Certainly I didn't do that. On the other hand, what do you think his job was at Boeing? Was it to look after the interests of the DoD or the warfighters, or to maximize profits for Boeing? Shanahan has no foreign policy experience or exposure, no military experience. But he did like that Space Force idea.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

You need to change the title of this thread to Pompeo to Mattis.


What a pussy. He can't even fire one of his cabinet members.

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Suffer Well.

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From my first post on the topic: " I wonder if Trump will be piqued and punt Mattis early"

Obviously I'm a genius because Trump is so hard to figure out, or a fool to allow that Trump might not act as his temper dictates. At any rate, no real surprise here.

I know you didn’t do that; I was referring to Fishyjoe. Shanahan actually had far more to do with Boeing’s civilian airliner side, near as I can tell. And yes, making profit for Boeing is important, but I don’t think that means he wasn’t also trying to deliver the most capability that he could. Having worked very closely with Boeing on a number of very large contracts, I’ve always been impressed with them and their desire to deliver the contracted capability on time and on budget. Regarding experience, he has been DepSecDef for a while. That being said, I don’t think he is the guy to be SecDef permanently; like you suggested, we should have someone with some combo of foreign policy and military experience if possible, along with a decent knowledge of DoD acquisition.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Trump being a yuge pussy is news to you?

I think part of this whole built is 48 states is seen as on purpose, part of it maybe, but part of it is just the natural way it goes. Because even large non-defense aerospace projects also get made in lots of states. Parts of the 787 come from easily 40 states. These are very complicated and rely on specialists. Some components there are only really one place to go for that sort of thing, like generators. There are even more that there are only two or three places to go to for that sort of thing. Even then to get to the 48 state number, you are getting down to the sub-sub-sub tier supplier. Lockheed is not going "Hey pick the place in Wyoming for the supplier to the supplier to United Technologies." Now some it was choosen for political reasons, but probably only 5 of those states, really without caring about politics you are going to be building parts in easily 40 states.

Shanahan mostly worked on the defense side, was brought over during the 787 problems.

Nope, Shanahan was involved in a bunch of different commercial airliner programs:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/.../Patrick_M._Shanahan

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Did not know that, just knew him mostly from the defense stuff before the 787.

Hardly. Just taking the opportunity to point it out to his ball washers.

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Suffer Well.

I agree. For some people, everything Trump does is the end of the world. Mattis gave a two month notice while announcing to the world he doesn't agree with how is boss is running things. It doesn't surprise me Trump told him to not to worry about the two months after finding someone else. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Mattis expected this to happen, and Trump took the bait.

His pushing for funding of the F-15X when the Air Force explicitly says it doesn't want any, preferring more F-35's instead.. The F-15 comes from the company Shanahan used to work for. And the F-35 doesn't.

That's not proof of anything. But given that other Trump appointees assigned to regulate industries where they were insiders have shown strong evidence of regulatory capture, the suspicion at least occurs to me here.

Hold on there. He assigned the Deputy as acting. That's not the same thing as "finding someone else". It's also what happens when Mattis goes on vacation. Now it may be Trump's intent to promote Shanahan from Acting to the full position, but that is not yet officially stated to my knowledge. I'll note the Chief of Staff is also "acting" right now, so the White House does have a big job to fill arguably two of the most important Cabinet positions there are.

Mattis should tell Pompeo that he wants to hear it directly from trump. Wonder how that would go over ...

drn92

Bingo!

He also forgets the steps of 1) praising Mattis,2) degrading Mattis.

Sure someone can give time to find a replacement , and it took shorter than expected.

That does not coincide with the 180 degree of the tweets.

Yeah, that’s problematic for sure, especially since he’s a former Boeing guy. That being said...I’m not entirely sure that the USAF is taking the long view here. If Boeing stops building fighters, then the lone company capable of building them will be Lockheed, and I don’t think that’s in the best interest of the country. Keeping Boeing in the fighter business Is a valid requirement in my mind.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

There is so much incest in the aerospace industry it's ridiculous I don't really think it matters how many different companies are involved. I deal with men and women every day who have gone from one aerospace company to another, both on the commercial and military side. The idea that technology is not being traded between companies, I believe is a false one, whether on purpose or secretly. Designs do not change dramatically from one company to the next. They all believe they are very innovative but once you see the designs, there are a ton of similarities.

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

Totally disagree. If two companies are trying to comply with requirement X, then there is probably not too many ways to skin that particular cat. The notion that Boeing and Lockheed are trading proprietary designs with each other? I give that a .001% chance of being correct.

And, the notion that it doesn't matter if different companies are involved...you do realize that if you have no active fighter contracts, you now have this huge overhead of $200+ an hour engineers on your payroll with no end in sight, right? If Boeing is forced to shut down its fighter production line, not only with the manufacturing guys go, but also engineers who can design a new fighter.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I’m not saying they’re actively trading but the same engineers are going from one company to another and to assume they are leaving their ideas on the last desk, I think, is wrong.

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TEAM HD
Each day is what you make of it so make it the best day possible.

I hear that argument a lot in defense acquisition. Maybe sometimes it's valid. I think one place where it was/is valid is the manufacture of nuclear munitions. That's a skillset that, once lost, could be very, very expensive and time consuming to re-develop. That's why we continued to fund Los Al., Sandia, Oak Ridge, Law-Liv, et al, to do all sorts of things even while not in active acquisition of new nuclear munitions.

I'm skeptical about applying it to Boeing. They have lots of other military contracts for non-fighter aircraft. They have the newish T-X contract for fighter trainers. The F-15 and F/A-18 are going to be around for a while yet, particularly counting foreign governments. They're doing well with UAV contracts. I don't think they need to go on the government dole just yet.

Another place to look at is shipbuilding, we've lost a significant amount of institutional knowledge, and even Sub-Building. Or Tank building...if shut down that line it's like the F-22...you can't get that back.

The 48 States bit of the F-35 is a bit insane though.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

So, having a fair amount of insight into what goes into a fighter these days, I disagree. Building a trainer or UAV just aren’t the same. Since we’ve gotten ourselves into a position that it takes 20-30 years to go from initial requirement to IOC for a new aircraft, Boeing simply can’t afford to maintain that expertise without active contracts. There is a world of difference from a trainer to a fighter with integrated radar, EW, and armament.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.