[drewpc]

I agree that military IT has been atrocious. I disagree that NMCI was "damn near treasonous levels of awful." NMCI was a large, Department of the Navy (DoN) -wide contract that had incredibly challenging tasks it needed to complete to be successful. The first few years were bad but it got better over time and, by the time the next transition was set to happen, it was running pretty smoothly.

When people complained about not getting the things they wanted, what they were really railing against was the fact that they didn't get what they wanted all the time anymore; the military grew accustomed to telling someone "I want X" and it happened, regardless of cost, lifecycle sustainment, security, etc. NMCI forced the DoN to develop and articulate requirements properly, write good contracts, budget for software and hardware sustainment, and generally operate professionally.

In short, I would take an NMCI computer and enterprise services from 2010 versus a Marine Corps Enterprise Network computer and enterprise services from 2022 any day of the week.

Disclosure: I have been a Marine Corps Communications Officer for almost 20 years; starting before NMCI. I worked at the regional and enterprise levels to transition ownership back from the NMCI program/contractor to government owned.

[alexjplant]

> . I disagree that NMCI was "damn near treasonous levels of awful."

In 2018 I was issued an NMCI laptop with a hard disk drive in it... with platters and a spindle and everything. Each time I powered it on I spent 20 minutes being serenaded by its deliciously clicky retro soundtrack as I waited for a desktop with a working Start menu (and I use the term "working" loosely since it took 5 seconds to appear when clicked). If I didn't have work to do it might have been comforting - it kind of reminded me of my old Presario V2555 from the late 90s. Constant McAfee updates and poorly-designed bespoke MFC management apps completed the aesthetic nicely.

"Treasonous" might be hyperbole but it isn't entirely unwarranted.

[drewpc]

I have had similar experiences, however, it's important to be specific: the NMCI contract ended in 2010 and DoN moved to the Continuity of Services Contract where we bought services piecemeal until we could fully take it over. The Navy and Marine Corps tried to transition to NGEN during this time but mostly failed and each service ended up taking different paths. Now, the two services operate their networks differently: the Marine Corps, for example, runs it as a government owned and "shared operations" model where it's mixed government and contractor.

I imagine that the laptop you were given in 2018 was not an NMCI laptop, but instead a laptop from either the Navy or Marine Corps' new ownership/operations model which is incredibly flawed. Also, HBSS was poorly implemented in the 2010 time frame and Tanium was introduced (at least in the Marine Corps networks) around 2017. Both are major contributing factors to the issue you're describing.

In short: the current state is that computers are barely usable and that is not NMCI from yester-year.

[navbaker]

This was 100% my experience. It was a standing joke in our Navy command of ~1200 people that the morning routine was to get into the office, type username/pw, then go get coffee and BS with co-workers for 30 minutes and by the time you got back, Outlook would just be finished coming up.