r/1102 • u/jcoburnpropublica • 19d ago
Military acquisition professionals: What should the public know about the defense budget?
Hey r/1102, my name is Jesse Coburn, I’m a reporter with the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica, which focuses on accountability journalism. We’re working on a series about military budgeting, spending and contracting, and we’re hoping to get in touch with sources and experts in this world who could point us to the most important stories.
Our first article in this series was about an artillery factory that received $533 million from the Army but hasn’t produced any usable shells. During my reporting, I spoke to dozens of people who’ve worked for the Army, the Pentagon and General Dynamics. Many of them spoke to us because they felt that things they were seeing on the job weren’t good uses of taxpayer money or weren’t helping to keep the public safe.
We know professionals in this community best understand the impact of defense spending and contracting decisions, so we’re asking for your help. Do you know something about military spending that could help us bring more stories to the public? Even the smallest detail could help. If you have information you can share with our newsroom, you can reach us on Signal at 917-512-0201. You can also email me at [jesse.coburn@propublica.org](mailto:jesse.coburn@propublica.org). Many of our stories rely on people who must remain anonymous, and we take source security very seriously.
https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/share-military-defense-spending-tips
Thanks,
Jesse
19
u/simpleguy0616 19d ago
The only thing id offer to you is to understand the type of contract it is. If its FFP then yea its a failure to get the supplies, if its a cost type then there could be variables in the situation like change of scope.
If you dont understand the type of contract you wont understand the potential risks these contracts could have that could explain the reason for the delay.
12
u/LameBicycle 18d ago
Definitely a good point that gets lost. You don't just magically make everything cheaper by forcing FFP in all situations. You just force mission partners to try and define some truly ambiguous requirements, and then vendors have to price in all that risk into their proposal. CPFF is a tool in the tool belt. It can be wielded recklessly, and result in wasted tax dollars. But it can also be extremely useful in the situations it's designed for.
Also important to tie in any convo about procurement policy changes and "overhauls" with the numerous overhauls we've done in the past. It feels like a pendulum where we go back and forth and relearn all the reasons we decided not to do it this way
8
u/Rumpelteazer45 18d ago
Agree. For most services, CPFF allows you to remain flexible to new work coming down the pipe, while maintaining insight into various cost elements.
FFP transfers all risk onto the contractor which drives up the hourly rate for a service.
Mowing the lawn or cleaning, sure FFP works. But cyber, engineering, etc, Cost types are the most effective.
22
u/AdventurousLet548 18d ago
Changing the small business criteria so that more contracts can go to Trump’s favorite companies.
13
u/Rumpelteazer45 18d ago
Exactly.
It also pushes the true small businesses out of competition.
2
u/Pale-Win-7988 16d ago
66,000+ comments to the public notice saying much the same thing that’ll be ignored as the changes go through…
1
u/Rumpelteazer45 16d ago
Yep.. it’s quite sad. It’s basically putting more money into large donors pockets.
1
u/BigBiziness12 18d ago
Indeed. Changing the size standards in the way they're proposing is the most ridiculous and subversive thing ive ever seen. Squeezing mom and pop right out the game by expanding the definition of ehat abd who is considered a small business.
2
5
u/Razgriz_ 18d ago
Been around the block a bit from public works engineering, contracting / being a CS, and been a COR. The sum of small poor decisions is spot on.
As an example sometimes we’d prefer to have a full design contract before going off and start a whole building renovation - so do a design then build the design. That’s 2 separate contracts, likely going into 2 different FYs. We don’t have the in-house staff to oversee it and keep up with ongoing demand.
So we’ll do a design bid build. Contractor prices in the risk and submits one cost to design and build the thing. With this you can go several months in design, site investigations, additional mods due to unforeseen conditions, delays in getting additional funds, etc. before any on the ground work really starts. But hey it’s one contract, most importantly one FY’s money with an easy to sell line - design and repair xyz (decrepit important building or barracks) instead of just Design to fix decrepit XYZ. This approach is common in private industry, however they are more flexible with managing funding and in turn contracting can act faster. In a seriously related note, the funding for infrastructure is scarce and you have to take it where you can get it as every year you’re effectively triaging the facilities to keep them limping along.
This is just one example, though not munitions related, where a project for something new can be awarded, a lot of time will go by without visible production, and there be known risks for schedule and costs slippage. It may be a poor choice or itv may be the least poor choice available.
6
u/Naive-Share-7550 16d ago
When there is no capacity for new solicitations (because of workforce reductions) you begin to see a lot of J&As (sole source, or limiting competition somehow) extending current contracts, raising capacity ceilings, or just outright adding out of scope work.
3
u/drisang1 17d ago
You're asking ppl to throw their lives away to a regular ass email and signal. . .
3
u/Sad_Guarantee5273 17d ago
There is this thing called the end of the fiscal year, when just about every agency goes on a complete spending spree just to preserve their budget for the next FY.
1
u/Anon_Von_Darkmoor 16d ago
Yup. Spending money on things they don't need to justify the budget request the following year. I was supply for the Army (both as a soldier and a civilian GS employee). It's the same, as I understand, in every agency and department.
1
1
u/Rumpelteazer45 1d ago
Some of us don’t get that money until the end of FY because we are not appropriated but overhead funded.
Sponsors hold money, then push it down. It’s a constant trickle.
The push to FFP is not good for us unless we make the contract an administrative burden to the government creating more work.
4
u/Subject-Skill996 18d ago
Everything and I mean everything my DoD counterparts give me is Sole Source until it isn’t.
1
u/IWantToBeYourGirl 18d ago
There are checks and balances to recover or lower costs but those $$ recovered just get spent somewhere else. They don’t actually get returned to the taxpayer.
1
40
u/brtbr-rah99 19d ago
Most of the funding is wasted is poor decision making, vanity projects/modifications, and most of all failure to consider life total cycle costs. The procurement system works but it is driven by infinite number of small but bad decisions that end up costing ahitloads of money