’m skeptical about the survey. I just can’t believe that.
Would need to see the breakdown in age with the race I think.
Have to say I’m a little skeptical of that survey.
I’m sure it all has to do with phrasing. Another option: start the question with “Assuming Donald Trump is president, do you support government surveillance in your home?”
Maybe it’s because a third of that generation is on OnlyFans already.
Nobody is stopping them from putting in cameras with a 24 feed to the internet that’s open to the public.
They want the government to pay for it, that’s all.
My God. How could anybody possibly vote for him now?
https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1666092704948953092
“Paid for by the DeSantis For President campaign”