"Boeing's tanker losses top $7 billion"

[Dawes]

Airbus must be getting a chuckle from all this:

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/04/27/boeings-tanker-losses-top-7-billion/

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, I hope they choke on it.

[sunday]

9 hours ago, Dawes said:

Airbus must be getting a chuckle from all this:

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/04/27/boeings-tanker-losses-top-7-billion/

When an aircraft company has better lawyers than engineers...

[Yama]

Well, neither of them are match to company's managers. They don't seem to have any strategy beyond lowballing everything, and then act surprised when it doesn't bring in the profits.

I wonder if the company is even salvageable anymore. Both military and civilian divisions seem to be heading from one disaster to another.

[lucklucky]

https://leehamnews.com/2023/04/25/pontifications-a-contrarian-view-of-stock-buybacks/

[Stuart Galbraith]

39 minutes ago, Yama said:

Well, neither of them are match to company's managers. They don't seem to have any strategy beyond lowballing everything, and then act surprised when it doesn't bring in the profits.

I wonder if the company is even salvageable anymore. Both military and civilian divisions seem to be heading from one disaster to another.

The problem is, 'Too big to fail', is not a problem that just exists for Banks. If Boeing fell over, it would take so many industries with it that its going to be immensely hard on the US Defence industry. Just who do they get to build their AWACs and antisubmarine aircraft for starters.

Might make sense for someone to start insisting they start offloading chunks of their establishment, and concentrate on building bad airliners cheaply.

[Yama]

3 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

The problem is, 'Too big to fail', is not a problem that just exists for Banks. If Boeing fell over, it would take so many industries with it that its going to be immensely hard on the US Defence industry. Just who do they get to build their AWACs and antisubmarine aircraft for starters.

Might make sense for someone to start insisting they start offloading chunks of their establishment, and concentrate on building bad airliners cheaply.

Increasingly, Boeing is starting to resemble tried & true scheme:

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, it really is. And I say that as someone whom is still full of admiration for everything Boeing made before the Triple 7. Its a tragedy to see what is being done with it now. They are doing the old BAC method of operation, soaking up market share, and doing it badly.

[Dawes]

Boeing is still getting some mileage from the old McDonnell Douglas days - F-15, Apache, Harpoon, etc.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yep. Whats alarming is how little they have actually developed themselves.

[DB]

5 hours ago, Yama said:

Well, neither of them are match to company's managers. They don't seem to have any strategy beyond lowballing everything, and then act surprised when it doesn't bring in the profits.

I wonder if the company is even salvageable anymore. Both military and civilian divisions seem to be heading from one disaster to another.

The "reverse takeover" of the engineer-led Boeing by the MBA "managed" McDonnell-Douglas is usually blamed.

[sunday]

39 minutes ago, DB said:

The "reverse takeover" of the engineer-led Boeing by the MBA "managed" McDonnell-Douglas is usually blamed.

Have heard that, too.

[Stuart Galbraith]

It might explain the fiasco of the DC10 and MD 11 I guess.

[DB]

I'd call the MD11 the silk purse version of the DC10 - superficially better but built on a deeply flawed original.

if you take a look at the accident statistics for jets by their decade of introduction, you can see that the DC10 belongs to the previous generation (and the Tristar was a generation ahead). There is no justice in the world.

[R011]

On the other hand, I haven't heard of serious issues with the P-8 or E-7.

[DB]

Neither of which starts with a modern airframe...

I wonder if Boeing considered using the MAX as the base for either of these and was told that their customers had Airbus on speed dial...

[Dawes]

Outside of aircraft, Boeing has had some successes such as the Avenger SHORADS. On the other hand, they were the prime contractor/systems integrator for the Future Combat Systems program - an embarrassing and costly flop (although, to be fair, it would probably have crashed no matter who was involved).

Gong back to the late 1970's/early 1980's, Boeing was the losing competitor in the MLRS program (won by Vought). And their X-32 was the loser in the Joint Strike Fighter effort.

 

[James1978]

There is a 2022 documentary called "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" that is worth watching. It's on Netflix in the US.

The main focus is on the 737 MAX crashes, but they spend a lot of time looking at how McDonnell-Douglas culture and management wrecked a once great engineering company.

[Yama]

3 hours ago, Dawes said:

Outside of aircraft, Boeing has had some successes such as the Avenger SHORADS. On the other hand, they were the prime contractor/systems integrator for the Future Combat Systems program - an embarrassing and costly flop (although, to be fair, it would probably have crashed no matter who was involved).

Gong back to the late 1970's/early 1980's, Boeing was the losing competitor in the MLRS program (won by Vought). And their X-32 was the loser in the Joint Strike Fighter effort.

JSF was a clever ploy by LockMart to sell the military a concept only they had prepared for in advance, ensuring they win it by default.

In retrospect, the concept proved out to be rather daft, but it's too late now.

[Ivanhoe]

9 hours ago, DB said:

The "reverse takeover" of the engineer-led Boeing by the MBA "managed" McDonnell-Douglas is usually blamed.

I considered Boeing to be toast when they moved HQ to Chicago. Allegedly because their big customer was there, purportedly because the then-CEO wanted to be located near the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

 

[Ssnake]

6 hours ago, Yama said:

a clever ploy by LockMart to sell the military a concept only they had prepared for in advance, ensuring they win it by default

That's not "a clever ploy", it's The standard solution for public tenders if you can leverage the necessary influence.

[DB]

It is a cardinal rule that a company will move its headquarters to nearer where the CEO lives, although presumably the size of the CEO ego has to exceed the value of the company (at least in his own mind).

[Josh]

What I find amazing is that the tanker bid was a more or less existing aircraft being modified to do something Boeing had done several times before. Now I do question the value of making the boom operation remote when there was an existing way that worked perfectly fine, and that apparently came from the USAF, but how a tanker conversion could be such a fuck up I just can't fathom. Of course both their flagship civilian products have managed to tank hard as well, so something is definitely wrong with the culture.

[Murph]

MBAs tend to destroy everything they infect.

[Yama]

On the plus side, it's still better run company than NHIndustries, where the salesmen are in charge.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Yama