Posted on 02/12/2022 11:05:26 AM PST by jonrick46
Question: Do you think we spend too much on national defense?
“Do you think we spend too much on national defense?”
I was in the defense/industrial complex for 33 years. The answer is yes and no. Give me line item and contract item veto and I’d supply you with the same amount of material and technology for significantly less. Plot the purchasing on any major project and you’d have a map of the entire United States. To get funding the booty is spread into as many congressional districts as possible. For example, on how important location of jobs is, a company called Spray Cool located their plant right next to the home of the Congressman who headed the budget committee. We ended up using their ridiculous technology even though we’d proven it didn’t work. It was part of the contracts we got. So, we had to go ahead and design replacements for their part of the project, which severely affected schedule and cost. We were still buying their failed products even thought we’d proven they didn’t work. Then, every contract has gay and lesbian outreach programs, diversity programs and all kinds of special socialist propaganda training. Companies love these adders as profit is a percentage of costs.
As bleeding edge technology is very expensive companies will reach for the sky because even if it fails it may be useful on other unrelated projects and, as noted, the higher the expense the better off the company.
There are hundreds of little changes that could be made to save money. For example, we’re told to use only components that have been in production for x years. Usually, this means by the time you are building the actual hardware, say, three years after you proposed it and tested the beta units, the components are not available. The company knows this going in, but says nothing as redesigns are just funding gravy.
I could go on, but it’s pointless. Everybody knows what’s wrong with the system and how to make everything cheaper, but nobody wants to make those changes. And, if you need someone’s vote and they tell you to use fuel made from unicorn pee, you’ll gladly use fuel made from unicorn pee.
Naw.
Them there new pink battleships NEED bathrooms unique to all 46 genders.
In fact, they need to install extra 'gender-unassigned-to-be-determined' bathrooms
for the newly-discovered/created genders!
You Betcha!
/s
Yes, in the sense that government usually spends too much whenever it spends. Take out the pork, waste, graft and stuff the government doesn’t need to be doing, and you’d come closer to the right amount.
Very insightful post.
For a breakdown on spending the big items in 2019 were:
* Operations and maintenance $258 billion
* Military Personnel $153 billion
* Procurement $97 billion
* Research and Development $63
It’s certain we could shave a fair amount off procurement, but it is operations and maintenance where real savings would need to be found.
How would you know, how would anyone know, if we do or if we don’t spend too much on national defense if no one here even knows what we spend on national defense.
Sheesh!
Oh, yeah, maintenance. At the end of every budget period, we’d get a flurry of orders for stuff that would never be used. Why? To spend the budget so they’d get that much next year. How much of the overall was wasted? No idea. But the purchases came often enough that from what I saw, it was a pretty good percentage.
Another thing that would change the whole calculous is this. You may have a multiyear contract for, say 1000 items. But the money is allocated by the year. That means every item is hand built...no automation because you’d need the allocation for the total number of items in a multiyear contract to be certain and not at the whim of Congress every twelve months. So, no automation.
Thanks for your interesting post which seems to explain the FedGov's problem with full frontal nudity, violence, magical situations, [and] possible pole dancing.
(Your book covers are great too.)
With best regards and congratulations.
We definitely waste too much on it. The prices the military pays for stuff is insane bordering on legalized fraud.
Beware of the military-industrial complex, as someone warned us once.
Same goes for all the other agencies. Their goal is not to save money but to spend every last dime of their budget so they can ask for more the following year.
A better question might be, “Do you think the defense dept wisely spends the huge amount of money we give it every year?
What do you think?
At the end of every budget period, we’d get a flurry of orders for stuff that would never be used. Why? To spend the budget so they’d get that much next year.
The object of the exercise was to get as near as possible to 100% obligation rate on the available funds without incurring a violation (spending one penny more than is authorized). For a period of about 90 days after the end of the fiscal year, government contracts could be adjusted up by about 15%, so allowance had to be made to cover this possibility. And yet, comptrollers were able to hit 99+% obligation rates without incurring violations.
The magic in them thar hills was to enter contracts for services to be performed in the next fiscal year. This obligated the funds on paper. The make-believe contract could be left standing for the first quarter of the new fiscal year, and then canceled. Those funds from the expired fiscal year were then no longer obligated and could cover adjustments of other contracts after the fiscal year ended.
Not exactly legal, but it worked and could win an award for the comptroller who achieved such a high obligation rate without incurring a violation.
A popular overseas item at the end of the fiscal year was a training course back in the States. Gotta do something with the money, use a training trip to combine with annual leave. Free round trip transport and travel time did not count as leave. It was leave in conjunction with training.
As stated, all available funds had to be obligated to defend against budget cuts in the next fiscal year.
“Question: Do you think we spend too much on national defense?”
In 1949, we were on top of the world and disarmed BIG TIME. At the end of that year, we even pulled our troops out of South Korea - after all, we just won WW2, no one could mess with us. In fact, no need to spend money, after all the world was at PEACE!!!!
364 days later, we had the draft again as we had to get nearly 2,000,000 Americans in uniform to fight over there. And 4 years later, nearly 40,000 of them dead, plus 1,000,000 Koreans dead.
Bottom Line: If we want war, then yes, we spend too much today and need to cut back. If we want peace, then we should NOT be cutting back, and if anything, increasing our spending.
And yes, I know that Rand Paul will object to the above, as peace to him flies in on doves or something.
“Planes that cost $1 billion and carriers that cost $10 billion are bad investments.”
Hate to see people using numbers put out by Leftists, but I guess they control the narrative, so we might as well get used to seeing it here.
Bottom Line: Yes, if you include development costs and only build 21 bombers, then yes, they will cost $1B each. But the REAL QUESTION is why even bother developing new planes if we’re not going to produce them? Similar for carriers, build one at a time, over 10 years, and yes, it will ‘seem’ to cost a lot of money. Build 6 at once and see what happens to the per-carrier price.
Yes. Defense is now foreign welfare for Europe, Asia and Africa. It was never for this purpose.
“Thin dime? - no, red cent.”
LOL Do you understand the meaning of the word, “Paraphrased?” Apparently, not.
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