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

[Ancalagon44]

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 understand why it is expensive - what I can't understand is why the current expected budget is so much higher than the original. The original budget would have taken into account the advanced security, safety, electronic and facility related requirements of the POTUS. That it was so badly missed is the problem.

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.

Last I heard, there are particular missions that the A10 is suited for, that no other airframe is suited for. I heard it was more of a fight between the different branches of the military and has nothing to do with the A10 being overdue for retirement. I heard that they cannot retire it because quite simply nothing is as good for the role that it plays.

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."

Not cut budget, just spend it wiser. Ie we can have new weapons on the battlefield in 5 years instead of 20.

See this for an example of a screw up that did not need to happen. If military spending was less wasteful, they would have been able to afford the warheads. Because of the pork barrel way that procurement is possible, the US military ends up not being able to afford the hardware that it actually wants to purchase.

 

[K1052]

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 $$$

We're actually done to under 5,000 now and about 1500 of those are active. The rest are in the hedge (usable but not deployed on delivery systems) and the inactive reserve (can be made ready but lack ready delivery systems).

It's still going to cost a boatload of money to build new ones and the accompanying delivery systems. We've largely been coasting on money spent at the end of the cold war with respect to the strategic deterrent. Stuff is getting old.

 

[piasabird]

We could probably save about 500 billion just by moving the capital to a more central location. That is just in travel costs. There is no real reason to have a capital on the east coast where any ship can come along side and use short range rockets to attack the white house.

 

[shortylickens]

We could probably save about 500 billion just by moving the capital to a more central location. That is just in travel costs. There is no real reason to have a capital on the east coast where any ship can come along side and use short range rockets to attack the white house.

You never actually served in the Navy, did you?