Name:   Talullahhound - Subject:   They Were Great Date:   9/8/2020 11:55:26 AM

The "business" of Generals and military people is to fight wars.  They consent to it, they train for it, they do it.  If there are no wars, there really isn't a reason to have advanced military weapons.  And it is a revolving door to some extent - almost all of the industry guys I worked with were all retired miltary or had served.  Why are they hired?  Because they understand the culture, and they understand the needs of the military.  

It is my observation that one of the reasons that costs go up on weapons systems is that the miltary goes into most programs with a vague notion of what they want.  Over the course of time, the military wants to gain additional capabilities, so they change the requirements and they keep on changing the requirements untill the notion of the original capability is lost.  Then there is the funding problem - the budget keeps changing year to year and that leads to stretching out the delivery schedule, which adds costs to the contract, since the companies cannot take advantage of economies of scale when they buy the parts.  Add to that is that weapons systems of today are technology dependent and we all know how fast technology is changing to the point where you start out with one "chip" and before you can settle on that "chip" there is a newer, but more expensive "chip".  You really can't stablize the design anymore.  

Trump seems to like the idea of the military more than he likes the reality.  He really doesn't understand the culture and he doesn't understand the way they think.  The military teaches people to plan and execute, to be logical, and consisent.  To be "apolitical".  Trump doesn't understand it because that is not the way he likes to operate.  Remember how he liked Kelly until Kelly was his Chief of Staff and then turned against him?  That's because Kelly wanted to impose a systematic way of doing things, Trump felt that cramped his style.  He came to dislike Mattis too, for the same reasons.  He's not going to like anyone that sits in the Pentagon, because it is a foreign culture to him, and the way he operates is a far cry from the way the miitary thinks.  

Just my opinion.