66NOVA66
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 17 months, 2014–2024
10:59 · 4.1M views · May 10, 2011
A roughly ten-minute scene from the movie The Pentagon Wars showing how the Bradley Fighting Vehicle's requirements ballooned through committee demands into a compromised design. It is a satirical dramatization of military procurement.
Linked in nearly every F-35 or procurement thread as the classic illustration of feature creep and design by stakeholder committee, including in software.
20 comments from Hacker News
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
When you need the absolute best for something, you need to specialize. That's why there have historically been so many different kinds of aircraft, each with relatively discrete missions. The F-35 is a terrible aircraft, and the procurement is deeply suspect. The South Korean acquisition process leaked some surprising information about the acquisition process and the F-35 failed the relatively modest criteria the Koreans had set and an older aircraft (F-15) to be purchased. At the time there was loads of news about the F-35 failing the acquisition and it even made it into Aviation week. Doing a google search now, it looks like it was a smooth process from RFP to acquisition and I can't find many of the older articles [1] The rumor is that Lockheed bribed the hell out of the Korean National Assembly and "won" the initial round of acquisition, but the agency in Korea responsible for the acquisition (DAPA) saw right through it and awarded the final contract to Boeing. The National Assembly got upset, Lockheed got upset and probably some U.S. congressmen got upset and the entire acquisition was tossed out "recompeted" and of course the F-35 won the second time. It's a sad joke and I can't even begin to guess at the acquisition shenanigans that happened in the U.S. 1 - [LINK] edit a great movie about this is the movie "Pentagon Wars" which includes this great scene. 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.