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Made in us
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Fort Campbell

So... yeah, sure most of you have seen me bring this topic up before, but we had a new story done recently that highlights some more specific issues, these are obviously close to home for me. We lost 2 pilots last year due to maintenance issues. I'm not at all trying to lay blame on Pres. Obama for that, but the trend of cuts that we experienced under his leadership is certainly telling in how thinly we're stretched right now.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5353522957001/?#sp=show-clips00

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Wise Ethereal with Bodyguard




Catskills in NYS

I'm not personally roaring for our military budget to be increased, but this does seem to be a recurring theme in our military and the DoD in general (see, our neculear arsenal).

As an ignorant civilians my opinion on the whole thing is that the military desperately needs a from-the-ground-up no-holds-barred review of budget and spending to make sure that the money we have is actually getting spent on the things we need, not stuff we don't need, want, or use. Plus, in any $600B organization there is bound to be loads of unnecessary waste. You could probably get a at least a billion dollars free just from that

I've always thought that the leading generals, admirals, ect should really be involved more in the budget process, to make sure our troops are well equipped, what they are using is safe, and to cut down on "you have to buy 200 more tanks because my district benefits form it" type gak.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 23:01:04


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 kronk wrote:
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 sebster wrote:
Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
 
   
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On moon miranda.

"The military", as a whole, has tons of money to keep its equipment in good order if that is what it was directed toward, the question is are they putting it to good use and are the logistics systems operating properly?

We spend gargantuan amounts of money on very sophisticated devices and vehicles that inherently require a very high level of maintenance, and many of them have little or no value over items several orders of magnitude cheaper in any conflict we have fought in the last 30 years or more. Others are expensive boondoggles that get pushed through because money and careers are built on them as billions are wasted.

Purchasing decisions also factor in, such as the Army having to buy tanks it doesnt want thanks to congressmen wanting the plant in their district to keep running.

One issue with small arms failures is that equipment just isnt turned in for maintenance, and often when it is, replacement parts from the low bidder random machine shop (instead of the OEM) dont meet spec and either fail early or dont work at all, which further disincentivizes turning weapons in for maintenance. Stuff like M9 locking blocks, M9 magazines, M16 BCG cam pins, etc and all too often nobody seems to go back to these bidders about it or deny them further business.

Another related but not identical concern is munitions and replacements. Quite frequently US forces have run out of certain types of munitions (e.g. tomahawk cruise missiles) in even relatively low intensity conflicts, how would we supply such things in a hot war? What would the US do if it lost half the F22 fleet in combat? Wait a decade or more to rebuild the manufacturing capacity and build new planes at 9 or 10 digits apiece?

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.

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Catskills in NYS

The lowest bidder things does seem to negatively effect all part of government. My father works for the NPS and the amount of pain he's had to go through to get a new tractor for his works was ridiculous, and the one they did get was one that was a different maker than the rest of the ones they had, so it means that some of the attachments aren't compatible. I mean the purpose of the rule makes sense, but it does get in the way of a lot of things.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 23:08:57


Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
 kronk wrote:
Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
 sebster wrote:
Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
 
   
Made in us
Member of the Ethereal Council






I Kinda have to agree with the above. the military is, IMO, y. There are too many projects that are just jokes(Mine Disarming seals anyone?) and are too expensive for what they do. Like the 500$ shovel. Or the tanks they are forced to buy. I dont care if people lose their job, that money can be spent better places damnit.
The Budget needs to be slashed several times and applied properly.
And maybe not on the Forever War.

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Made in us
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4th Obelisk On The Right

I never got the impression the military is thinly stretched at all. It gave the impression of pouring a jar of jam onto one corner of your toast and then complaining there isn't enough jam.

The US Army buys the marginally improved M855 ball round but because its just expensive trash the Army has to also upgrade the M4 with a heavier barrel because the new M855 blows out the barrel and 2x the rate. Yet it also offers no real improvement.

The military just burns money and then cries that its starving.

Units can't do a reset without civilians holding their hands. At my old unit as an E3 I lead the first in house deployment reset in almost a decade. Maintainers don't know the first thing about their jobs and are too used to civilians doing all the work for them. So I don't see it as stretched thin but rather incompetent and over pampered.

 
   
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I am unsure how much you can lay the cuts on Obama's feet.... I mean he did offer a "Grand Bargain" before the Sequestration thing set in.

I am sorry to hear about the aviators who lost their lives.

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 BrotherGecko wrote:
The military just burns money and then cries that its starving.
I got the same impression when reading articles about Blackwater/XE (now apparently Academi) when they got famous. Since the USA started the two wars (Afghanistan/Iraq) a lot has apparently been outsourced to private military companies and contractors (everything from janitorial services to actually being the military). All in the name of some sort of flexibility or something like that. Everybody from the actual military was pissed because in the end the USA are paying at the cheapest three, four, or five times more than what it would cost if done internally but get worse results, including actually dangerous situations where the contractors do the job really bad while still somehow complying with the stipulations of the contract. And the people running these companies are making very nice profits by extracting money from the US military budget while delivering shoddy to dangerous products and services.
   
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avoiding the lorax on Crion

Its not short of money it has it by thr ton.

Its spending it wrongly and downright badly.
Bloated procurement that baloons in cost. The zunwalts are now gonna cost billions each, F22/F35...

So many projects have just got out of control.
If you brought spending under control there would be money for everything and more besides as that budget is enormously huge.


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On moon miranda.

Yeah, the whole contractors/mercenary thing was/is quite an issue. One dude I knew finished his contract with the marines and was back in Iraq a month later with his old unit in the same location and operating the same piece of equipment he had when in uniform, but at several multiples his old pay and no longer under military discipline

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Pleasant Valley, Iowa

Nothing like hearing cries of poverty from the guys who found 400 billion dollars to blow on a plane that can't fly at night, and sometimes catches fire and no one knows why.

Perhaps there are other places they can find to save money too?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 23:39:29


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4th Obelisk On The Right

I got to see company level budget planning and that stuff was out of control. I had my supply sargent just throwing cash at anything that moved so that next year we could get more.

Some of the maintenance issues are due to people being out of MOS too. My unit had track mechanics but no tracks, abrams mechanics but no abram chasis, drone mechanics but no drones. These guys were just supposed to know how to fix MRAPs. So what did they do? Just opened the TM-23&P and order the highest complete part rather than fix what actual problem was. Vehicles become money pits because they break down and nobody is trained on how to fix them. They have to call up civilian firms and get them to help out. Down range, everything was handled by civilians making 3x as much.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 00:49:25


 
   
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It is the organization where taking away a nickel will end with the destruction of America but increasing the budget by 100 Billion isn't enough.

Most of the guys in at are good people and they deserve excellent stuff to work with: equipment, logistics, medical treatment, el al. The issues come from the politics at the higher level, both civilian and military. To steal a slogan and change it up a bit "everyone talks about loving the military until they have to do military gak". This includes funding.

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Halifornia, Nova Scotia

I wish our military was stretched as 'thin' as you guys are. I'm doing a fly past tomorrow for a 45 year old destroyer we're retiring...in a helicopter that entered service before said destroyer and will remain in service for another year (or more).

I dream of the day we bump our budget up to even 1% of our GDP.

With regards to the OP specifically, it sounds like a use of resources problem, not a lack of them.

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Tornado Alley

The decision to cut back essential personnel and manning slots is a big contributor to waste as well. I was an instructor, and for 3 years for every 3 personnel we lost we gained 1. It got to the point where I had back to back classes for 1.5 years and was never home. My wife would seem eat night when I got home and I would be gone again early AF. Now because the slots are no longer available for "green suiters" (military personnnel) they have had to extend out a contract which I am not going to be part of at more than I was making as a green suiter to do the same job I was doing albeit under much less stress. All because they cut slots available to fit personnel in.

Im not complaining because hells its gonna be an easy transition, but if they would just have a few less generals, many more NCOs and lower enlisted they could fill all combat slots, temporary duty slots, training slots and Instructors and Drill Sergeants would not be losing their gak left and right.

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 Co'tor Shas wrote:
The lowest bidder things does seem to negatively effect all part of government. My father works for the NPS and the amount of pain he's had to go through to get a new tractor for his works was ridiculous, and the one they did get was one that was a different maker than the rest of the ones they had, so it means that some of the attachments aren't compatible. I mean the purpose of the rule makes sense, but it does get in the way of a lot of things.

What is the old Saying?
You get what you pay for?
The Govt really needs to stop with the "Lowest Bidder" stuff.
My family might be broke, but we still buy stuff that lasts, even if is it twice as more expensive. Its the same concept with the GOVT and military.

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 djones520 wrote:
I'm not at all trying to lay blame on Pres. Obama for that, but the trend of cuts that we experienced under his leadership is certainly telling in how thinly we're stretched right now.


It's probably best you don't lay any blame on Obama, because the recent cuts are a fantasy story produced by ignoring the last 10 years of US military spending.



Even with the recent cuts the budget is still double what it was 10 years ago. If you could put planes safely in the air 10 years ago with a $300b budget, you can do it today with a $600b budget.

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/7-shocking-ways-military-wastes-our-money-0



1. A whole battalion of generals? The titles “general” or “admiral” sound like they belong to pretty exclusive posts, fit only for the best of the best. This flashy title makes it pretty easy to say, "so what if a few of our military geniuses get the royal treatment--particularly if they are the sole commanders of the most powerful military in human history." The reality, however, is that there are nearly1,000 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces, and each has an entourage that would make a Hollywood star jealous.

According to 2010 Pentagon reports, there are963 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces. This number has ballooned by about 100 officers since 9/11 when fighting terror--and polishing the boots of senior military personnel --became Washington’s number-one priority. (In roughly that same time frame, starting in 1998, the Pentagon’s budget also ballooned by more than 50 percent.)

Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. army colonel and now a military analyst for MSNBC, says the military needs only a third of that number. Many of these generals are “spending time writing plans and defending plans with Congress, and trying to get the money,” he explained. In other words, a large number of these generals are essentially lobbyists for the Pentagon, but they still receive large personal staffs and private jet rides for official paper-pushing military matters.

Dina Rasor, founder of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, explains that this “brass creep” is “fueled by the desire to increase bureaucratic clout or prestige of a particular service, function or region, rather than reflecting the scope and duties of the job itself.”

It’s sort of like how Starbucks titles each of its baristas a “partner” but continues to pay them just over minimum wage (and a caramel macchiato per shift).

As Rasor writes, “the three- and four-star ranks have increased twice as fast as one- and two-star general and flag officers, three times as fast as the increase in all officers and almost ten times as fast as the increase in enlisted personnel. If you imagine it visually, the shape of U.S. military personnel has shifted from looking like a pyramid to beginning to look more like a skyscraper.”

But the skyscraper model doesn’t mean that the armed forces are democratizing. In fact, just the opposite; they’re gaming the system to allow more and more officers to deploy the full power of the U.S. military to aid their personal lives--whether their actual work justifies it or not.

2. The generals’ flotillas. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed Arnold Punaro, a retired major general in the Marines, to head an independent review of the Pentagon’s budget. Here’s the caution he came up with: “We don’t want the Department of Defense to become a benefits agency that occasionally kills a terrorist.”

So, just how good are these benefits? For the top brass, not bad at all. According to a Washington Post investigation, each top commander has his own C-40 jet, complete with beds on board. Many have chefs who deserve their own four-star restaurants. The generals’ personal staff include drivers, security guards, secretaries, and people to shine their shoes and iron their uniforms. When traveling, they can be accompanied by police motorcades that stretch for blocks. When entertaining, string quartets are available at a snap of the fingers.

A New York Times analysis showed that simply the staff provided to top generals and admirals can top $1 million--per general. That’s not even including their own salaries--which are relatively modest due to congressional legislation--and the free housing, which has been described as “palatial.” On Capitol Hill, these cadres of assistants are called the generals’ “flotillas.”

In the case of former Army General David Petraeus, he didn’t want to give up the perks of being a four-star general in the Army, even after he left the armed forces to be director of the CIA. He apparently trained his assistants to pass him water bottles at timed intervals on his now-infamous 6-minute mile runs. He also liked “fresh, sliced pineapple” before going to bed.

3. Scandals. Despite the seemingly limitless perks of being a general, there is a limit to the military’s (taxpayer-funded) generosity. That's led some senior officers to engage in a little creative accounting. In 2012, summer the (formerly) four-star general William “Kip” Ward was caught using military money to pay for a Bermuda vacation and using military cars and drivers to take his wife on shopping and spa excursions. He traveled with up to 13 staff members, even on non-work trips, billing the State Department for their hotel and travel costs, as well as his family’s stays at luxury hotels.

In November 2012, in the midst of the Petraeus scandal, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demoted Ward to a three-star lieutenant general and ordered him to pay back $82,000 of the taxpayers’ misused money. The debt shouldn’t be hard to repay; Ward will receive an annual retirement salary of $208,802.

Panetta may have been tough--sort of--on now three-star general Ward, but he’s displayed a complete refusal to reevaluate the bloated ranks of the military generals. Unlike his predecessor, Robert Gates, who has come out publicly against the increasing number of top-ranking officers and tried to reduce their ranks, Panetta has so far refused to review their numbers and has yet to fire a single general or admiral for misconduct. He did, however, order an “ethics training” after the Petraeus scandal.

4. Warped sense of reality. After the Petraeus scandal, the million-dollar question was: Did the general who essentially built the world’s most invasive surveillance apparatus really think he could get away with carrying on a secret affair without anyone knowing? Former Secretary of State Gates has floated at least one theory at a press conference in Chicago: “There is something about a sense of entitlement and having great power that skews people’s judgement.”

A handful of retired diplomats and service members have come out in support of Gates’ thesis. Robert J. Callahan, a retired diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, wrote an op-ed in theChicago Tribune explaining how the generals’ perks allow them to exist on a plane removed from ordinary people:

Those with a star are military nobility, no doubt, and those with four are royalty. Flying in luxurious private jets, surrounded by a phalanx of fawning aides who do everything from preparing their meals to pressing their uniform trousers, they are among America's most pampered professionals. Their orders are executed without challenge, their word is fiat. They live in a reality different from the rest of us.

Frank Wuco, a retired U.S. Naval intelligence chief, agrees.

With the senior guys and the flag officers, this is like the new royalty,” he said on his weekly radio show. “We treat them like kings and princes. These general officers in the military, at a certain point, become untouchable... In many cases, they get their own airplanes, their own helicopters. When they walk into a room, everybody comes to attention. In the case of some of them, people are very afraid to speak up or to disagree. Being separated from real life all the time in that way probably leaves them vulnerable (to lapses in moral judgement).

Sounds like a phenomenon that’s happening with another pampered sector of society (hint: Wall Street). Given the epic 2008 financial collapse, do we really want to set our security forces on a similar path of power, deception and deep, crisis-creating delusion?

5. Military golf.Of course, generals and admirals aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy some of perks of being in the U.S. armed forces. Although lower ranking service members don’t get private jets and personal chefs, U.S. taxpayers still spend billions of dollars a year to pay for luxuries that are out of reach for the ordinary American.

The Pentagon, for example, runs a staggering 234 golf courses around the world, at a cost that is undisclosed.

According to one retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, who also just happens to be the senior writer atTravel Golf, the very best military golf course in the U.S. is the Air Force Academy's Eisenhower Blue Course in Colorado Springs, CO.

He writes, “This stunning 7,000-plus yard layout shares the same foothills terrain as does the legendary Broadmoor, just 20 minutes to the south in Colorado Springs. Ponderosa pines, pinon and juniper line the fairways with rolling mounds, ponds and almost tame deer and wild turkey.” (The Department of Defense did come under fire a number of decades ago when it was discovered that the toilet seats at this course cost $400 a pop.)

And the number of golf courses is often undercounted, with controversial courses in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Mosul, Iraq, often left off the lists, which makes assessing the total costs difficult.

Yet some courses rack up staggering expenses as they become far more than mere stretches of grass.

According to journalist Nick Turse, “The U.S. Army paid $71,614 [in 2004] to the Arizona Golf Resort -- located in sunny Riyadh, Saudi Arabia... The resort actually boasts an entire entertainment complex, complete with a water-slide-enhanced megapool, gym, bowling alley, horse stables, roller hockey rink, arcade, amphitheater, restaurant, and even a cappuccino bar -- not to mention the golf course and a driving range.”

DoD's Sungnam golf course in the Republic of Korea, meanwhile, is reportedly valued at $26 million.

For non-golfers, the military also maintains a ski lodge and resort in the Bavarian Alps, which opened in 2004 and cost $80 million.

6. “The Army goes rolling along!”Vacation resorts aren’t the only explicitly non-defense-related expenditures of the Department of Defense. According to a Washington Post investigation, the DoD also spends $500 million annually on marching bands.

The Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the Marine Corps all maintain their own military bands, which also produce their own magazines and CDs.

The bands are [pun intended] “an instrument of military PR,” according to Al McCree, a retired Air Force service member who owns Altissimo Recordings, a Nashville record label featuring music of the service bands.

The CDs are--by law--distributed for free, but that doesn’t mean the private sector can’t profit off these marching bands. According to the Washington Post article, “The service CDs have also created a private, profitable industry made up of companies that obtain the band recordings under the Freedom of Information Act. They then re-press and package them for public sale.”

As if subsidizing the industry of multibillion-dollar arms dealers weren’t enough, the record industry is apparently also leeching off the taxpayer-funded military spending.

7. The Pentagon-to-Lockheed pipeline.While the exorbitant costs of private planes and hundreds of golf courses may seem bad enough, the most costly problem with the entitlement-culture of the military happens aftergenerals retire. Since they’re so used to the luxurious lifestyle, the vast majority of pension-reaping high-ranking officers head into the private defense industry.

According to William Hartung, a defense analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC, about 70 percent of recently retired three- and four-star generals went straight to work for industry giants like Lockheed Martin.

“If you don’t go into industry at this point you are the exception,” Hartung said.

This type of government-to-industry pipeline, which he said was comparable to the odious Wall Street-to-Washington revolving door, drives up the prices of weapons and prevents effective oversight of weapon manufacturing companies--all of which ends up costing taxpayers more and more each year.

“I think the overspending on the generals and all their perks is bad enough, but the revolving door and the ability of these people to cut industry a break in exchange for high salaries costs more in the long run,” said Hartung. “This can affect the price of weapons and the whole structure of how we oversee companies. It’s harder to calculate, but certainly in the billions, compared to millions spent on staff per general.”



Seems to me the army/whatever is run like any other large corporation.

The people on the frontline -- and this is quite possibly an actual frontline as opposed to just a phrase -- get crapped on and less and less whilst those at the top do better and better.

I'm sure those marching bands are tremendous fun , if that's your proverbial cuppa, but do they genuinely serve any purpose in the modern age ?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 08:36:19


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Pleasant Valley, Iowa

Man, I feel like this thread turned out way, way different than OP expected.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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I am just waiting for people, who argue that the EPA need to be entirely dismantled because of ineffective spending, argue here that only adjustments are needed in the military.
They can stand next to the people, who argue that the ACA need to be repealed in its entirety and then start talking about a replacement, presented their opinion that reducing the defence budget presents an unacceptable risk to the health/lives and well being of the American people.

Surely the entire military industrial complex must be shut down and rebuilt from the ground up - overseen by a pacifist Buddhist Jain as head of the Department of Defense, if the appointments of the Trump administration are any indication.

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 djones520 wrote:
So... yeah, sure most of you have seen me bring this topic up before, but we had a new story done recently that highlights some more specific issues, these are obviously close to home for me. We lost 2 pilots last year due to maintenance issues. I'm not at all trying to lay blame on Pres. Obama for that, but the trend of cuts that we experienced under his leadership is certainly telling in how thinly we're stretched right now.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5353522957001/?#sp=show-clips00

You aren't necessarily thinly stretched. My experience is working with the USAF quite a few times (for clarity, most recent was last November, most embedded I've been was back in 2012-13). Once was during sequestration. We were pissing ourselves laughing at hearing all the things they'd have to lose and how hard it was going to be - it was like a factory worker hearing a rich man cry about losing a tenner. The USAF is chock full of fat that can be stripped.

While I've no knowledge of the crashes you mention and so can't talk directly of the contributing factors, I can say that (only based on my experience with USAF) you've got much bigger institutional problems than money. A quick break down of things I have seen: Human factors are unheard of, blame culture is rampant, tool control is woefully inadequate, recording of maintenance tasks is so poor as to verge on non-existent and responsibility for risk is carried out at all the wrong levels (which mostly ties into human factors and blame culture failings).

In no way do I suggest we're perfect, or that any one of these reasons led to these specific crashes, but the quality standards set by the US military can at times be shocking.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/03/10 12:02:55


 
   
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 djones520 wrote:
So... yeah, sure most of you have seen me bring this topic up before, but we had a new story done recently that highlights some more specific issues, these are obviously close to home for me. We lost 2 pilots last year due to maintenance issues. I'm not at all trying to lay blame on Pres. Obama for that, but the trend of cuts that we experienced under his leadership is certainly telling in how thinly we're stretched right now.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5353522957001/?#sp=show-clips00


Meanwhile we are still building M1 tanks, and the plane made of gold (F-35) keep rolling along. We have the most massive military budget in the world, but its being spent on crony capitalism projects.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 12:12:11


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I look at the US Military's vast budget and wonder if it wouldn't be more effective to pay people not to attack US interests, rather than blow the money on these bloated projects.

Also, I wonder when this permanent war footing the USA seems to be on, will end?


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 reds8n wrote:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/7-shocking-ways-military-wastes-our-money-0



1. A whole battalion of generals? The titles “general” or “admiral” sound like they belong to pretty exclusive posts, fit only for the best of the best. This flashy title makes it pretty easy to say, "so what if a few of our military geniuses get the royal treatment--particularly if they are the sole commanders of the most powerful military in human history." The reality, however, is that there are nearly1,000 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces, and each has an entourage that would make a Hollywood star jealous.

According to 2010 Pentagon reports, there are963 generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces. This number has ballooned by about 100 officers since 9/11 when fighting terror--and polishing the boots of senior military personnel --became Washington’s number-one priority. (In roughly that same time frame, starting in 1998, the Pentagon’s budget also ballooned by more than 50 percent.)

Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. army colonel and now a military analyst for MSNBC, says the military needs only a third of that number. Many of these generals are “spending time writing plans and defending plans with Congress, and trying to get the money,” he explained. In other words, a large number of these generals are essentially lobbyists for the Pentagon, but they still receive large personal staffs and private jet rides for official paper-pushing military matters.

Dina Rasor, founder of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, explains that this “brass creep” is “fueled by the desire to increase bureaucratic clout or prestige of a particular service, function or region, rather than reflecting the scope and duties of the job itself.”

It’s sort of like how Starbucks titles each of its baristas a “partner” but continues to pay them just over minimum wage (and a caramel macchiato per shift).

As Rasor writes, “the three- and four-star ranks have increased twice as fast as one- and two-star general and flag officers, three times as fast as the increase in all officers and almost ten times as fast as the increase in enlisted personnel. If you imagine it visually, the shape of U.S. military personnel has shifted from looking like a pyramid to beginning to look more like a skyscraper.”

But the skyscraper model doesn’t mean that the armed forces are democratizing. In fact, just the opposite; they’re gaming the system to allow more and more officers to deploy the full power of the U.S. military to aid their personal lives--whether their actual work justifies it or not.

2. The generals’ flotillas. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed Arnold Punaro, a retired major general in the Marines, to head an independent review of the Pentagon’s budget. Here’s the caution he came up with: “We don’t want the Department of Defense to become a benefits agency that occasionally kills a terrorist.”

So, just how good are these benefits? For the top brass, not bad at all. According to a Washington Post investigation, each top commander has his own C-40 jet, complete with beds on board. Many have chefs who deserve their own four-star restaurants. The generals’ personal staff include drivers, security guards, secretaries, and people to shine their shoes and iron their uniforms. When traveling, they can be accompanied by police motorcades that stretch for blocks. When entertaining, string quartets are available at a snap of the fingers.

A New York Times analysis showed that simply the staff provided to top generals and admirals can top $1 million--per general. That’s not even including their own salaries--which are relatively modest due to congressional legislation--and the free housing, which has been described as “palatial.” On Capitol Hill, these cadres of assistants are called the generals’ “flotillas.”

In the case of former Army General David Petraeus, he didn’t want to give up the perks of being a four-star general in the Army, even after he left the armed forces to be director of the CIA. He apparently trained his assistants to pass him water bottles at timed intervals on his now-infamous 6-minute mile runs. He also liked “fresh, sliced pineapple” before going to bed.

3. Scandals. Despite the seemingly limitless perks of being a general, there is a limit to the military’s (taxpayer-funded) generosity. That's led some senior officers to engage in a little creative accounting. In 2012, summer the (formerly) four-star general William “Kip” Ward was caught using military money to pay for a Bermuda vacation and using military cars and drivers to take his wife on shopping and spa excursions. He traveled with up to 13 staff members, even on non-work trips, billing the State Department for their hotel and travel costs, as well as his family’s stays at luxury hotels.

In November 2012, in the midst of the Petraeus scandal, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demoted Ward to a three-star lieutenant general and ordered him to pay back $82,000 of the taxpayers’ misused money. The debt shouldn’t be hard to repay; Ward will receive an annual retirement salary of $208,802.

Panetta may have been tough--sort of--on now three-star general Ward, but he’s displayed a complete refusal to reevaluate the bloated ranks of the military generals. Unlike his predecessor, Robert Gates, who has come out publicly against the increasing number of top-ranking officers and tried to reduce their ranks, Panetta has so far refused to review their numbers and has yet to fire a single general or admiral for misconduct. He did, however, order an “ethics training” after the Petraeus scandal.

4. Warped sense of reality. After the Petraeus scandal, the million-dollar question was: Did the general who essentially built the world’s most invasive surveillance apparatus really think he could get away with carrying on a secret affair without anyone knowing? Former Secretary of State Gates has floated at least one theory at a press conference in Chicago: “There is something about a sense of entitlement and having great power that skews people’s judgement.”

A handful of retired diplomats and service members have come out in support of Gates’ thesis. Robert J. Callahan, a retired diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua, wrote an op-ed in theChicago Tribune explaining how the generals’ perks allow them to exist on a plane removed from ordinary people:

Those with a star are military nobility, no doubt, and those with four are royalty. Flying in luxurious private jets, surrounded by a phalanx of fawning aides who do everything from preparing their meals to pressing their uniform trousers, they are among America's most pampered professionals. Their orders are executed without challenge, their word is fiat. They live in a reality different from the rest of us.

Frank Wuco, a retired U.S. Naval intelligence chief, agrees.

With the senior guys and the flag officers, this is like the new royalty,” he said on his weekly radio show. “We treat them like kings and princes. These general officers in the military, at a certain point, become untouchable... In many cases, they get their own airplanes, their own helicopters. When they walk into a room, everybody comes to attention. In the case of some of them, people are very afraid to speak up or to disagree. Being separated from real life all the time in that way probably leaves them vulnerable (to lapses in moral judgement).

Sounds like a phenomenon that’s happening with another pampered sector of society (hint: Wall Street). Given the epic 2008 financial collapse, do we really want to set our security forces on a similar path of power, deception and deep, crisis-creating delusion?

5. Military golf.Of course, generals and admirals aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy some of perks of being in the U.S. armed forces. Although lower ranking service members don’t get private jets and personal chefs, U.S. taxpayers still spend billions of dollars a year to pay for luxuries that are out of reach for the ordinary American.

The Pentagon, for example, runs a staggering 234 golf courses around the world, at a cost that is undisclosed.

According to one retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, who also just happens to be the senior writer atTravel Golf, the very best military golf course in the U.S. is the Air Force Academy's Eisenhower Blue Course in Colorado Springs, CO.

He writes, “This stunning 7,000-plus yard layout shares the same foothills terrain as does the legendary Broadmoor, just 20 minutes to the south in Colorado Springs. Ponderosa pines, pinon and juniper line the fairways with rolling mounds, ponds and almost tame deer and wild turkey.” (The Department of Defense did come under fire a number of decades ago when it was discovered that the toilet seats at this course cost $400 a pop.)

And the number of golf courses is often undercounted, with controversial courses in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Mosul, Iraq, often left off the lists, which makes assessing the total costs difficult.

Yet some courses rack up staggering expenses as they become far more than mere stretches of grass.

According to journalist Nick Turse, “The U.S. Army paid $71,614 [in 2004] to the Arizona Golf Resort -- located in sunny Riyadh, Saudi Arabia... The resort actually boasts an entire entertainment complex, complete with a water-slide-enhanced megapool, gym, bowling alley, horse stables, roller hockey rink, arcade, amphitheater, restaurant, and even a cappuccino bar -- not to mention the golf course and a driving range.”

DoD's Sungnam golf course in the Republic of Korea, meanwhile, is reportedly valued at $26 million.

For non-golfers, the military also maintains a ski lodge and resort in the Bavarian Alps, which opened in 2004 and cost $80 million.

6. “The Army goes rolling along!”Vacation resorts aren’t the only explicitly non-defense-related expenditures of the Department of Defense. According to a Washington Post investigation, the DoD also spends $500 million annually on marching bands.

The Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the Marine Corps all maintain their own military bands, which also produce their own magazines and CDs.

The bands are [pun intended] “an instrument of military PR,” according to Al McCree, a retired Air Force service member who owns Altissimo Recordings, a Nashville record label featuring music of the service bands.

The CDs are--by law--distributed for free, but that doesn’t mean the private sector can’t profit off these marching bands. According to the Washington Post article, “The service CDs have also created a private, profitable industry made up of companies that obtain the band recordings under the Freedom of Information Act. They then re-press and package them for public sale.”

As if subsidizing the industry of multibillion-dollar arms dealers weren’t enough, the record industry is apparently also leeching off the taxpayer-funded military spending.

7. The Pentagon-to-Lockheed pipeline.While the exorbitant costs of private planes and hundreds of golf courses may seem bad enough, the most costly problem with the entitlement-culture of the military happens aftergenerals retire. Since they’re so used to the luxurious lifestyle, the vast majority of pension-reaping high-ranking officers head into the private defense industry.

According to William Hartung, a defense analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC, about 70 percent of recently retired three- and four-star generals went straight to work for industry giants like Lockheed Martin.

“If you don’t go into industry at this point you are the exception,” Hartung said.

This type of government-to-industry pipeline, which he said was comparable to the odious Wall Street-to-Washington revolving door, drives up the prices of weapons and prevents effective oversight of weapon manufacturing companies--all of which ends up costing taxpayers more and more each year.

“I think the overspending on the generals and all their perks is bad enough, but the revolving door and the ability of these people to cut industry a break in exchange for high salaries costs more in the long run,” said Hartung. “This can affect the price of weapons and the whole structure of how we oversee companies. It’s harder to calculate, but certainly in the billions, compared to millions spent on staff per general.”



Seems to me the army/whatever is run like any other large corporation.

The people on the frontline -- and this is quite possibly an actual frontline as opposed to just a phrase -- get crapped on and less and less whilst those at the top do better and better.

I'm sure those marching bands are tremendous fun , if that's your proverbial cuppa, but do they genuinely serve any purpose in the modern age ?


This is what Im talking about. Less Generals, more joes doing the things that we pay contractors to do now. I mean, sure every officer wants to retire a General but even a Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel retires making just as much as I currently make on active duty. Somewhere we have to quit shooting ourselves in the foot.

The other part of the spending process is different accounts and budgets for different reason. There is no incentive to save. If the commander has X amount of money for purpose A and Y amount of money for purpose B then he can not use X for B, or Y for A. Oh and if he doesn't spend it all, he gets less next time, so there is always this end of fiscal year spending burst. I mean from my end its cool, I got some nice flash lights and a cool spiderco knife but it still contributes to the problem.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 13:18:31


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A lot of people highlight the terrible waste of money in the US Military, which is a fair point, but for a long time in US politics or society, nobody seems to ask a very important question anymore:

Why does the USA need such a vast military?

What are our aims? Our Interests? etc etc

That is a national conversation that badly needs to be had.

"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd 
   
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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
A lot of people highlight the terrible waste of money in the US Military, which is a fair point, but for a long time in US politics or society, nobody seems to ask a very important question anymore:

Why does the USA need such a vast military?

What are our aims? Our Interests? etc etc

That is a national conversation that badly needs to be had.


I agree. We should pull out of NATO, quit helping everyone else police the world, and let them take the brunt of it, then I would have to pay less in taxes. Fair point. Hey UK, wanna get a glove and get in the game?

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 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah, the whole contractors/mercenary thing was/is quite an issue. One dude I knew finished his contract with the marines and was back in Iraq a month later with his old unit in the same location and operating the same piece of equipment he had when in uniform, but at several multiples his old pay and no longer under military discipline


Contracting work out is still cheaper for the govt. The govt has to invest all of the time and money into training to make sure everyone in the service has the skills they need so while the pay is lower the govt investment is higher. That same person can leave when his/her enlistment is up and get hired as a contractor with a much larger salary because they already have the skills needed to do the job. It's cheaper for the govt to hire somebody to fill a slot that is already qualified than it is to spend the time and money to create a new person to do that same job. It's also a lot easier for the military to contract out specific work to civilians than it is to try to fill niche slots through recruitment. It also lets the govt slap a temporary solution over the issue of retention and entering into prolonged conflicts without expanding the military.

We're always going to have a fethed up wasteful military budget because the budget is controlled by Congress and it's always politically expedient to spend money so Congress will make sure budget decisions also benefit themselves regardless of the impact on the military. The army can't do anything to change the fact that Congress forces them to buy tanks they don't need and the air force can't stop Congress from throwing an endless stream of money into boondoggle development projects. Everyone I know that's ex mil has a high opinion of Mattis and is happy he's SecDef but Mattis could draw up an ideal military budget that is trimmed of waste and focuses on funding a practical and effective military but Congress isn't going to just rubber stamp it so it wouldn't do any good. Congress needs to fix the problem, unfortunately Congress is the problem.

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 redleger wrote:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
A lot of people highlight the terrible waste of money in the US Military, which is a fair point, but for a long time in US politics or society, nobody seems to ask a very important question anymore:

Why does the USA need such a vast military?

What are our aims? Our Interests? etc etc

That is a national conversation that badly needs to be had.


I agree. We should pull out of NATO, quit helping everyone else police the world, and let them take the brunt of it, then I would have to pay less in taxes. Fair point. Hey UK, wanna get a glove and get in the game?


I thought Trump was pulling out of NATO anyway?

As for Britain getting in the 'game,' check your calendar. It's the 10th of March 2017, not the 10th of March 1817.

Our days of burning down the American capital, running the world, and declaring war on the Chinese when they stop buying our opium, are over.

"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
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Prestor Jon wrote:
 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah, the whole contractors/mercenary thing was/is quite an issue. One dude I knew finished his contract with the marines and was back in Iraq a month later with his old unit in the same location and operating the same piece of equipment he had when in uniform, but at several multiples his old pay and no longer under military discipline


Contracting work out is still cheaper for the govt. The govt has to invest all of the time and money into training to make sure everyone in the service has the skills they need so while the pay is lower the govt investment is higher. That same person can leave when his/her enlistment is up and get hired as a contractor with a much larger salary because they already have the skills needed to do the job. It's cheaper for the govt to hire somebody to fill a slot that is already qualified than it is to spend the time and money to create a new person to do that same job. It's also a lot easier for the military to contract out specific work to civilians than it is to try to fill niche slots through recruitment. It also lets the govt slap a temporary solution over the issue of retention and entering into prolonged conflicts without expanding the military.



Good point, to expand on it a bit you also have to consider man power caps on the services and why they have them. Also consider 'allowed footprint' in some deployment areas. If Country X only allows you to bring in 2000 soldiers, having a few hundred who do nothing but cook, wash clothes, check tire pressure on vehicles, fill sand bags, guard gates and so on is a waste. So you contract out the labor (often local which is supposed to be part of 'helping the host nation') and bring in as many trigger pullers as possible.

To my first point on man power caps, since they DO exist, you build your force structure according to the capabilities you need/anticipate needing for the long term. That tends to be along the War fighting Functional Areas. When you need short term capability, rather than grow the force (which incurs training costs, other personnel costs such as housing/retirement/medical and so on) you contract out for that capability. It may appear to be more expensive to hire a dish washer for a year than to pay a soldier to do it, but at the end of the year you don't renew the contract and the dishwasher goes away rather than is now a soldier with Dishwasher MOS you need to keep on board and keep paying for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


I thought Trump was pulling out of NATO anyway?


And his opening position to do so got several NATO countries to up their defense spending...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 16:01:59


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 BrotherGecko wrote:
I had my supply sargent just throwing cash at anything that moved so that next year we could get more.


It's like that in any organisation, the US armed forces just has a lot more cash to throw around. Even me who only did my mandatory service got to see some of it. For example, if we received more food than necessary on an outdoors training day we'd be instructed to make sure there's nothing left to send back to the kitchen because "next time they'd send us less".

You're not exactly helped by having so many different lobbyists and competing organisations though. Politicians and arms manufacturers want to sell so their states and corporations get money, no matter if the equipment is actually needed. And the airforce, army and marines insisting that they can't use the same vehicles might have some merit to it, but often it seems more like a pissing contest to see who can get the most expensive toy that the other kids can't have...
   
 
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