• Pentagon investigating acting Secretary of Defense over alleged Boeing bias
    11 replies, posted
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/20/pentagon-investigating-shanahan-boeing-ties-1284597 The Pentagon's inspector general has begun an investigation into Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan's reported Boeing bias, the IG's office said Wednesday. "In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations," she said. "We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation." On March 13, the independent watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington requested the investigation based on a January report from POLITICO that said Shanahan, while he was deputy Defense secretary, disparaged Lockheed Martin in Pentagon meetings and held up Boeing as an example. Shanahan's office has denied the allegations. Before coming to the Pentagon, Shanahan worked for Boeing for 31 years, mostly on the civil aviation side. He has signed an ethics agreement recusing himself from decisions involving Boeing.
what can the pentagon reasonably do against him even if they wanted to
Shanahan, while he was deputy Defense secretary, disparaged Lockheed Martin in Pentagon meetings and held up Boeing as an example. Well, I mean, he could have relevant knowledge or a history that leads him to the conclusion that... Before coming to the Pentagon, Shanahan worked for Boeing for 31 years, mostly on the civil aviation side. Oh, for god's sake, can we get this fucking shit weasels out of the government?
what's infuriating is that Trump supporters claim filling the government with corrupt hacks was draining the swamp
The last thing the military needs is more Boeing products.
Or dropping another 8 bn into an airframe that is almost old enough to claim social security, when we literally just finished a new generation and should be focusing on make that more cost efficient.
hey the f15X12ultalg5g is the most advanced fighter for the discerning buyer, it's like almost as much as an f35 but slightly cheaper!
I know nothing about aircraft, military or otherwise (although I did co-pilot a 4-seater Cessna and a 2-seater Citabria stuntplane during two points in my life) - can anyone provide any insight as to alternatives to Boeing in military applications and what their pros/cons would be? If the man knew the industry in and out and decided Boeing was the best for the job despite possible bias as a result of working for them, I can't argue otherwise. In the industry I work in, software/hardware options are limited to a handful, and I really mean a handful of companies - one of which I worked for from the age of 17-25. I left a year and a half ago to join a private consulting firm in the industry and have found that despite large exposure to many of the other vendors and their software/hardware that I'd never seen before, I found that my previous employer still has the best overall product, although all the companies in the industry have their pros and cons. Despite leaving the company with a sour taste in my mouth due to how I was treated, I try to remain impartial and I can safely say their solutions have impressed me more than others while evaluating, testing, and observing as a third-party individual. It makes it hard for me to judge in this situation with little information to compare to. As a manufacturer/vendor you try your hardest to beat the competition. And for all I know, Boeing is the best at producing aircraft, despite their recent (and massive failures). I'm being genuine here, I'd love to hear what the alternatives would have been and what we've missed out on if this guy was just shilling for Boeing because he was previously employed by them for an entire career - and if that's the case, there's no doubt his pockets were being stuffed the whole time.
I am a mechanic for a certain Boeing aircraft, the AH-64D/E Apache Longbow/Guardian. If they can charge for something, they will. They do not care about safety, they care about profits ONLY. They consistently give us shitty parts, shitty engineering, and shitty prices. They can do this, and they know it, because it's the Apache, the Army's baby. For example, during my recent Afghanistan deployment, some transmissions of a certain part number failed with only 100 hours on them, and they failed in the same way. The pilots had to do a precautionary landing, in the middle of a warzone. We recovered the aircraft and the pilots, thankfully, and we swapped the transmissions for a different part number transmission that was known to be reliable. In the meantime, we did the paperwork and sent those transmissions back to Boeing as faulty products, and thus they would have to eat the cost of them. They rejected them because they had 50+ hours on them, instead of owning up to giving us a faulty product that could have killed 4 of my pilots. We were flying hundreds of hours per month. I can also mention the strap pack problems, just look that one up. If you want an alternative, I'd say Bell Helicopter. Bell is a fantastic fucking company, and I used to work on the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, a Bell product. They actually give a shit. To simplify what they are about, I will give the example of the AH-1Z Viper that the Marines use. Since the Marines are poor, they requested a rotor head that would require less maintenance, thus saving costs. Bell went to the drawing board and came up with a bearingless rotor head, which, if you know helicopters, is a miracle in and of itself. It saved the Marine Corps about 24% in maintenance costs for the rotor system, which is pretty big. Also, it helps that the Viper has the same engines as the Apache, weighs less, is smaller, and less complicated to work on. Don't get me wrong, the Apache is a death machine, but it suffers from a lot of stuff that could be fixed if Boeing gave a shit. They just get so much government money that they just swim in it and don't care. They can afford lawyers. The state of their manufacturing plant is also godawful, using cheap unskilled labor to build a lot of stuff, and quality control is not very good. It's just terrible. And it won't change as long as they keep getting awarded contracts just because they are Boeing.
This is the kind of information I love to read - and I thank you for it. That's the problem with news and politics, everything is always one-sided.
I apologize for bumping this, but after reading again you jogged a very important memory about my life that I'd long wrote off. When I was 14, my Dad lost his job he'd had for 21 years. The company he'd worked for is a massive conglomerate, and his particular position was a lead mechanic at a plant in our home town. The plant was built literally to produce products for Boeing under a very large, very long contract. The company, being as large as it was, left him (in his own mind) a false sense of security that work succeeding the contract would continue with other clients, yet, he was laid off the second the contract was completed, the plant was shut down, and all employees there were laid off. Again, this was after 21 years of hard mechanical labor. For 3 years he struggled to find work and has since recovered from the deficit it brought our family, but I have this vivid memory of him talking to my mother during the layoff about how they'd offered him a position during the closing of the plant at another plant that was 3 hours away. A 6-hour commute each day was not feasible for our family, and he turned it down. The subsequent years of unemployment due to his highly specialized position and over-qualified resume were a struggle and I'm grateful I had my first job at 15, and began my career at 17, and was able to help my family. All of this, because Boeing had a contract, and the second it was complete, that was that. You're absolutely correct that they're all about money, and while I sat here and thought about it and my experience working in corporations for close to a decade now, that's the sad fact about the private sector. Greed, money, and power. All the CEO's, Presidents, Owners, CFO's, etc. I've met challenged me in that I had to maintain a professional composure despite my disgust for their attitude and character. I'm not sure where I meant to go with this, but I'm glad you reminded me that the topic in general was more personal than I had remembered. Never forget where you came from.
Boeing has been trying to sell the airforce on the idea that the f-15 (which boeing makes) can be upgraded to have all the features the f-35 has for half the cost, and under trump a noted baffoon, that effort has almost actually succeeded. They're scared that their f-15 line will end at some point since the f35 will eventually replace it, and they have been having a hard time getting military aircraft
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