My memories are a bit different. I never fully understood why, but we never, NEVER, returned ammo to the armory. It was always expended, ooooorrrrrrrrrr buried. In all honesty, I never buried any, but knew about the practice. I had way too much fun firing whatever weapon I could get my hands on. Hell I'd shoot up all your ammo if you didn't pay attention.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

Despite a million stories like this, despite the Pentagon not being able to account for trillions of dollars in spending, despite having the largest military in the world and a military that's still larger than the next 8 largest militaries combined...we're still a nation that clamors for increasing military budgets by the billions.

Meanwhile we're in deep debt and have poor standards of health care compared to most of our developed world peers. It's mind boggling.

There is a lot of shady business going on when it comes to military contracting. If you are really against government waste, that should be your starting point.

You can love the military, but the contractors should be ashamed and possibly jailed in some cases.

Spot on.

$702 mil? Psshhh, that's just getting started.

https://www.theguardian.com/...007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

We dropped $12 billion cash in Iraq with no idea where it went. And then we think we can cut off funding for some of these guys.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Despite a million stories like this, despite the Pentagon not being able to account for trillions of dollars in spending, despite having the largest military in the world and a military that's still larger than the next 8 largest militaries combined...we're still a nation that clamors for increasing military budgets by the billions.

Meanwhile we're in deep debt and have poor standards of health care compared to most of our developed world peers. It's mind boggling.


X 1,000,000


I worked for a company, about twenty years ago. We had contracts in Camp Pendleton working in many housing communities. This one neighborhood of 110 houses we replaced all the carpet, vinyl flooring, and window covering, and there were other contractors replacening windows. and painting the houses.

About 8 months later we were doing another community on the base. I decided to drive over to see how our work was holding up on the first job. Dude I was shocked! They bulldozed down all those house (110) we just had redone, to start building new houses. What a colossal waste of man-hours and money!!!

I also have a buddy who worked for Lincoln Welders as a CAD mechanical drafter where he worked his ass off for ok pay. He got a new job last year working for a YUGE local Defense contractor, he was hired along with 20 other drafters. He has been there for about a year now and told me that in one week working at Lincoln he did more work than he and all 20 other new workers have in one year. He says it is sooo boring people are sleeping, playing video games, and even watching movies. Even though it is boring he stays there because it gives him time to study to become an engineer, plus the pay and benefits are good. He says they hire all these workers just to justify the huge amount of money they get for their contracts.


I can imagine this kind of waste is just a tip of a humongous iceberg,

It's not just the military. Few years back we did some work for the one of the post office's distribution facilities. Did about $100k in modifications to the existing rooftop heat/ac units. Just about a year later, we get an invitation to bid the replacement of all the existing rooftops units. Same ones they just spent $100k on.
Post office had built a brand new 100,000 sq ft $6.5 million mail sorting facility. About a month after they finished, the post office decided to consolidate their operations and closed the facility and moved all the mail to another facility.

Used to do some work at the local VA. Every 2-3 years they would replace over 1000 laptops just to spend all of their budget money each fiscal year. If they didn't spend the budget they were allocated, their budget would be shrunk the next year to what they spent the previous year regardless if they had large expenditures coming up the next fiscal year.

My mother-in-law used to tell me stories of the waste she saw when she worked at Social Security.

It's not a military problem, it's a government problem.

It is a government problem, but the military is the biggest offender. They have the least accountability for the money. And it seems like they are getting rewarded for all their waste with a bigger budget.

A lot of people think that cutting the budget of the military puts the troops at more risk. No, the contractors are putting the troops at risk by wasting/stealing money.

"It's not a military problem, it's a government problem. "

Exactly. The government exists to spend money, not turn a profit. They certainly pay lip service to spending tax dollars wisely, but I think it's safe to say government service is a very different fiscal culture

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

But I am sure if we had the government run all healthcare (18% of the GDP) through single payer they would get it right!


It is pretty simple and human nature;

In a free market you have to compete with high risk. Produce a product or sevice faster, better or cheaper and you may succeed. If not you will fail and pay a price until you get it right.

Government rewards the fail.

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." Thomas Sowell

I hear ya! One day we're in uniform distributing water to HX survivors; or, leaping out of Jeeps, er, HMMWVs, er well MRAPs these days evil assault rifle in hand ready to do battle with the enemy of freedoms. The next day we're in mufti either greeting folks at Walmart or evil slimy contractors hell bent on bilking taxpayers out of millions and jeopardizing the readiness, health, success, and general well being of those simpletons in uniform who were too dumb to get a 'real job.'

I find the money making side of the contracting world extremely distasteful--which i guess is why i will never really be 'successful' as a contractor. What i enjoy is still being relevant and helping the young men and women in today's military come to grips with an implacable enemy and kill them. **public disclaimer--as a 'contractor' i am NEVER in the kill chain. Ever.** So i enjoy helping the current generation with some skillz that i have that are still relevant. While i may never get to eat the dinner--i do enjoy setting the table and watching the younger generation eat.

What i HATE is when my company tries to get me to do BD. I despise that. I'm not good at that. It's not why i am there--at least in my view.

Not why i am still volunteering to help out with this endeavor. Not interested in that in the least.

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Steve

We had a seriously, seriously STRAC Marine O3 for a company commander. Honor graduate at OCS and TBS both as well as the Infantry Officer Course. He was a genius but, like I said, a little uptight. Every single round was accounted for -- and I don't think he'd have had a problem with it being expended (definitely NOT buried, though) -- but once the red star cluster was fired for ENDEX that was it. You turned in and properly accounted for the ammunition, lensatic compasses, starlight scopes, 782 gear and everything and anything else that was signed out.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

My next-to-twilight-tour (I got to spend that out in Hawaii at MCBH :-), I was the medical supply department head at a medium-size naval hospital. Every year, I'd get a "money dump" additional allocation, from the Navy's medical department (Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, or BUMED, at the time) around Labor Day weekend.

One year, it was $4 million, another year $5 million. I had just the month of September to get it all spent, and it's harder than you think, at a smallish-medium-size Navy hospital, to do that. We'd put out a general call to each clinic, department, division, physician and so forth to make up their wish lists, put each item on the list on a purchase document and get them to me and my civilian assistant so that we could get the ball rolling.

I had permission to put all the civilians in my purchasing section on overtime for the month, too. They loved that. And we needed the OT to get everything bought, though I can tell you that we didn't need half the crap we ended up purchasing. If I hadn't gotten a minimum of 98% of that money dump "obligated" (i.e. spent) I would have gotten marked down on my annual officer fitness report (FITREP), I can tell you. Fortunately, I knew how spend it (top marks at the Navy's medical supply officer training course ;-) and my civilian assistant was twice as good as me at it.

Sadly, this goes on all over DOD, in very service branch -- with the possible exception of the Marine Corps, I have to say. I was I&I of the 4th Medical Battalion. My bosses were as tight-fisted as they came and were proud to turn money back into HQMC and MARFORRES every year, LOL!

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Happens all over the Corps as well, even MARFORRES. I did two I&I tours during my career. As a SNCO and CWO/LDO so I was involved with the command's budget both times.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody