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0 pointsdralley1y ago0 comments

People keep saying this but it borders on conspiracy talk. The Air Force leadership has been pissed off at Boeing for well over a decade. Every project they've been given has turned into a clusterfuck even moreso than average. They fortunately had the foresight to not give them any cost-plus contracts, so at least it's Boeing eating most of the cost overruns rather than the Air Force, but the point remains that Boeing mismanagement has been a headache for the military.

Politicians care about getting elected, which means they don't want layoffs on their watch. Politicians don't care what the military thinks or else they'd stop funding a lot of dumb projects that the military doesn't give a shit about - of which there are many.

There are so many examples of congress putting their hand on the scale that I really don't understand the popular insistence that the military is the problem here.

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SJC_Hacker1y ago

> The Air Force leadership has been pissed off at Boeing for well over a decade.

Military brass don't control procurement. That would be Congress. In fact the military often frequently has systems it doesn't want/need precisely because Congress. See the Zumwalt destroyer and the Littoral Combat Ship.

bombcar1y ago

The military isn't the problem, it's that the military has no other options.

Who else are they going to buy planes to bomb different-colored countries with? SpaceX? Airbus? It is to laugh.

When you get a company that is too big to fail, it rests directly on the government for not identifying and solving the issue earlier.

zokier1y ago

Boeing hasn't won any major military aircraft deals in recent decades.

The latest big bomber purchase, B-21, went to Northrop Grumman, as did the not so recent B-2. Fighters have been going to Lockheed (F-22 and F-35).

The biggest recent win for Boeing was KC-46 tanker airplane, which is just modified 767. I suppose there is also the handful of F-15EXes that are vestige from their McDonnell Douglas merger.

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