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JTarrou  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   2874 thread views

Revenge of the previous "gun guy" AMA

Just an update to a comment I made in the AMA about the military's new hotness as of two months ago, in response to this question:

https://www.themotte.org/post/296/im-a-gun-guy-ama

what's your take on the NGSW? I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts on the LMG and service rifle aspects of it, as well as your thoughts on the entire program.

To which I replied:

All these "new infantry arms" are a boondoggle for arms manufacturers. Billions of dollars to not replace the M16, or to marginally improve some esoteric aspect of the platform. The M5 is not going to be the standard infantry arm of the US military.

Today's update: https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/28/the-not-really-next-generation-weapons-program/

Pull quotes:

the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes. The program is on mechanical life support, with its progenitors at the Joint Chiefs obstinately now ramming the program through despite spectacularly failing multiple civilian-sector peer reviews almost immediately upon commercial release.

Starting from a highly dubious intellectual, strategic and tactical baseline, the NGSW program is now failing mechanically and ballistically at once. Army came out hard with the program’s aims and expectations, unreasonably so, practically declaring a War on Physics from the outset. Unfortunately, like so many other antecedent programs Army has lost the war again, badly. In terms of weight, recoil, durability and ballistics, expectations vs reality are crashing down on Army right now, hard.

Consider this my victory lap.

And next year, when the Army announces another hundreds of millions of dollars for some new secret-squirrel marketing program, give it six months. They'll be exposed as frauds before too long.

Edit: I should say that my extreme skepticism at the time was a bit uncomfortable. People who know more than me (and thus should know better) were saying the system worked. I didn't have access to any good data, but the math just didn't add up to me. I'm not a weapon designer, but I have a pretty good idea of what the normal ranges for technical specs are. Turns out, it really was all just marketing. Every time I think I'm too cynical, it turns out I wasn't quite cynical enough.

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People point to failed programs saying "look at all the stupid stuff they tried to make!" but the vast majority failed before adoption... which is how the system is supposed to work!

I don't have the link on hand, but imagine I linked to that post about the US military testing to failure here.

I do have to wonder, does the US military produce more procurement boondoggles than other nations on average/per capita? Are we just so materially-rich that we can afford to try stupid shit, whereas any other nation would really have to save up to even think of replacing anything?

Right now I'm watching my town's snowplows spread salt before it RAINS. And the core reason they're doing it is because we got no snow this year, so they need to use up some of their salt supply to keep the supplier contract in place. Maybe somebody's brother in law, maybe rational inventory management within bureaucratic restraints.

The military works the same way, plus a bit of extra corruption. They need to produce stuff all the time to keep the industry humming for when they need something.

They need to produce stuff all the time to keep the industry humming for when they need something.

.. is that even working, given that Ukraine hasn't had artillery fire parity with Russians since some of the ill-planned early attempts at Kiev ?

This causes everyone's cars to rust.

It'd be legitimately better to just dump the salt in a hole, should they really need to waste it.

Almost anything would be better, as usual in economics transfer payments to salt companies would be the superior choice.

I would appreciate if you could find that post, I don't think I've read it.

I do have to wonder, does the US military produce more procurement boondoggles than other nations on average/per capita?

My gut feeling is that it is partially true. There are almost certainly more boondoggles in other countries that we don't hear about because they aren't as open as the USA and they don't get the same media attention.

However, the US military is terrified not of their adversaries technologically surpassing them, but of them merely closing the gap. All of US strategy relies on overmatch, the theory that you don't just outperform your enemies, you can totally crush them if desired. In the situation where your advancement is plateauing, the bad guys are rapidly catching up, and you're at a severe disadvantage in manpower but you're flush with money and brain power, why not throw everything at the wall and see what sticks?

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