Well, I do think your comment quite overstates its case, but I’ve made some edits that should avoid the interpretations mentioned, and I do think those make the post better. So thanks for that! :)
On the P80:
It was built in 1943 and introduced in 1945. When I wrote “used operationally for 40 years” I didn’t have in mind that they sent it up to join forces with F-16s in the 1980s. Rather wanted to convey that “in spite of being built ridicolously quickly, it wasn’t a piece of junk that got scrapped immediately and never ended up serving a real function”.
Editing to say it was used operationally “as a trainer” for 40 years.
On the Sea Shadow
This is just a direct quote from Ben Rich who oversaw that program. It’s compatible with everything you mention. He’s just illustrating procurement incentives in the Navy. I think he might be speaking with some rhetorical flourish and saying even if it could blast a sizable attack force out of the sky, the ship still mightn’t be very prestigous.
It does seem like it could be clarified a bit, so editing to say “They also built this prototypeship that I’m including here because I really like how dope it seemed, even though it never became more than a prototype”.
On selling the SR-71:
Again, this is a direct quote on procurement incentives from a guy who was involved on both the buy and sell side of the SR-71 back in the day. But yeah, agreed this wasn’t the only reason the SR-71 didn’t sell more! (Two air-to-air refuelings per mission? JP-7 fuel? Any takers?) Editing post to say: “Yet some of these advances also made it harder for Lockheed to sell it (though there were also additional strategic reasons it wasn’t mass produced)”.
There’s also a more gnarly philosophical issue here, in terms of the “insane” belief you’re pointing to. I find it fairly plausible that individual commanders might have incentives that are different from those of the Navy, or the Air Force, as a whole, and that this might drive procurement decisions. Whether it’s insane or not depends on your priors. But this is less of a clear cut empirical question, so won’t belabor it more here.
On the F-117:
This already long post has to end somewhere :) I’d love to read someone else summarising lessons from building the F-117 though!
I’m not disputing that specific people at Skunk Works believed that their tech was disliked for being good; but that’s a totally insane belief that you should reject immediately, it’s obviously self-serving, none of those people present any evidence for it, and the DoD did try to acquire similar technology in all these cases.
Again, this is a direct quote on procurement incentives from a guy who was involved on both the buy and sell side of the SR-71 back in the day.
This is quote from, per you, somebody from the CIA. The CIA and Air Force are different organizations; he was presumably not involved in the Air Force’s decision not to acquire the F-12B. We have definitive proof that the Air Force’s procurement decisions weren’t necessarily opposed to high performing planes, since they had planned on acquiring different, but similarly capable, planes.
I am very confident that the book-length sequence you linked to doesn’t contain a justification for the claim that “individual Air Force commanders hate fast planes”. But if it does, please provide the actual justification instead of linking to a ~150 page book (“go read the sequences”).
ETA: I may have misunderstood your point; if you instead meant literally just to justify the sentence you wrote, that principal-agent problems are possible, then I don’t disagree; that does absolutely nothing to justify the specific claimed principal-agent problem.
Well, I do think your comment quite overstates its case, but I’ve made some edits that should avoid the interpretations mentioned, and I do think those make the post better. So thanks for that! :)
On the P80:
It was built in 1943 and introduced in 1945. When I wrote “used operationally for 40 years” I didn’t have in mind that they sent it up to join forces with F-16s in the 1980s. Rather wanted to convey that “in spite of being built ridicolously quickly, it wasn’t a piece of junk that got scrapped immediately and never ended up serving a real function”.
Editing to say it was used operationally “as a trainer” for 40 years.
On the Sea Shadow
This is just a direct quote from Ben Rich who oversaw that program. It’s compatible with everything you mention. He’s just illustrating procurement incentives in the Navy. I think he might be speaking with some rhetorical flourish and saying even if it could blast a sizable attack force out of the sky, the ship still mightn’t be very prestigous.
It does seem like it could be clarified a bit, so editing to say “They also built this prototype ship that I’m including here because I really like how dope it seemed, even though it never became more than a prototype”.
On selling the SR-71:
Again, this is a direct quote on procurement incentives from a guy who was involved on both the buy and sell side of the SR-71 back in the day. But yeah, agreed this wasn’t the only reason the SR-71 didn’t sell more! (Two air-to-air refuelings per mission? JP-7 fuel? Any takers?) Editing post to say: “Yet some of these advances also made it harder for Lockheed to sell it (though there were also additional strategic reasons it wasn’t mass produced)”.
There’s also a more gnarly philosophical issue here, in terms of the “insane” belief you’re pointing to. I find it fairly plausible that individual commanders might have incentives that are different from those of the Navy, or the Air Force, as a whole, and that this might drive procurement decisions. Whether it’s insane or not depends on your priors. But this is less of a clear cut empirical question, so won’t belabor it more here.
On the F-117:
This already long post has to end somewhere :) I’d love to read someone else summarising lessons from building the F-117 though!
I’m not disputing that specific people at Skunk Works believed that their tech was disliked for being good; but that’s a totally insane belief that you should reject immediately, it’s obviously self-serving, none of those people present any evidence for it, and the DoD did try to acquire similar technology in all these cases.
This is quote from, per you, somebody from the CIA. The CIA and Air Force are different organizations; he was presumably not involved in the Air Force’s decision not to acquire the F-12B. We have definitive proof that the Air Force’s procurement decisions weren’t necessarily opposed to high performing planes, since they had planned on acquiring different, but similarly capable, planes.
I am very confident that the book-length sequence you linked to doesn’t contain a justification for the claim that “individual Air Force commanders hate fast planes”. But if it does, please provide the actual justification instead of linking to a ~150 page book (“go read the sequences”).
ETA: I may have misunderstood your point; if you instead meant literally just to justify the sentence you wrote, that principal-agent problems are possible, then I don’t disagree; that does absolutely nothing to justify the specific claimed principal-agent problem.