Jobbo_Fett posted:

because we've mostly passed the point of sustainable weapons development in certain regards.

Cessna posted:

Tree Bucket posted:

What's the job of the bloke in front with his head next to the gun, and more importantly, how does he not die instantly of claustrophobia?

Tulip posted:

Interestingly I ran into an argument about this recently - apparently the consensus among current WW1 specialists is that they very likely could have but Moltke was opposed to the change of plans for other reasons and "can't" is a good substitute for "won't" when arguing with a superior.

White Coke posted:

Can you elaborate?

Ensign Expendable posted:

Those are rookie numbers

White Coke posted:

Can you elaborate?

Nebakenezzer posted:

Defense Watch Watch

Listen, you can't blame this on Irving

quote:

The cost of building an offshore science vessel for the federal government, originally set at $108 million, has jumped to almost $1 billion.

The price tag for the project had been steadily climbing from $108 million in 2008 to $144 million in 2011 and then to $331 million, according to federal government figures.

[...]

South Africa is constructing a similar oceanographic vessel with an ice-strengthened hull in a project with a budget of around $170 million.

Retired Liberal senator Colin Kenny, the former chairman of the senate defence committee, said the significant jump in cost of the Canadian-built oceanographic vessel is staggering. “Why isn’t anyone in government saying that this type of expense is crazy and it’s time to put an end to this level of expenditure for a single ship,” Kenny said.

But Barre Campbell, spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard, noted in an email, that the original budget was set based on the best data and methods at the time. “As the project has progressed and moved closer to construction, the estimated project cost has been updated to reflect the value of negotiated contracts and actual costs incurred,” he added.

The cost has been reviewed by independent experts, Campbell added.

[...]

But in December 2011, a team of auditors warned Fisheries and Oceans and the Coast Guard that they had failed to put in place a strategy to deal with construction delays for the vessel. “By not developing adequate risk mitigation strategies for time delays, the Canadian Coast Guard is vulnerable to higher-than-anticipated costs and ineffective delivery of programs,” the independent auditors hired by the federal government pointed out.

The auditors also noted the procurement staff overseeing the acquisition of the OOSV had erroneously concluded the project was of “low risk.”

quote:

The new military-spending plan would push Canada's defence budget to $32.7-billion a year in the 10th year of the plan, up from the current level of $18.9-billion. The expenditures would begin to significantly rise in the next decade, or after the next election scheduled in 2019.

Over all, the government said the plan includes $62.3-billion in new spending over 20 years. Only $6.6-billion in new money comes over the first five years of the plan, but the numbers quickly increase in following years. Between years 6 and 10, when many new acquisitions would be made, the government is planning on spending about $24-billion in new money.

[...]

Pressed on where the new money will come from, at a time when the Liberals are running $29-billion deficits, Mr. Sajjan did not provide a clear answer.

quote:

Earlier this year the Canadian government confirmed it would be procuring a further 3,626 C6A1 FLEX General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMG) from Colt Canada. This large contract is worth CA$96.97 million and was awarded under the Canadian government’s Munitions Supply Program.

[...]

Back in 2017, TFB reported that the Canadian Army was set to upgrade from its older C6 GPMGs to the new C6A1 standard with a purchase of 1,148 new guns at a cost of CA$32.1 million (at the time that was about $25.7 million).

the JJ posted:

Got a bit of an antique here. WWI era US bayonet.






Please ignore my bad photography skills. The finger in the third image is particularly choice.

Two questions:

Any idea what the symbols in the fourth image mean? I'm assuming some sort of unit or armory mark.

Second, any times on care and upkeep? I'd hate to have it rot/rust away. It's been stored in a pretty dry area, but not that it's with me it's in a place with a bit more damp.

quote:

The left ricasso is marked with the Model date of 1917 and the Remington logo. The right ricasso is marked with the Ordnance Shell and Flame over U.S. (the Ordnance property mark), the eagle head over 14 mark of the individual inspector responsible for the final acceptance of the bayonet, and an X. The X was originally a British mark, used to designate the convex side after flex/bend testing. I don't know if this type of test was performed on US contract bayonets, or if it signified that it had passed some other form of testing.

quote:

In a strange twist of fate, in 1966 procurement orders were let for brand new production M1917 bayonets. The contracts were issued to General Cutlery of Fremont, Ohio and Canadian Arsenals Ltd., the old Long Branch Arsenal of Quebec, Canada. Stockpiles had finally run out, and new Winchester 1200 trench shotguns were being issued. These were used in limited quantities during the Vietnam War.

M1917 bayonets were still in used by the US Army as late as the early 2000s for use with the M1200 shotgun.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Just seems like when it comes to planes and boats, especially, poo poo gets out of hand quick and always involves something like 3 times the cost than was originally estimated.

Tulip posted:

This is absolutely not just limited to planes and boats. I've been reading up on trains (cuz I live in in New York and it just feels kind of appropriate), and holy crap rapid transit systems get out of hand crazy fast. The one transnational expert who seems to be on top of the data that I follow thinks there's significant institutional factors - like governments that lack their own engineering side tend to get clobbered much more readily, and relying on post-hoc lawsuits rather than up-front red tape as a check is way more expensive for everyone. A really funny thing that he's found is that "English as the primary language" is one of the strongest correlates for high cost construction.

Military spending is an interesting particular case because, at least to Americans, it's the one part of the budget that's impossible to cut, and so contractors have near carte blanche to ratchet things up into oblivion.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Doesn't English as primary language just correlate with relatively high labor cost countries?

Arquinsiel posted:

Let me tell you about Ireland's new childrens hospital...

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Doesn't English as primary language just correlate with relatively high labor cost countries?

PittTheElder posted:

I'd suspect that it's more that English speaking governments have been the most deeply infected with neoliberal brainworms, and nearly everything has been privatized, meaning that our governments are now poo poo at planning, as none of the expertise is in house. When effective government action is avoided because it threatens private sector profit, government action won't be very effective.

But I know nothing about Scandinavian/German/French governments, so I could be wrong.

bewbies posted:

PLA procurement is probably worse and certainly more corrupt than anything in the west despite a highly centralized system.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

If the Chinese MREs are anything to go by, yes.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

If the Chinese MREs are anything to go by, yes.

bewbies posted:

PLA procurement is probably worse and certainly more corrupt than anything in the west despite a highly centralized system.

I think it is really more the nature of the business than the politics surrounding it.

Tulip posted:

Oh no, I want to believe that Ireland doesn't suck.

Raenir Salazar posted:

We can I imagine I suppose that we can only really observe from the outside and that limits our information; but looking at the equipment the PLA has been fielding and producing, their tanks, afvs, apcs, missile defence, planes, and of course their new ships, doesn't it seem like a functional system though? They seem to be at the least, are making progress in advancing and producing new systems and catching up in capability? I feel like if they were more corrupt or worse, that there should be at least some observable failures?

Tulip posted:

Oh no, I want to believe that Ireland doesn't suck.

Raenir Salazar posted:

How can a system be corrupt when it can produce such an awesome shovel!?

MikeCrotch posted:

Yeah I have heard similar, that the German High Command really wanted a crack at the French there and then and so did not want to change their plans. This basically meant throwing the mobilization planners under the bus by implying they weren't competent enough to change the timetables (especially since in a 1 on 1 fight with the Russians, Germany almost certainly wins anyway. I mean look at what happened historically)

bewbies posted:

Well, this kind of gets into what actually defines "corruption," but at least insofar as PLA day-to-day and acquisitions go, they're an entirely different order of magnitude from most of the west. To this end, Xi's anti-corruption efforts are in large part taking on the PLA directly, which is really something to watch. . Basically, corruption is baked in to how the PLA does business, and seriously altering that model likely will have significant effects on readiness and acquisitions programs.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Before WW1 IIRC wasn't the German High Command kinda scared of Russia? That could play into a reluctance to switch gears to a defencive war in the West while smashing Imperial Russia first because they were far less confident of victory.

Raenir Salazar posted:

Before WW1 IIRC wasn't the German High Command kinda scared of Russia? That could play into a reluctance to switch gears to a defencive war in the West while smashing Imperial Russia first because they were far less confident of victory.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

Yeah that was pretty much it. Worth noting that the Russian Imperial Census of 1897 recorded the Empire's population as over 125 million, which would have doubtlessly increased significantly by 1916. By comparison, the 1900 German Census listed 54 million, which increased to a hair under 65 million by 1910. So while Russia was still horrifically backwards, the prospect of a modernizing Russia that was more capable of utilizing its vast population was deeply concerning to German military planners.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

I vaguely recall hearing about the 1916 year mark as well, and yeah, it was a pre-war projection that by that year Russia's population and modernization would create an unbeatable juggernaut that Germany would be unable to meaningfully resist. As it stood of course the projections were completely wrong, but that was mainly due to Imperial Russia's infrastructure and leadership being so decrepit that no amount of numbers would have been able to overcome the vastly better trained, organized, and led German forces.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

Alright, found some sources to refresh my memory. So to answer the original question:

White Coke posted:

A fact that seems to pop up a lot is that the Germans thought that the Russians were going to be unbeatable by 1916, and therefore they needed to go to war as soon as possible while they still had the advantage. Where does this fact come from, and is there any truth to it?

The Germans were particularly concerned with the question of mobilization. The Russian Empire had a huge population, but it was a massive country with numerous enemies and a fairly underdeveloped transportation infrastructure. Because of this, for several years German war plans counted on a key window of opportunity where they would be able to mobilize their forces and strike into Russia before Russia was able to fully mobilize its forces to defend itself or attack into Germany. However, that window was constantly shrinking, in large part due to Russian reforms post-1906 that prioritized expanding railroad infrastructure to allow for more rapid mobilization—and critically, this also affected Germany's war plans in the west, as any war against Russia would also mean war against France. By the time World War I actually kicked off, the German plan was to mobilize quickly, knock France out of the war, and then reshuffle their forces east to meet the Russians before they could fully mobilize—but, as I said, these predictions came to naught as while they failed to knock France out of the war, the fears of the "Russian Steamroller" simply never materialized.

White Coke posted:

It was more that they were afraid Russia would soon be unstoppable

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

As I recall, this was based on analysis of Russia's demographics and economy and then projecting its growth potential and going "holy poo poo this country could be loving huge"

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

As I recall, this was based on analysis of Russia's demographics and economy and then projecting its growth potential and going "holy poo poo this country could be loving huge" (edit: I see Acebuckeye responded while I was writing this, yeah). I guess this is at best milhist-adjacent, but it seems like that potential they saw either wasn't there or was not well-realized. Is there a decent summary of why that is? I can spitball a few things -- most notably, they had an absolutely ruinous WW2 and then pretty much immediately got into a military-industrial pissing match with the USA. But also the country is just huge and highly-distributed, and I gather a lot of its territory is economically marginal.

But like, if we were to assume an alternate history where Russia wasn't really any worse-off than other allied powers in WW2, and somehow everyone got along so there was no Cold War, how well-developed could we expect the country to be?

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I guess this is at best milhist-adjacent, but it seems like that potential they saw either wasn't there or was not well-realized. Is there a decent summary of why that is?

Nenonen posted:

From the PYF Funny Pictures thread

bewbies posted:

Well, this kind of gets into what actually defines "corruption," but at least insofar as PLA day-to-day and acquisitions go, they're an entirely different order of magnitude from most of the west. To this end, Xi's anti-corruption efforts are in large part taking on the PLA directly, which is really something to watch. . Basically, corruption is baked in to how the PLA does business, and seriously altering that model likely will have significant effects on readiness and acquisitions programs.

Insofar as their acquisitions programs go, remember first that many -- if not most -- of their high profile programs are heavily subsidized by industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, and extra- or unlicensed production/modification. That being said, these things and their issues with corruption don't necessarily mean the system isn't functional -- it most definitely is. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it has some significant long-term advantages over western/democratic systems when it comes to acquisitions programs. Namely, external politics and flow of information are largely non-factors.

White Coke posted:

How much of an issue was it for the Soviet Union that their demographic growth dropped very quickly after they came to power, and even more after WW2? According to Wikipedia the fertility rate for Russia dropped from 6.72 in 1926, to 4.54 in 1936, and 2.81 in 1946. And then it dropped below replacement levels in 1967 and hovered around there until they broke up. A planned economy isn't going to be dependent on a growing population to drive "endless" economic growth, but it'd certainly leave them falling behind since less people produce less stuff.

White Coke posted:

It was more that they were afraid Russia would soon be unstoppable, but that in 1914 France was the bigger threat and needed to be defeated as quickly as possible since Germany expected Russian mobilization would take longer, and knocking France out would prevent a prolonged two front war.