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About TaiidanTomcat

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    Hopeless Recluse
  • Birthday 02/25/1983

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    the 5 oh fizzle

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  1. F-35 in Switzerland. Gripen E officially removed from competition
  2. I'm living that life, and its not even as busy as its going to become. The "blue canopy of death" looks awfully tempting... with the self imposed stalls, The big piece of advice that helped me, was a guy they interviewed in FSM who basically said "if someone put 10 hours into a model, it generally looks like it, and if they put 1000 hours they generally look like it" so for him the idea was that there was no "bad model" there was just how much time one decided to put into one. That was a game changer to me. The piece of advice that has not helped me: I read an armor book and the author said that every model should have a scheme that "feels just right." I've never had that happen. and I know the "right" scheme is out there for every model, but what If I choose the "wrong" one?! The biggest issue for me is indecisiveness. That model is looking good! now which squadron!? Which scheme!? which time period?! Which country!? And I do What ifs too so the possiblities are endless 😞
  3. I'll add another one I just thought of: time to complete the individual step. I've done 3 hour masking jobs before. I can't find 3 uninterrupted hours anymore. so the interval isn't there. Not just generally "not having time" but being stuck on something because it can't be broken up into smaller intervals. I can accomplish things if I can break them into smaller parts. 30 minutes a night adds up. but I've discovered I hit points where more than 30 minutes is required
  4. I think there are 3 main culprits, either a big nasty problem with the model that basically makes it "work" and not fun. essentially a "deal breaker." A research hang up or tedium. Having to sand 32 wheels or place 250 track links or some other very repetitive task (this one is actually the least problematic IMHO but still results in shelf hanger ons)
  5. Like all the Canadian Drama, this was one that has an interesting backstory. From what I can tell. Long story short Canada which has been making F-35 parts for sometime now (to the tune of billions) wanted to exclude all that from the competition in the name of other industrial cookies the competitors would get to flash, (which is a violation of the JSF contract to boot) The US threatened to finally deep six the whole thing. Basically Canada was going to try and find a way to say all the JSF benefits wouldn't count because they aren't technically what they were asking for in the competition. I'm as dumbfounded as everyone else here as I was assured that Canada would be leaving this program and buying super hornets some time ago. You would think this would be Canada chance to finally get away from that program... Superb article on the latest chapter of the Canadian F-35 Debacle by Canadian who's been on it from the start: http://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/20190502_MLI_COMMENTARY_Shimooka_FWeb.pdf
  6. I understand that in some cases youre simply shifting costs. but the idea is your shifting costs to keep old people rather than train new people, and youre also getting fewer mistakes that way hopefully. I think you would save money in other areas. like for example training. imagine if the marines could keep 5 percent more people in annually, which means you now have 1/5 the recruits and recruit training you needed previously per year. etc etc. 1/5 the amount of infantry school billeting etc. Hopefully it would be a ripple effect, but again this is just off the top of my head I havn't delved into it. If you convince 10,000 More marines annually to stick around (or don't throw them out because they have 4 combat deployments and a stack of ribbons-- but got icky tattoos we decided we won't tolerate this year) it would have a walloping effect down the line. And would hopefully pay off in other areas. But theres people who have been around longer that probably have a better idea. The military spends big bucks investing in people, human capital, then tells them they don't care if they leave and lets them go. All to start the process anew. I think there is just a litte more to it not necessarily indicated by the graph. I'll be the first to admit these are not matured ideas. But there might be a slightly better way of doing things. especially with specialization or oddball MOSs
  7. Thats the million dollar question. Personnel costs in the military are utterly massive. More than procurement and R+D combined. it costs a million dollars to train a Marine 0321. IT cost 1 million per man per year for the SEALs. Pilots are 5 million for basically trained. some jobs take years to master. I don't mean like "yay I graduated ____ school! I'm a basically trained _________" I mean like years to actually master the work in the fleet. So if you can retain those guys instead of having to train up a new one (and those are the ones who make it, wash outs cost money too) you invest in a known commodity, moreover you cut training costs at actual training commands, and then training costs at unit level since theyre salty and don't have to be schooled up to fleet level. (IE not a boot anymore) And this is before we get into families. (which is a disaster BTW) but if you have a a young guy or gal, and they have kids theyre going to be infants and toddlers the most expensive and intensive phase. they do their 4 then leave, then the process begins anew. instead of taking care of a 3 year old, we are back at day 1. You can also lower your recruiting qoutas and thus work to get the better ones, instead of "bodies" and further increase improvement in your force. You get smarter, more fit, and generally less of a PITA people and then when that happens everything gets better. Theres one thing i've learned about smart people, its that theres always a shortage of them. No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you always need more of them. They will theoretically make smarter decisions, that will then help everyone be slightly less miserable, which could lead to re-upping. thats what has always cracked me up about Special forces/elite units. "we took all the smart and motivated people and gave them extra training with some purpose to it-- you wont believe the results!!" no way?! pure anecdote (could be a seastory but i love this colonel and hes honest) but a Marine colonel told me about one of his guys who was former army, Vietnam guy. Joined the Marines and was just a fanatic mortarman. He had a sixth sense for it and utterly loved it (dropedp thousands of them in nam). So one day theyre on the range and some VIPs come by (Flag officers) And they ask him if he can hit an old dumpster out on the range, and he says "Left half or right?" (it had one door on top of one half) boom drops a mortar round right into the side he wanted. accuracy in feet with an F-ing Mortar. General picks up jaw and promotes him to corporal on the spot. That weekend the new corporal goes out and gets into trouble to get busted down because he doesn't want to be an NCO and not have his mortar. Thats all he ever wanted.
  8. ' The biggest issue is simply retention. every year 25 percent of Marines leave the service. Nearly every business out there has figured out retention is cheaper better smarter than starting back at day 1, but the military still struggles with this concept. Even wal-mart is treating its people better after someone explained that retention is better across the board. It may not be the worst thing to plug the retention hole, and then let people homestead a bit or hang around a little longer here or there before moving them completely away from their specialty. (wouldn't it be nice if instead of moving 5 or 6 times through your 20 year career it was closer to 3 or 4? theres a lot of different things that could be done. paygrades would be an interesting experiment if they favored years in more than rank. You could be a perfectly content sub hunter for 20 cozzy years as an E-4. making what an E-8 does. Seeing as rank and time are important metrics, what happens if you tinker with them? Yes there would be good and bad things about all this, but theres good and bad things about it right now. "up or out" means you pretty much have to continue to level up, even if leveling up means you keep being a total fish out of water.
  9. What did you think about that old p-3 hand in the story who had been chasing subs since the 80s?! appreciate you sharing it
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