what are the biggest military procurement mistakes in history?were the requirements flawed or the execution?pic unrelated
>>64954508M14SA80FAMASBismarcksYamatos
>>64954522wtf?
>>64954527
>fastest warplane in the world >most powerful fighting plane ever built>nigh invinciblehttps://youtu.be/QrkY9re2pic?si=
That torp from WW2 the US used
>>64954547Turbine engine sucking water in along with the air.
>>64954746DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMWHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL!
>>64954764why dont all turbines do this? those are mounted especially high too
>>64954794that one had just done a long flight and was especially thirsty.
>>64954644Mark 14 had a shitty launch, but at least it was a salvageable design once BuOrd got their heads out of their asses.
>>64954508the M16
>>64954812lmfao desu senpai
>>64954508Something naval like the Vasa from Sweden, ships are expensive and easy to fuck up
>>64954508While it's in no one's top 5, I always remember the British spring-loaded anti-tank weapon. The PIAT.
>>64954508>we could have had a forever trench war with comfy 7 layer bunkers>instead we got maneuverslopUGH what could have been....
>>64954888Boondoggle is a term usually reserved for things that are expensive and don't work.Why would you give an example that was cheap and demonstrably worked?
>>64954888>Trips wasted on warriortard-tier shit
>>64954893No, it would have never happened.>Do you dare attack my invincible baguette fortress? HON HON HON!>No, I'll just go around it .
>>64954934>warriortardI scanned the thread and didn’t see any anti-UK disinformation which needed to be countered. Which post did you think was warriortard’s?
Every super power spends tens of billions of dollars and decades trying to make themThey get used twice and never again
>>64954883This one is super underrated, people don't seem to really understand just how fucking enormous it was, it was like a floating apartment complex. It was meant to be the ultimate symbol of Swedish military supremacy, but the demands for it just got more and more ridiculous. Engineers were repeatedly warning everyone that the design was flawed, it wouldn't work, but it was all ignored. Then, after an enormous grand unveiling that the king, half the nobility, a zillion peasants were all present for, it left the drydock, and then immediately tipped over and sank
>>64954927>and demonstrably worked?Did it? Many historians will argue that they often didn't fire the projectile far enough and there were multiple cases of the PIAT hurting British troops. I suppose geeks have a soft spot for it, as it was one of the inspirations for Fallout's "Fat Man."There also was another failed anti-tank weapon, the anti-tank dogs that the Soviets tested. The Soviets tried to train dogs to run towards tanks with explosives strapped to them, but in battlefields sometimes the dogs would get scared and run back to their handler while the explosive was active.
space shuttle feat. the meddling Air Force and their >muh crossrange>muh polar orbitshittery.t. sfg
>>64955276gustav gun did its job, at least kind of, during the siege of sevastopol. Granted, the Luftwaffe could be credited for a larger role in busting soviet bunkers
>>64955869>Did it?Yes. Your entire post is equivocating sophist (>just asking questions >lots of people are saying) kind of bullshit. The PIAT was very far from perfect and had many flaws, but it did generally work and is no where near a boondoggle. Realistically it probably wouldn't even be capable of being a boondoggle even if it completely didn't work since it was cheap and nasty as fuck.FWIW the PIAT was better than the original Bazooka (which actually didn't work at all), but worse than the Bazooka with its fixed rockets and worse than the Panzerschrek, but was also available well before either and never had the problems with its projectiles fixed up the way happened with the Bazooka.It's credited with 7% of AFV kills in the Normandy campaign, which is a little less than the 10-12% that the (fixed) Bazooka and Panzershrek are credited with in similar conditions (offensive action, mixed terrain etc), but absolutely no where near "doesn't work at all" histrionic equivocation territory.
>>64955869>>64955924Between the four major infantry anti-tank launchers, I'd say the matchup goes along these lines>LethalityPanzerfaust > PIAT/Panzerschreck > Bazooka>RangePanzerschreck/Bazooka > PIAT > Panzerfaust>PortabilityPanzerfaust > Bazooka > Panzerschreck > PIAT>Additional factorsPanzerfaust: One-shot, slow ass projectile, have to lob itPIAT: Lacks backblast, much more useful indoorsPanzerschreck: most obvious backblast, typically not issued at squad levelBazooka: early rocket teething issues, most portable of the reusable launchers
>>64955881ThisISS after 2030, SLS as wastefull as it is hasn't killed anyone yet.T.fellow/sfg/
>>64954746Pretty sure this is a hoax.
>>64954508Nah, the Maginot line did exactly what it was supposed to do.Blame the Belgians for the invasion of France.
WW2 Battleships. Planes ruined the possible Kino. German and Japanese ones were especially useless.
>>64954544>m14>sa80Bait.
>>64955715Fake and gay.
>>64955901The Karl-Gerat did all the heavy lifting at Sevastapol. Gustav was too inaccurate to be of much use.
>>64956255That doesn't make it not a boondoggle. If it is a hoax it was an extremely expensive one that nobody gave a fuck about. Unfortunately we know very little about it and the condition it is currently displayed in is obviously not original.
>>64955815Mary Rose is pretty similar but at least she got to see some action before capsizing in a light breeze
>>64955715>>64960467That's Jumbo, IIRC. For the Trinity test some of the scientists were worried that an unsymmetrical detonation of the lenses would result in a zero-yield and the destruction of the Plutonium pit. So to prevent the Plutonium from being wasted and just scattered about the test site, they built a massive steel vessel (and named it Jumbo) that would be able to withstand the blast and contain the material to be repurprosed if that were the case. It was absolutely massive and weighed hundreds of tons and at the time was the most massive object ever transported by road vehicle (as you can see from the trailer its on in the photo)Eventually they did away with it because they certrain Gadget would work, that it might interfere with yield calculations, and adding hundreds of tons of neutron-activated radioactive steel into the atmosphere wasnt the greatest idea.
>>64961113>If it is a hoax it was an extremely expensive oneHow so?
>>64961220The wheels are large castings which were then turned on a big lathe afterward. That meant someone spent a lot of money making them, not just to make the patterns & castings in the first place, but also to tie up time on a strategically important machine tool for the turning operation afterward.
>>64954544Yamatos make some sense since Japan at least had a powerful surface navy as a whole. The Bismarcks would be like Iran trying to build two Essex sized carriers.
>>64961942They made no sense because Japan didn't have anywhere near enough fuel to use them effectively.
>>64954508The French military's colossal interwar investment in fixed fortifications. Both the requirements and execution of them were rife with flaws and the result was the destruction of the French state, had it not had very powerful and magnanimous allies. The infamous Maginot constructions alone (one of several defensive lines) received some 5.3B francs over 10 years, equivalent to over 350 billion euros today. They had their reasons - political strife and distrust of fascist sympathies among the Army chief among them - but a healthier state could've found far more productive uses for the materiel and labor.
>>64962707>The French military's colossal post-Cold War investment in expeditionary capability. Both the requirements and execution of them were rife with flaws and the result was the destruction of the French state, had it not had very powerful and magnanimous allies. The infamous Africa operations alone (one of several extra-European adventures) received some 5.3B francs over 10 years, equivalent to over 350 billion euros tomorrow. They had their reasons - political strife and distrust of fascist sympathies among the Army chief among them - but a healthier state could've found far more productive uses for the materiel and labor.
Germany's Siegfried Line was also used for public works and as a training ground for paramilitary organizations, and was far from a well-planned defensive line.
>>64962707Real normie posting hours-The Maginot Line enabled the French to heavily economize on forces on the German and Luxembourg border, while they still deployed too many there they would have had far less - It was built in the beginning of the 1930s. If the French had budgeted the money for anything else it would have bought a bunch of obsolete biplanes or near-worthless tanks, completely useless by 1940- Given the political state in France in the early 1930s, nobody would have been willing to use money for regular forces: you either get the Maginot Line or you get nothingThe flaw was stationing too many troops in it and not extending it further to block the Ardennes at least. As a defensive scheme it eminently made sense and was a productive use of resources. The Italian border fortifications worked perfectly.
>>64962707People shit on the Maginot line as if they know anything but completely forget to shit on the *rench "navy" which entirely failed and was way more expensive.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7MuQM0rt_w
Second Chance vests
>>64964181>Economize on forcesFalse economy, fortification had been losing to firepower for centuries with no sign of the trend reversing. If manpower conservation was the priority, options like "procure and equip platoons with additional machineguns" were right there, untaken, as instead their reservists marched off in thousands with the same bolt-action carbines as last war to their brilliantly funded concrete mausoleums.>Built in the beginning of the 1930sIt was only completed in 1939. There were many more diversified investments that could've been made with enduring relevance. Imagine if the money for gravel pits and cement pours in the intervening years went to something dual-use like factory capacity for Renault trucks and expressways instead of please-bombard-me fortresses that the Luftwaffe completely obviated before Krupp's world-renowned arsenal of siege artillery even arrived.>Maginot or nothingWhich is why it was a boondoggle, yes. A massive bad buy for political reasons doesn't make it the correct choice.
>>64954508>biggest military procurement mistakes in historyDrafting niggers
>>64964447If you knew anything about fortifications you wouldn't have posted a picture of Liege forts which caused French high command to conclude their forts were obsolete so they disarmed and abandoned them which directly lead to the battle of Verdun being the meatgrinder that it was.What everyone learned after the war was that the Belgian forts at Liege were actually just plain fucking shit. The Belgians who had no experience with concrete or equipment to work at night didn't just build forts out of poorly bonded unreinforced mass concrete, They designed the forts with their weaponry all clustered together directly on top the magazines which fed them all with clear lines of sight to the direction of enemy fire.Can you see the fucking problem here? The forts at Liege were basically begging to be destroyed as catastrophically as possible and they would have done so even if the Germans didn't wheel out new fuckoff huge mortars against them, Which is probably what tricked the French into thinking their newly upgraded forts were completely obsolete. A similar pattern happened with the Maginot line where early German successes again caused the French high command to completely squander their fortifications by ordering the interval troops and garrisons to abandon their positions and equipment and march to the new front in completely uncoded messages the Germans captured, Who them proceeded to then cut-off and capture the now equipment-less French troops as they WALKED to the Belgian front.
>>64964447the belgian forts worked; they slowed the German advance enough preventing a victory in the west before they had to start sending reinforcements east.>but they got blown upyea, but it took the Germans bringing up the heavy siege guns they borrowed from the Austrians tying up the whole German western advance until they showed up.
>>64956145Have you ever held a panzerschreck? It's huge, heavy and with a much bigger rocket than the bazooka. The PIAT was designed to be dropped with paratroopers and was much shorter and lighter. Technically speaking, the PIAT also had the highest rate of fire, similar to a mortar, when the spring recocking mechanism worked, though that was unreliable.>>64955869I'm not sure if the anti-tank dogs count as a boondoggle since they were a cheap desperation weapon. They failed because animals have a will to live, an alien concept to the average russian.
>>64956262Or blame the French for ignoring all the evidence that the Germans were advancing on France
>>64962707To be fair, it's not like that money would have been better spent on conventional forces. Pre-war french procurement is nothing short of a comedic farce.
>>64965699>Have you ever held a panzerschreck?I was only going off of weight, which according to the most reliable source of information in the world Wikipedia places the panzerschreck at 24lbs and the PIAT at 32lbs. But then I fucked up because it also lists the Panzerfaust 60 as actually being slightly heavier than the Bazooka
