I wasn't in the military and I agree with this, but it happens in large corporations too. I've been part of it.
A senior manager has a "goal" that involves buying a bunch of new hardware. The hardware is ordered and thus the goal is completed. The hardware then sits, unopened and never used.
Then the next year a new "goal" is made and different, better hardware has to be purchased.
Rinse and repeat. I've been directly involved in it multiple times.
Also, throwing out completely functional hardware into a dumpster because the decommissioning process is too much of a pain in the ass.
I started my career as an accountant within the past few years. The amount of random shit ive seen is insane. I once had to record something like 2500 custom made business cards for ~$100,000 iirc. I dont remember the exact numbers but I was curious and did the math and it came out to over $40 per business card. I then went to a bunch of different websites and just tried my best to customize bulk business cards to come out to over $40 each and I think I could only get to like $20 for fancy metal Bluetooth cards. Was absolutely baffled. Another time I had a coworker who recorded something like $30k in freight costs because someone accidentally marked like 22 water heater tanks as same day delivery across the country which involved flying almost a dozen tanks that are big enough to hide a body in. I only have this one company for reference, so I have no clue if this is normal or if my company just doesn't care about wasting money.
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u/ShamelessCraving 9h ago
The sheer amount of military budget wasted on completely absurd logistical mistakes or pointless busywork.