Garbage In, Garbage Out

Here’s another Air Force issue that is highly relevant to the Navy and the military, in general.
 
Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk is years behind schedule.  This is not a highly complex, F-22/35 type stealth combat aircraft;  it’s a simple trainer intended to replace the Air Force’s T-38 Talon.  As a Drive website article notes, the T-7A was going to revolutionize aircraft design and construction by using computers and digital models. 

Advertised by the Air Force and Boeing as the service’s first "digitally designed and engineered" aircraft, T-7A was lauded as a poster child for developmental speed.[1]
 
The Red Hawk was expected to begin a new era in rapid design and engineering with iterative development carried out in the virtual world via modeling and simulation without having to bend metal or conduct extensive real-world testing. Systems integration would be accelerated and the time from the first flight to production significantly compressed.
 
It hasn’t worked out that way.[1]

Foolishly, we assign an aura of infallibility, bordering on a religious faith, to everything digital.  The reality, however, is that everything in the digital world  …  everything  … let me repeat that  …  everything  …  is governed by the ancient computer programming adage, GIGO which stands for,
 
Garbage In, Garbage Out
 
It doesn’t matter how brilliant your program is, if you feed it garbage input, you get garbage output. 

“A funny thing happens when you move out of digits to reality,” Teal Group analyst J.J. Gertler said.  “Digital engineering has the capability to rapidly iterate but it’s only as good as the information you put into it. It may also help you get to a wrong answer faster which you then have to back out of.”[1][emphasis added]

 
There you have it.  GIGO. 

“Digital engineering isn’t going to make issues go away,” he [Dr. Will Roper, former assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics] noted. “It’s going to create a new issue which is – do you trust the underlying models and simulation upon which your performance predictions are based?”[1][emphasis added]

 
When hand held calculators were introduced, teachers noted that they all too often helped students get the wrong answer faster.  The calculator was electronically correct but the students were too ignorant to input the correct data.  GIGO.  The same phenomenon is prevalent in industry. 
 
Closely related, students lost the ability to recognize obvious incorrect results caused by mistaken inputs (accidentally pushed the wrong button) because they lost the ability to quickly estimate expected results and be able to recognize that an answer was patently incorrect.  I can instantly estimate 18x20 by rounding it to 20x20=400.  Therefore, I can recognize that an answer of 3600 is an order of magnitude off.  Students no longer have the ability to do that and cannot recognize obvious errors - the calculator said it so it must be right.
 
We’ve become so caught up in our blind worship of technology that we’ve completely ignored the constant presence of the GIGO phenomenon.  Digital results are accorded unquestioned faith.  Whether it’s artificial intelligence, computer aided design, pilot or ship driver training via simulation, or command and control networks, they’re all plagued by the constant presence of garbage input. 
 
Every Navy and Air Force design and acquisition program for the last two decades has claimed to be computer designed and computer aided and yet none have been what anyone would judge a success.
 
We had far more successful ship and aircraft design results from people using paper, pencil, and a slide rule then we do now using computers.  Common sense is screaming lessons at us but we’re too busy worshipping at the altar of technology to hear them.
 
How’s that simple, straightforward Air Force KC-46 tanker coming along?  It’s been well over a decade and still counting! 
 
Remember the Ford?  Computer modeled and computer designed?  How’d that turn out?
 
The F-35’s ALIS logistics, maintenance, and mission planning program was going to solve all our problems and yet it’s been abandoned and nothing has yet taken its place.
 
And so on.
 
The problem is that the people inputting the information are all too often incompetent idiots who can’t even rattle off their multiplication tables without consulting a calculator.  Have you ever tried to get change from a cashier who hasn’t got access to the register’s computer output?  They can’t calculate simple change in their head.  Why would we expect such people to be able to recognize garbage input and avoid it?  They can’t.  We’ve crippled ourselves, as a society, by allowing calculators in schools.  But, I digress …
 
We now have military leaders who are inputting idiotic data into wargames, computer models, and simulations and are unable to even recognize the idiotic results.
 
This isn’t just about arithmetic errors.  In the military, the idiotic inputs are things such as
 

• Assuming the enemy won’t respond in any harmful way to us.
• Assuming everything we do will work and nothing the enemy does will work.
• Assuming that we have capabilities the enemy doesn’t.
• Assuming our systems will work flawlessly.  Does any wargame factor in, oh, say, Ford EMALS breakdowns?  We have hard data but we’re hand waving away the reality.
• Assuming our surveillance assets will be allowed to conduct their missions without hindrance.
• Assuming we’ll have no problem working around the enemy’s electronic warfare even though any attempt at introducing even a modicum of EW into a real exercise has ended in the complete collapse of the exercise.
• Assuming our networks will work flawlessly even though we’re being successfully attacked and penetrated by enemy cyber forces on a daily basis.

 
This is the kind of idiotic, garbage inputs that are producing garbage outputs.  Unfortunately, we’re too stupid to recognize the garbage nature of either our inputs or outputs and so we blindly follow our technology down ever more incorrect paths.
 
 
Garbage In, Garbage Out
 
 
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[1]The Drive website, “T-7A Delays Compound Pilot Shortage, Expose Digital Engineering Pitfalls”, Jan Tegler, 12-May-2023,
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/t-7a-delays-compound-pilot-shortage-expose-digital-engineering-pitfalls