As practically anyone who has worked in even the smallest organization knows, much of the success depends on doing boring things well, efficiently and predictably. The U.S. Federal government has lost the interest and depth of competence to carry out the boring stuff, while focusing much of its attention on pointless vanity projects. It’s no surprise that logistics is suffering when the top leadership has zero experience (or even interest) in it.

I know nothing. But when I see headlines like this, and our dwindling missile stockpiles, and the fact that we have moved all carriers away from Asia, and the many other worrying things, I have to ask - are we about to get attacked? We seem rather weak right now.

there was a recent article detailing why jet engines are so hard to do, and that the US was one of the few countrys that maintained the very complex and precise layered knowledge and manufacturing base to make the hot section blades and the arcane methods to keep even those ultra tough and durrable parts from melting or breaking. To put it into perspective, every last thing in your home or business would be burnt and destroyed very quickly if exposed to the conditions inside a modern jet engine, including titainium and ceramics. From my perspective I can see how under current management conditions it would be easy, very very easy, for some bro to wreck decades of acumulated knowledge and practice and never even know, and his "superiors" to never know, just that there is now a problem with something™. And they also dont know that in mechanical engineering of aircraft the first law or aviation is that everything effects everything else , which requires some things to operate at there limits, meaning that changes or substitutions will fail the whole aircraft, or create havock for maintenance, etc, etc, etc. No Bros, bro.