Pentagon moves to bury report on $125 billion in wasteful adminstrative costs

[Brainonska511]

Link to Washington Post

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.
...
For the military, the major allure of the study was that it called for reallocating the $125 billion for troops and weapons. Among other options, the savings could have paid a large portion of the bill to rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, or the operating expenses for 50 Army brigades.

Looks like there is some money within the Defense Department's budget that's just being wasted, but it seems like they don't want that to come to light.

 

[master_shake_]

25 billion a year?

damn!

now that's a spicy meataball!

 

[Victorian Gray]

Link to Washington Post



Looks like there is some money within the Defense Department's budget that's just being wasted, but it seems like they don't want that to come to light.

You might find this DOD report and accompanying articles of some interest.

http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2016-113.pdf

and a couple of articles:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/...ookkeeping-Means-65-Trillion-Can-t-Pass-Audit

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/03/28/Why-Pentagon-Needs-Audit-Now

 

[ivwshane]

Speaking of a federal departments budget I'd like to cut!

 

[Fenixgoon]

Speaking of a federal departments budget I'd like to cut!

prettymuch the only department you can cut the budget from, outside of social services. every other department is noise compared to those two

 

[superstition]

rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal

That's what we need!

Because nukes won't nuke if they've "aged".

 

[Brainonska511]

That's what we need!

Because nukes won't nuke if they've "aged".

They do need to be functional and useable to actually function as a deterrent.

 

[IEC]

That's what we need!

Because nukes won't nuke if they've "aged".

The nukes themselves (i.e. fissile material) may work fine. The delivery and initiation systems might not.

 

[Jaskalas]

The nukes themselves (i.e. fissile material) may work fine. The delivery and initiation systems might not.

Hopefully they're not dumb enough to connect any modern system to the internet.

 

[Jhhnn]

The nukes themselves (i.e. fissile material) may work fine. The delivery and initiation systems might not.

It seems highly likely that units are rotated thru a refurb & testing program- everything but the boom.

 

[Balt]

Hopefully they're not dumb enough to connect any modern system to the internet.

Don't worry. It's all run over a DoD-only network they call Skynet.

 

[IronWing]

It seems highly likely that units are rotated thru a refurb & testing program- everything but the boom.

Actually, the booms have to be refurbished due to the build up of daughter products over time.

 

[Paratus]

prettymuch the only department you can cut the budget from, outside of social services. every other department is noise compared to those two

NASA for example had a budget of $19B in FY 16 if I remember correctly.

 

[Fenixgoon]

NASA for example had a budget of $19B in FY 16 if I remember correctly.

not sure where you are going with that exactly. just to put the NASA budget in perspective, its entire budget is exceeded by the yearly estimated administrative waste of the DoD (19B vs 25B).

 

[Paratus]

not sure where you are going with that exactly. just to put the NASA budget in perspective, its entire budget is exceeded by the yearly estimated administrative waste of the DoD (19B vs 25B).

Just agreeing that most other departments and even agencies are rounding errors compared to the DOD.

 

[FIVR]

The US defense budget is patently absurd and is constantly used a rationalization for starting conflicts all over the world. It is an order of magnitude higher than any rational nation (i.e. NOT Saudi Arabia) would ever allow to exist.

 

[Paladin3]

I enjoy having a large American military, but have always understood that they were culturally inefficient and wasteful. Ask not why or attempt to improve efficiency, just follow SOP to the letter. Ideally twice, with double the resources and at half-speed to ensure we get it correct.

Our military is run by old men who have no concept of running a mean, lean, efficient operation that doesn't waste the taxpayer's money.

 

[trenchfoot]

Wow, that's a lot of office supplies being taken home.

Short blurb on wasting time on the gov't's dime.

While driving off base after work some time ago with a buddy of mine, he asked me why there were so many cars coming on base when it was already quitting time and the swing shift had already clocked in.

I told him most were goof offs that were hiding off base coming back in to clock out as evidenced by the large number of gov't vehicles that were in the mix.

 

[Paladin3]

Wow, that's a lot of office supplies being taken home.

Short blurb on wasting time on the gov't's dime.

While driving off base after work some time ago with a buddy of mine, he asked me why there were so many cars coming on base when it was already quitting time and the swing shift had already clocked in.

I told him most were goof offs that were hiding off base coming back in to clock out as evidenced by the large number of gov't vehicles that were in the mix.

Many people falsely believe governments, corporations or whatever big tit they are suckling from is an endless resource so that they can justify their wastefulness and, in some instances, outright theft of those resources. Wealth and resources are a finite commodity on this planet, the more we waste the less we all have.

 

[agent00f]

The US defense budget is patently absurd and is constantly used a rationalization for starting conflicts all over the world. It is an order of magnitude higher than any rational nation (i.e. NOT Saudi Arabia) would ever allow to exist.

You have that backwards. Defense spending is basically lucrative white welfare, and the constant conflicts bombing some expendable/hapless brownies back to the stone age are used as a justification to keep up the payouts. Improving efficiency runs rather counter to the point.

Keep in mind its biggest fans are often those mouthing off about welfare queens when they're clearly the biggest queens of that description by far.

 

[shortylickens]

I enjoy having a large American military, but have always understood that they were culturally inefficient and wasteful. Ask not why or attempt to improve efficiency, just follow SOP to the letter. Ideally twice, with double the resources and at half-speed to ensure we get it correct.

Our military is run by old men who have no concept of running a mean, lean, efficient operation that doesn't waste the taxpayer's money.

This is so fucking true.

I saw an obscene example of massive government waste at least once a month while I was in the Navy. Made me sick.
Really hoping 25 billion a year goes right into our schools. But thats not likely.

 

[superstition]

They do need to be functional and useable to actually function as a deterrent.

Maybe if you hire foreign spies to monitor all your equipment.

I am willing to be that we have plenty of functional nukes.

 

[Ancalagon44]

And people give Trump stick when he says the order for Air Force One should be cancelled when the cost estimate for the project balloons from $1.65 billion to $4 billion. Clearly, something is wrong when your estimate is so far off.

Anyway, kinda not surprising, if disheartening. Everyone knows the military industrial complex of the USA is bloated and inefficient. The disheartening part is that those at the top want to keep it that way.

I also think this shows how bad the procurement processes must be. The F35 disaster, for instance, is likely due to this culture. The inability to retire the A10 (because there is nothing to replace it) is due to this culture.

Heck maybe the next Presidential campaign should focus on sorting this mess out.

 

[HomerJS]

They do need to be functional and useable to actually function as a deterrent.

Just curious, I don't know the exact number but it's known we have 20,000 nukes. How would anyone know if all work or only a few hundred? Maybe we only need others to "think" all 20K are operational. We can save the extra $$$

 

[Brainonska511]

And people give Trump stick when he says the order for Air Force One should be cancelled when the cost estimate for the project balloons from $1.65 billion to $4 billion. Clearly, something is wrong when your estimate is so far off.

A thread in OT has been talking about this, but there is much more to the story than a simple number of $4 billion.

I also think this shows how bad the procurement processes must be. The F35 disaster, for instance, is likely due to this culture. The inability to retire the A10 (because there is nothing to replace it) is due to this culture.

Part of the reason the A10 can't be retired is because Congress has forbidden its retirement. It seems unclear how useful the A10 would be against targets that have any real anti-air capability and many close-air support missions have been run by non-A10 aircraft, thanks to guided munitions.

Heck maybe the next Presidential campaign should focus on sorting this mess out.

I bet that would go over like a lead balloon. I bet most people would just hear "so and so wants to cut the defense budget and that will make us less safe."

Just curious, I don't know the exact number but it's known we have 20,000 nukes. How would anyone know if all work or only a few hundred? Maybe we only need others to "think" all 20K are operational. We can save the extra $$$

I have no idea either. I don't think we have tens of thousands of deployed warheads. But there are two major costs: the delivery systems and the warheads. I would guess both need money to keep them functioning, even if we only want to keep hundreds to a few thousand in working order.