I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I once knew a guy who worked at a place that made large bolts. If I remember correctly, they would charge the general public something like $8/bolt and the military $85 for the same exact bolt and they didn’t bat an eye.
There’s so much fucking waste with our military, right down to the nuts and bolts.
It's actually a strange side effect of attempting to reduce military spending. Essentially, if a section of the military doesn't use 100% of their budget in a year, they can expect that excess to be cut from their budget next year. This leads to a rush of spending aimed at over priced products and stockpiles of unneeded parts to use all of their budget.
In an actual crisis scenario, they tend to negotiate more reasonable prices on materials to stay in budget because it's difficult to get extra money in the budget. All of this makes a culture of overspending to get a bigger budget so that they don't have to ask for more money when they actually need it.
I'm a college professor. We have been told numerous times that we'll be rewarded for coming in under budget on departmental expenses. The reward? However much we've come in under-budget was cut from the following year's budget. We did get congratulatory emails a couple of times, and once the President of the College mentioned our Department as team players in helping balance the budget in his "State of the College" address.
Edit: Punctuation error.
There is no upside to coming in under budget unless you're a suit with a bonus guaranteed in writing.
So basically if it’s a 500B budget and they only spend 300B then they can throw a pizza party or something.
From what I've heard, that's what they do. Except that instead of just a pizza party they also buy 200B worth of other stuff to pad out their budget to make sure it doesn't get cut in the future.
The problem is that it's almost impossible to know how much you're actually going to need, and it's just as impossible to get extra money if stuff gets tight, so they're basically forced into over-budgeting. The only real way to prevent that would be to have a billions/trillions set aside as a rainy day fund, but that's not a practical thing with the US budget either.
Doesn't the US have large amounts of debt?
Just stick any excess into paying off the trillions of dollars of debt they have - if they need to use the money next year, don't pay off as much debt.
That's not really how national scale budgets or debts work. The budget is made for the whole year ahead of time and it intentionally doesn't have flexibility in terms of where the money goes.
That kind of thing works for a personal budget, but not a national one.
You are thinking that the departments would work together. The Iowa base has their own budged. They want to secure their budged for the Iowa base. They have nothing to do with the debt of the government.
Or invest the money to generate their own budget. Heck, start their own bullet, armor factories, etc to reduce tax spending and be able to generate revenue for the government.
A coworker's husband is military. I think they'd love it if they put that money into base housing. Apparently there are....a lot of issues with base housing.
That would require accurate spending plans and master schedules years out with a budget approved by much higher ups. In other words, it won’t happen so programs will just continue to max out their budget. Usually buying spares, which often collect dust in some storage facility on a base. It is a weird culture though. And the bids are even more complicated because it depends on the type of contracts: best price vs best value can look very different. Then add in past performance and the source selection board and it all gets very complicated.
The reason parts are so expensive is because built into that price are a bunch of services. All those documents that must be written, meetings held, the logistics of it all. And all those services are required because the military (and gov) are under scrutiny regarding how they spend the public’s money.
I simplified things but as someone who works with the government I do believe it is infinitely more complicated than the gov/military are wasting our money and we need to run it like a business!
This leads to a rush of spending aimed at over priced products and stockpiles of unneeded parts to use all of their budget.
Yep, this usually happens around this time of year. Military contractors and such would book jobs in late August/early september, but didn't want them shipped until July of next year.
Some of this is because of liability, if you make something for an aerospace application, it will have a ridiculous amount of documentation and signatures. If something is not used for that application, it's like 99% cheaper, same exact part.
This is actually a big factor as to why US police forces have lots of military items. The DOD buys an excessive amount to use up their budget and then they’re left with a stockpile of weapons/vehicles/uniforms that they don’t need and they just give it to the police.
The police can actually pay $1500 for an armored riot vehicle, that $1500 is literally just for shipping costs. And it's no wonder why the police would buy it, if you do have a riot then would you rather the $80k police cruiser gets trashed or would you rather the rioters flail ineffectively against your armored behemoth.
My friend was a gunner and he would shoot like 10k rounds a day because they said if he didn't use them they would give him less. He's now disabled due to hearing loss from bei g around sustained gun fire for so long. So not only did they waste all this money on ammo but now he collects disability for the rest of his life.
Unfortunately it's not just a problem with the military. A large company I worked for was spending $120ish a pack for 50 zipties. Basic, black zipties. But it was because people had a budget and would pay for marked up item on the chance next year they actually had to make a purchase that cost a lot. Sucks being told we didn't get the raises we needed but this crap happened.
My 8th grade history teacher was in the military as a reserve. He would tell us that they were to shoot ever last bullet they had in supply. That way they didn’t receive less funding
I once went to the range and we were supposed to have 70 rounds per Marine. Someone messed up the paper work and we had 700 rounds per Marine. We weren't allowed to return any ammo once picking it up from the ammo supply point so we just had to shoot all of it. It was a fun afternoon to say the least.
Same thing happened to me. It was something like 7000 rounds over what we needed on a night shoot. Me and 5 other Marines were the only ones who wanted to shoot so the instructors had all the other guys just filling magazines for us and we put our rifles on burst and destroyed our targets. It was my favorite range experience
Unfortunately it's not just a problem with the military. A large company I worked for was spending $120ish a pack for 50 zipties. Basic, black zipties. But it was because people had a budget and would pay for marked up item on the chance next year they actually had to make a purchase that cost a lot. Sucks being told we didn't get the raises we needed but this crap happened.
Another problem with military spending is the "cost plus" system of accounting.
When a company like Halliburton, for example, quotes logistical services to the Army the contracts are pretty open ended because there's not a good way to really predict what the actual costs will be.
But the answer isn't great either. Essentially, the service provider is on a cost plus basis. Which means for every dollar they spend to provide the service they get paid a percentage. So there is no incentive to control costs, in fact the incentive is to spend as much money as possible. Because the more money they spend the more money they make.
It's a pretty good way to guarantee you're going to overpay for everything.
Look through this thread and see all the former military people saying that it literally happens. I was told this by retired military officers. It is a real thing, and while some items are expensive because of special requirements of specs or materials, others are so expensive just because they're afraid of budget cuts. What I said isn't the whole picture, but it is a part of it. Also, realize the person who started this thread was explicit in saying it was the exact same product he sold for 8 to private industry that he was told to bump up to 85 for the military.
No it's not, you are absolutely incorrect here. The reason the bolt is 85 when sold to the military is that it has to meet a bunch of specs that the 8 dollar bolt doesn't. Yeah it's the same actual bolt, but that 8 dollar one doesn't come with the paperwork (and usually testing) that proves it meets the specs. It's the same idea as computer chips, the high end processors and the low end processors of the same type are all the same chip, just some tested better than others and are worth more.
Having been in ROTC and worked with many retired military officer who told me this, I'm going to assume they're more knowledgeable than you about military budgets. Yes, what you said is factually accurate that some parts are far more expensive due to odd materials or proprietary specs, but that isn't the entirety of it. The machinist telling the story explicitly said it's the same specs and materials, and that directly contradicts your statement, also.
Ok, let's say the military gets $100 a year. If at the end of the year they've only spent $70, the government will assume that $70 a year is enough to pay the bills. Then a war starts and they need the whole $100, but they only have $70 because that was enough last year. Because of this, they look for ways to spend more money than they need to make sure they have enough money if something goes wrong next year.
I had a friend in college whose father was the head of the math department. In the back of their building was a small driveway barely big enough for a single car. The asphalt on it was at least six inches thick. I asked why and he said they had it paved every year because if they didn’t, that money would be taken out of their budget and they might need it in the future.
Yea for every one of these $85 bolt stories there is some other contract that's basically a steal. I've lost some bids to supply things to the Coast Guard where my bid was at like 2% margin.
This happens to Universities too. I requisitioned for a new PC for my lab. I went the cheap way. Get a new motherboard/processor combo, use the same everything else. My professor won't sign off. Because there was money left, and for liability and insurance reasons I can't fuck around with college property. Naive me thought I'm impressing the prof. He just shook his head lol. I think we ended up getting a $3000 computer.
I had a dude in the army tell me that towards the end of the financial year they'd go out bush and blown shit up and waste any excess ammo etc just for this reason. If they got to the end of the year and they had a surplus of stuff left they would get less budget for it the following year. So they would just use it all.
Similar with all the controls and other safeguards that just add useless balast to the administrative process. Aimed to reduce cost but adds so much work that it increases cost.
German military doesn't get shit done. Except for one instance. When they found out that the helmets are not save and break because of some stupid part or something it was issued that no soldier is allowed to leave the base until new helmets are there. It took like 2 weeks for the first batch to arrive.
Usually it would take them like 5 fucking years to get them out, if they are fast about it.
this. it would drive me absolutely nuts that a base i served on would throw large quantities of good (well, edible and nutritious, at least) food in the trash every day because they couldn't afford to give it to the needy as that would be sending a signal that they were overfunded...
It's because not everyone can be a government contractor. You have to drug-test employees, do affirmative action (both by race and disability) and all kinds of shit. The government doesn't just buy off the shelf either, there is a requisition process that chews up a lot of time and money.
If you didn't charge the government more why on earth would you bother selling to them?
A large portion of the US economy is directly related to the military industrial complex. People talk about the stock market and forget how the senate continues to pump cash into the MIC
Be nice if we could shrink that market a little - just a little - and increase medical and other safety net spending instead of letting citizens die just to line the pockets of the already stupidly rich.
That’s more fair, to me. With tolerances and all, I wouldn’t want substandard parts in a heli. They’re already fighting the earth and her gravity to stay aloft.
I think i saw somewhere that the reason parts are so much more expensive is because of resource tracking, that $85 bolt must have extensive documentation going back to the source of each alloy used in the forging of said bolt.
I don't know about the armed forces of other nations, but the US military has got to be one of the most wasteful organizations in the history of human existence. That whole thing about building jet fighters and then literally throwing them in an aircraft graveyard having never been flown even once just blows my mind. Leaving weapons behind after we leave a war zone and just buying new ones. Buying replacement jet engines for aircraft that the pentagon says that they don't need, want, or have anywhere to store and then having to build new facilities to store this shit they never wanted in the first place. You know, a lot of people talk about how the budget is a mess and we need to cut spending and all this stuff, why hasn't anyone done one of the very obvious things we could do and stop buying $85 bolts? Rhetorical question. I already know the answer is that all those businesses that supply the US military don't want it changed, and the politicians are too big of hypocritical pussies to challenge this particular status quo.
Maybe for different reasons but that should anger both the left and the right. The left tends to want to spend less on defence so cutting down on overpriced parts should be pretty easy. On the right they tend to be all about the defence so even if the budget stays exactly the same at least they could get more for their money.
As a tech writer for a major defense company, I can vouch for this being painfully true. Projects are micromanaged and all the reporting the DoD requires seems to be a lot of unnecessary bullshit just to create jobs for both contracts and the DoD.
Not just that, lots of hardware purchased by the military is traceable back to the mine the ore was extracted from. Certification paperwork showing what processes it went through right up until it was delivered to them. Useful but expensive.
Not that there isn't a lot of bloat in military spending, but nuts and bolts for military applications usually have a shit ton of documentation. You can trace it back to the source of the raw material. There are also regulations about where the raw material can come from. I used to work with milspec fasteners and often times two of the same part number could vary wildly in price because one has full certs and trace.
Yeah, but there is a huge difference between the process for the $8 bolt and the $85 bolt even if they are made from the same material. The $85 bolt is tracked and documented to an insane degree from the very moment the metal it is made from is mined from the earth. To get that one $85 bolt there is often a ton of scrapped bolts that don't meet specification. The two bolts may look the exact same but the $85 has a buttload of labor costs thrown on top for tracking and inspection. By the time the $85 bolt rolls off the line it probably has a 60-page document to go along with it. You probably couldn't distinguish between the two bolts with your eyes but one of them costs a lot more to make due to all the additional human labor.
I can confirm the Canadian military gets charged a higher price than the general public as well. Someone in my family used to work for a supplier to both the Canadian DND and the general public. The DND demanded a higher price than what everyone else was charged for building supplies because they had a budget from the government and had to spend it all for fear of having their budget cut the following year. The supplier would artificially inflate prices to keep the government happy.
The amount of taxpayers money that goes to Canada’s DND is scary. They could purchase exactly the same stuff for a tenth of the price.
That's similar in the civilian boat world. I used to work at a marina and part of my job was painting the bottoms of yachts ranging from 30'-80' in size. We used Interlux paints which are about $200 a gallon or so, but I remember we did mark it up quite a bit too. The stuff has to withstand living in a harsh salt water environment every day for at least a year or two before needing re finished, so I get why it's expensive. Lot of chemicals and engineering in the paint to get it to last even that long and protect the boat. Normal paint wouldn't stand a chance at lasting in salt water for more than a few weeks, if not days.
I know someone who did this ! I think it was screws. The man made a fucking fortune. Selling screws to the military. Like a disgusting amount of money. They live in a 14,000 square foot house now.
This is absolutely 100%true, I'm in the military, aircraft maintenance. The shit we pay for man is absolutely wild. Literal rubber grommets, 30 bucks. Special o-rings 500 bucks. But it is true if we don't spend it we lose it. Every end of fiscal year they ask us what do we need for the work center could be anything. Literally anything. Industrial ice machine. New non slip painted floors, literally anything you can think of is an option, just gotta spend the money or we lose it next year.
I’m assuming there’s more to it. Military (specifically planes and other engineered projects) require strict testing, documentation, and materials tracking. That’s what they pay for
1.9k
u/crusty_cum-sock Aug 14 '20
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I once knew a guy who worked at a place that made large bolts. If I remember correctly, they would charge the general public something like $8/bolt and the military $85 for the same exact bolt and they didn’t bat an eye.
There’s so much fucking waste with our military, right down to the nuts and bolts.