re: #252 Daniel Ballard

What gets me is the inability to run down the problem itself. WTF? Good engineers, built by a company of literally a historic quality reputation.

Overcomplexity. It’ll get you every time. When you have all these highly specialized systems interacting, it weakens it terribly.

A friend of mine actually founded a company to do simpler code and simpler systems for military stuff. He’s having a tough time making headway against the entrenched guys and their lobbyists, but the Finns have actually gotten him to consult for them. One of his things is to take any instrumentation on the plane that doesn’t need to be synched with the rest and give it it’s own processor set up. He basically just looks at any current design and figuring out how much worth you get out of the complexity you’ve introduced vs. the amount of risk of failure you’ve introduced.

He says most modern US military designs are pretty horrendous from that point of view, except for the drones.