This is brilliant and I'm going to share it with the rest of my class (I'm taking a PM class so this is extremely relevant). Any project manager ought to be able to recognize the problem from the moment the one general says (without really intending it as a question) "why can't it be both?" Note: this is not to be confused with "is it too much to ask for both?" which, as long as it's genuinely a question and not rhetorical, is much more realistic.
I will also say that in the 80s the Bradley was designed as a direct competitor to the Russian designed APCs such as the BMP which also had a turret, and were amphibious well before the Bradley's release. - But I digress, scope creep none the less.
thank you, I was wondering what this was from. I expect I can reference this somehow in a PM class I'm taking, though I might see if I can find a better sourced version or at least correct it in my citation if I use the video itself. as is the video is probably at risk of being taken down if it gets popular and does not positively identify itself, rightfully in my opinion since it's academically citeworthy, as fair use (Disclaimer: not a lawyer) side note: I like your username
I'm doing homework for my Cloud Computing class. One section requires us to provide possibilities of project creep in a preliminary investigation. It's driving me crazy. This made me laugh.
I can see why; this is brilliant and I'm somewhat surprised my instructor didn't share anything similar. Not to mislead, they should plenty of interesting resources like one about the Denver airport (I assume you are aware of that one and use it as a case study, right?), but nothing so bluntly satirical.
I guess the irony of this is the M1/M2 Bradley has become one of the most successful mid-size troop carriers in the military. In the first gulf war, Bradleys destroyed more Iraqi vehicles than were destroyed by M1 Abrams tanks.
yeah really useful carrying a couple of guys down the path littered with the routed wreckage of a destroyed Irqui army that was retreating. The real winner of the gulf war was the Warthog, beautifully destructively ugly piece of mayhem.
Ehr.. the problem like stated in the film is that it's primary purpose should be to CARRY TROOPS into battle.. not engage tanks. As for the A-10.. That only works if you have air superiority. Works well if you invade a 3rd world country but it would be dogmeat against a real opponent.
If you watch the whole movie, the thing gets completely redesigned in the end because it became so FUBARed. What eventually went into production is not what festered in this clip.
Just to be technical in a military sense, when the Bradley was first produced the M113 was still in active service and was then used for scouting. It was smaller and had a smaller turret. The Bradley was much better armored but still had the ability to get a lot of troops into battle quickly. The M113 was particularly poorly armored and could be penetrated with even rifle based armor piercing rounds.
You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. Generally its the army you fought the last war with, and generally you have to improvise on the fly. We're good at that, and we have a lot of money, so that's why we win. Carrying five less or five more troops per vehicle, having this or that caliber, being able to fire at a certain range, that's all just icing, is what I'm saying. As long as you have good men, good generals and working equipment, victory is still an option.
7:00 He's annoying me, He's causing his own misery by not being straight with them and accepting every whim. But it's a briliant shows of how someone who's not on the field might not get a single thing of what they're asking and on top of that blame on someone's lack of effort, someone like Steve Jobs with his extreme deadlines is an example of how even great people might do this. It's also a warning for us when we take too much commitments, especially when doing something new, i wish to be more of a specialist than a generalist but i see myself getting spread sooooo thing by all the things i supposed to learn to survive while not even knowing precisely what they are, it's just.... ugh 😧, SO. DAMN. EXHAUSTING.
Which is why the defining factor in our long term strategic plan is going to be the economic considerations, not the military ones. If this period of unconventional war lasts, and I see no reason it wont, then we will essentially be balancing a budget as much as fighting a war. I think you could argue successfully that there is no need for the JSF, that its way too ambitious, but I believe the results (a plane to replace most of the fixed wing air force of every anglo military) are impressive.
>Australia >Pretty Good Airforce Maybe in terms of pilot quality, but the airframes are getting old, and the best we have are only Super Hornets. A Su-27 would eat them for breakfast, let alone the newer models circulating amongst the region. All the wargames happening paint the Hornet and Super Hornet as last generations plane. It's not something that can stand up in a modern air combat environment, hence the need for upgrade.
USA and Warpact had 'no first use' policies for nukes. And if either side had a big air advantage, then that affects everything else. People are more likely to apply military pressure and sabre rattle if they can get away with it. And the thing is is that it's actually fairly complicated to get air superiority. SEAD, air and ground, CAP, Air Interdiction, along with everything else means that the air war is an ongoing one. See Vietnam and Korea and the various Israel/Middle East conflicts.
I agree, because Bush's idea of waging a conventional war against a non-conventional foe was a bust from the start. It was and should have stayed a special-forces war, but the Bradley has shown that when you have a Bushmaster repeating cannon, a machine gun, and a compliment of AT missiles your squad is pretty much the biggest game in town.
oh my goddd, this is every consultant's struggle. this is why we don't sleep and less valuable quality time and make youngsters prefer to be dumb but make money through social media platforms with quality time they had.
Ah me, this is a FANTASTIC bit of a great movie. What an absolute mess the Bradley was! The movie is "The Pentagon Wars," an early HBO offering. But it's very enjoyable, funny, and it will show you where your hard earned tax dollars go. -There's other things too: They were testing a Heat Seeking Missile. It didn't work so they attached hot plates all over the tank target and it grew so hot one could fry an egg at twenty feet. The missile still missed. Derp!
The thing is though, this period won't last for ever, or even for an especially long time. Sooner or later we will need that level of air superiority, and when we do it will be there.
The plans to replace stuff are again, choosing the lesser evil. In Australia's case, it's because we can't get the range we need from the Euro designs, and politically it would be unwise to use a Chinese or Russian design. We aren't allowed to license the F-22, so we're more or less forced into the JSF. Like the initial design, it's all politics and impossibilities. It's not a good design at all, and Air Power Australia (our defence think tank) agrees. "Can't turn, can't fight, can't run".
LMAO!!!! Something tells me, that's not far from the truth of how the Bradley came to be .. too funny. I was among the first to prove the Bradley was a capable combat vehicle in Operation Desert Storm
You can't discount the importance of effective management and effective feasibility testing. You HAVE RnD projects. The competitor to the JSF was one of those. But the JSF project like the Bradley has gone WAY beyond simple statistically likely slow-downs that RnD gets. The JSF has almost tripled in budget, and fails at a number of crucial functional requirements. The degree of failure is WAY beyond anything else, and it was 100% predictable. You can't pack that many features in. Design is trade
What Bejing says and what Bejing does are two totally different things. Their aim is reintegration. CBG's entire job was not just convoy support. That's massive overkill. The F-14 was built for air superiority, interception, and other multirole options like strikes.
They'd have rolled over Taiwan with tanks and paratroopers first chance they got if the US wasn't there. They've made it abundantly clear that they'll take what they want if it's not defended. Ground support is the reality. It was done numerous times in Korea. Plus support for amphibious engagements. Falklands, anyone? Convoy protection is one small part of their job, there's many other parts. And the F-14 was a fleet defence interceptor in part, and it was carrier based.
Anything going to the USA needs to deal with the honking great ocean. Engaging strategic bombers, etc. Plus support for ground operations. And that means dealing with a CBG at some stage. Plus force projection on other areas. Plus Vladivostok etc. Plus indian ocean stuff. Plus any sort of local stuff outside the USSR proper. Taiwan is only democratic still because of the CBGs chugging around the place locally.
The Phoenix was designed to deal with strategic bombers. Look at WW2. Fighters all over the place, mostly carrier based. And anything near a coastline is fair play for a CBG's fighters on strike missions. Or escorting bombers in.
Because the objective is not an immediately field-able single role aircraft. R&D is expensive. Sometimes it goes on a wild goose chase. But if you restrict your parameters, and you don't let your eggheads push the boundaries, you're going to be stuck in a doctrinal rut while your enemies do the innovating and the winning. The US military procurement process is awash in money, more than any other industry on the planet. We should be thanking our lucky stars we produce as much good shit as we do.
It would have been a risk in a Cold War style situation. And it's silly to say 'oh, it'll never happen'. You can't base a military on that idea. We got hornets because we needed them, or might need them, we need to keep things current for the same reasons. Taiwan wouldn't exist anymore if the US didn't have a strong presence there, and the same goes for any country. Being able to project power can sometimes be enough. Nukes will never be the first choice.
That's like hunting flies with a bazooka. A very expensive bazooka, that was designed to shoot satellites, but now is being used as an anti-insect weapon because hey, we have to get SOMETHING for our money, right?
Plus, Korea. Plus, Vietnam. Limited to a single country, but still large conflicts. Plenty of scope for nuke use there. But of course, MAD limits them to absolute last resort, and neither side got desperate enough. Policy can be fulfilled militarily without nukes being the first thing used.
Of course it's dangerous, we're talking hypothetical nuclear war here, not hopscotch. But they wouldn't dare launch a preemptive strike, not only because it's not part of anyone's doctrine, but because anyone who conducts one and then precedes to lose the war (assuming there are enough depots left to continue land operations on either side) would be vilified for all time.
Expensive is one thing, total clusterfuck is another, and the F-35 is firmly in the latter category. And it wasn't the eggheads pushing it, it was the brass who wanted more with less. This wasn't a case of innovation, this was a case of 'we fucked up in other areas and want to paper over the cracks'. This was a case of scope creep. And the objective WAS to get it in the air pretty soon. Concurrency and all that. And it's a multi-role aircraft. A little bit of everything. But it has nothing.
I'm not saying the Pentagon isn't sclerotic, bossy, and overbearing, but it turns out good things more often than not. Australia has a pretty good air force already, and I believe your government would probably discontinue participation in the JSF if they thought it wasn't prudent.
Becuase the F-14 is nothing compared to the capabilities of modern Flankers, Pak-FAs, SU-35s, etc. The F-14 is unable to do it's job (ensure air superiority). It's near useless in the modern environment, therefore it needed to be replaced with something better.
So what was dealing with the fighters during all that? They had to figure into someones thinking at some stage. Are you telling me carrier based fighters don't really care about enemy fighters?
Yes, but as I said, the cost is having negative consequences with regards to the quality of the pilots. The plane costs so much to maintain that they've had to reduce the training budget. Hours a year in the plane has been greatly reduced. That's not going to end well. The F-35 project should have been what the F-22 was like. Instead we got a massive clusterfuck. The F-22 is on top presently. But for how much longer? Economic development is still hugely important even if you're ass deep in cash
I'm certainly not claiming it was 100 percent perfect, but the lightbulb was an utter failure too until a certain someone found a filament that would last longer than a few minutes in it. Technology will present solutions for downing ICBMs in the future.
"The F-14 served as the U.S. Navy's primary maritime air superiority fighter, fleet defense interceptor and tactical reconnaissance platform. In the 1990s, it added the Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night (LANTIRN) pod system and began performing precision ground-attack missions." "the U.S. Navy's primary maritime air superiority fighter" "air superiority fighter".
It was what the Bradley was designed for, fighting the Soviets, along with most of our arsenal. It's not particularly impressive fighting insurgents because lets face it, the casualties and risks and level of enemy effectiveness are orders of magnitude less than a real conflict. We've been in the sandbox what, 10 years? Not a tenth of the casualties from the equivalent WW2 time. Anything would have worked. The Bradleys real test hasn't yet happened. A well equipped, well trained, organise enemy.
Precisely. One project panned out, another didn't. To somebody else, that's gross waste and misuse of funds. To me, that's pretty much exactly what R&D is all about.
What about the F-22? It can outfly god and all his angels, plus every jet in the foreseeable future. Besides the air supply there have been zero problems.
Who cares about the Fulda Gap? That scenario is irrelevant in today's low-intensity conflict. Yes, the Bradley Era 3 IFV can handle either anti-tank conventional war or asymmetrical warfare like we face most often now. Yes, you could probably move all those men with Gavins for a fraction of the price, but it's more effective and allows a mechanized division to be almost as lethal as an armored division.
Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the Bradley could have been designed a LOT better. It's a classic example of a fucked up military project that was damaged for eminently preventable reasons. We could have gotten twice as many if they were done proper And every cent you spend one silly designs is one less cent you can spend on stuff that's sorely needed. Observe the F-22. We've been cutting the training budget to make up the maintenance budget. That's going to bite us in the ass.
Bradley is still, terrible, vehicle in all forms. Its large, enormous, like said in the video. Too large to do scouting, can't carry men, and most of all doesn't have a good armor. What is it then? Failure. The original version of it looked useful though, the very first model. Low, fast and carried enough firepower to defend itself and give additional covering fire if required...then zoom off.
>lose the war >vilified The loser doesn't get to write the history books, but I suspect that scenario would be a loss/win like the Korean war, without a clear victor, and with the loser still politically solvent.
