pentagon's 8" nuclear floppy disk

There is plenty of fault to go around on this topic.

The Services tend to focus on todays OPs and in very limited budget times they put the priority on "today" and investment, R&D, etc., gets deferred. Just like the decades of ignoring our infrastructure investments in bridges and highways. Once the panic does kick in, the $$$ then goes to the weapon systems and again the derived requirements (C4ISR, logistics) are still skipped over. The thinking is "if I don't have ICBMs then I don't need a C2 system for ICBMs--buy the ICBMs first and worry about the ancillary parts later." The Navy doesn't do it perfectly, but they separate identifying current needs vs future requirements better than the Army or AF in most regards. The AF is better at identifying the necessary enabler support most the time (computers, comms, intel, etc.)

Then the Executive branch jumps in and changes what the Services put forward, often trading away even more of the unglamorous but vital pieces. To be honest, this is completely independent of who the president is, EVERY one since at least Carter has done so to one degree or another (that's as far back as I have direct knowledge). Eisenhower certainty did and said so repeatedly.

But far and away--by a huge amount--the biggest perpetrator is Congress. What district something is or is not built in is far more important to getting funding than what capability is actually needed. Useless items are crammed into the budget strictly because of which company will get the contract. We have warehouses of things the Services never asked for, pushed back on getting, can't use--but were built in the "right district". When the Services have actually done solid homework to find/justify a certain course of action it is often overturned and redirected by Congress. The worst offender over the past couple years is McCain. He wants to legislate his way to be the defacto SecDef and several of his dictatorial edicts are a huge waste of $$$--but no one wants to challenge him on defense issues because of his POW time. He is also pushing for completely stupid changes to Goldwater-Nichols and holding up a number of GOOD changes that other members of Congress are trying to get enacted.

The things we need to do to make significant improvement in DoD spending is known (they certainly won't fix everything, but will improve it) but politics at every level, coupled with massive egos, gets in the way of making those process changes.
Originally Posted by Old-T

Excellent response Old-T. It is a cumbersome system but even Mr. Trump will have trouble dealing with all the competing interests.

One big reason for my loyalty to the manual transmission. How many little car-jack thugs do you think can drive a stick? Originally Posted by roaringfork

That's a great point, but you could have the hassle of driving a stick for twenty years and never get carjacked.

There is plenty of fault to go around on this topic.

The Services tend to focus on todays OPs and in very limited budget times they put the priority on "today" and investment, R&D, etc., gets deferred. Just like the decades of ignoring our infrastructure investments in bridges and highways. Once the panic does kick in, the $$$ then goes to the weapon systems and again the derived requirements (C4ISR, logistics) are still skipped over. The thinking is "if I don't have ICBMs then I don't need a C2 system for ICBMs--buy the ICBMs first and worry about the ancillary parts later." The Navy doesn't do it perfectly, but they separate identifying current needs vs future requirements better than the Army or AF in most regards. The AF is better at identifying the necessary enabler support most the time (computers, comms, intel, etc.)

Then the Executive branch jumps in and changes what the Services put forward, often trading away even more of the unglamorous but vital pieces. To be honest, this is completely independent of who the president is, EVERY one since at least Carter has done so to one degree or another (that's as far back as I have direct knowledge). Eisenhower certainty did and said so repeatedly.

But far and away--by a huge amount--the biggest perpetrator is Congress. What district something is or is not built in is far more important to getting funding than what capability is actually needed. Useless items are crammed into the budget strictly because of which company will get the contract. We have warehouses of things the Services never asked for, pushed back on getting, can't use--but were built in the "right district". When the Services have actually done solid homework to find/justify a certain course of action it is often overturned and redirected by Congress. The worst offender over the past couple years is McCain. He wants to legislate his way to be the defacto SecDef and several of his dictatorial edicts are a huge waste of $$$--but no one wants to challenge him on defense issues because of his POW time. He is also pushing for completely stupid changes to Goldwater-Nichols and holding up a number of GOOD changes that other members of Congress are trying to get enacted.

The things we need to do to make significant improvement in DoD spending is known (they certainly won't fix everything, but will improve it) but politics at every level, coupled with massive egos, gets in the way of making those process changes.
Originally Posted by Old-T

Democratic members of the Church Committee publicly stated that they did not want the FBI to have the technology to monitor everyone which is why they repeatedly denied the FBI the funding to upgrade their database.


If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.---Frank Church, Democratic Senator from Idaho

Well it is open source projects fault for some of these computer hacking or hijacking issue's cause the government latched onto the well it's a small business oppertunity to make new programming applications for the mobil devices. See i spelled it mobil cause we're not in a city in Alabama and i am glad the commador 64 is in use might even pray for some i.b.m. and some Apple Macintosh I.E. there is some hope that as time has changed and we out paced our own advancements in other places besides computing machine's least the calculators on those older system's can calculate and not have the mathematics have a variance between machine's or program's like today's smartphone calulator app's and say Google's if you used the search engine to find calulator program's. Take the pie key for a circumference ratio of a standard protractor or need point end compass for drawing a perfect circle and that button and symbol for pie is to have that preloaded at the push of that button and all of them have some that have differing numerical values entered especially after the decimal point. That will be brushed off by some so smart with a premade excuse that forgets a computer was created for that functionality as its primary reason they exist and took up the size of most homes in the early days when the micro processors and transistors and resistors we're just being invented and made for these machine's to work and exist. So yeah i would take that as a extreme issue with over all opperating system's and have some issue's like that they consider not a factor in 5 years from now they might be wishing they had stuck with a rotary dial corded telephone and not one that can play music that sucks and is over engineered even this throw back to 1960's folk songs and barber shop quartets in rock music. That rock has no roll to it cause well I can sing hold on hold on hold on to me cause I'm a little unsteady for 4 mins over and over with little else added to the song and think yep hold on to those old dinosaur computers cause the new hand held ones gets common core math problems correctly teaching one student something different from the other using the same calculator on his "smart device" that is why so many things are going to have to be looked at from some 1970's and 1980's kid's that know what it is like to not have the internet and social networking but not have text messages but had standard's in there text books in a class room not a e book some one can change the words while driving the educational system down the drain faster. Originally Posted by lordunsleep

jeez,
you'd think he has a sense of mind to break up his one long paragraph into readable portions.

Democratic members of the Church Committee publicly stated that they did not want the FBI to have the technology to monitor everyone which is why they repeatedly denied the FBI the funding to upgrade their database.


If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.---Frank Church, Democratic Senator from Idaho Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

God Bless Frank Church. Wish he was still around.