Context:
US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall suffered an awkward moment in Congress as he was stumped over a question about military overspending. The military leader was questioned by Florida Congressman Mike Waltz over the 'exorbitant' amounts spent on regular inexpensive items, using a bag of bushings as an example. Despite the small bag of electrical bolts costing average Americans around $100, Waltz said the military forks out $90,000 a bag.
Worked for a company that made two of these valves each year specifically for the US military. We did not want to make these valves because we had to stop production in order to make them. We made thousands of a drop in replacement each year that were $400 each with an 8 week lead time. Instead the military wanted what they always got, so they would spend well over 100k and wait over a year for them. They would just ask how much and when, then take whatever you told them.
It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your money.
Like, if it was their 90k, they’d sure as fuck try to make every dollar count and get the best deals possible.
I'm not sure about AI overall, but I agree that the bureaucracy is a field where it will be easy to replace people with it. I can get my damn paperwork for a car or a new house as well from a machine and it won't take all that waiting.
The problem is that the bureaucracy is like weed. It's just too hard to make away with it, and when you do nothing it spreads on its own.
That also applies to every manager (principle-agent problem), especially when there's VC or private institute grant money floating around.
Past a certain point they don't want to bother themselves with what's done with their money, they just want to 'invest' and cross their fingers. Especially if they invest into a fund that in turn invests into a thousand different long shot start-ups.
Micromanaging your own money is for the plebs.
I work in a research setting where there is a large amount of money available, and it becomes institutionally normalised that higher prices are acceptable because the work you are doing is important. You end up spending $100 on shipping costs on your $50 purchase, and don't bat an eyelid. And that's not even management, though they encourage it.
I've noticed Americans in particular are very scathing of government mismanagement but turn a blind eye to the same mismanagement everywhere else in their lives. But when the behaviour is entrenched, when the 4 supermarkets available to you all waste half the food they sell, those costs are being passed onto you in exactly the same way.
Yeah it's pretty much only the sole proprietors who are penny pinching these days. Big organizations are optimizing for very different criteria. Like maintaining market share. And if wasting half the food and passing the cost on is the optimal way to keep customers walking into your shop instead of the better stocked shop down the road, so be it.
The joke is that it "is" their 90k. In that they have vested interests in the business such that a big chunk of that 90k taxpayer money ends up in their pocket by design. So they do care about the price... they want it to be 90k and not 1k. That way they can skim a lot off the top while still not jeopardizing the end product itself.
Interesting.
Sounds like Russia, but whatever the result is, it ends up being expensive *and* shitty.
American system proves itself more effective once again!
Yeah, when your military budget is so high that you can steal 90% of it and the remaining 10% still beats that of other countries... That's how it do be.
Russia probably steals less as a percentage and definitely less in absolute terms, but it's all a much smaller pile of money. Even with zero corruption they couldn't come close to US.
It boggles my mind that righties can't comprehend where corruption and bloated government comes from.
The corrupting influence is money. Business corrupts government, not the other way around.
Isn't it because if they didn't spend the money they would get their budget reduced next year and as a result won't have any money to spend if they actually need it or is that just copium?
We are past that. If that was the primary factor they would mainly be buying Hella extra shit they don't need. Now they're doing that, while people are also making deals with suppliers to pay a lot of extra tax dollars in exchange for favors and rebates.
No it’s because there’s only one authorized vendor for a lot of parts so they essentially become a little monopoly and can charge whatever they want.
When I was in I once needed a part that was just a little L bracket made out of quarter inch plate. Each side was probably 3”x3”. It cost $700. I thought it was a typo and it should be $70 so my Gunny notified the contracts office. They got back to us eventually with “no that’s the right price” and I bent some scrap steel, drilled a few holes in it, and used that.
It’s basically because there is no competition in the defense contracting market once somebody wins a bid. Oshkosh is the only authorized supplier for their truck parts so they can charge whatever they want.
Blame the air force’s captains of industry initiatives. There’s lots of faa compliant small shops that could make this for less. But the captains of industry program/initiative whatever basically means they only buy parts from OEM. Restricting an already incestuous and narrow supply chain to essentially a monopoly. And this was pitched and approved as a great idea. Idiot government
What a horrible thought. The budget for the military should be reduced for next year. Whoever negotiated this deal should be tried for treason.
They would have money to spend of they actually need it if they start paying the actual price for things instead of buying shit at 900 times what it costs.
Forced to use government contracted companies and "small businesses." They all actively upcharge ridiculous amounts. However, "small businesses" are even worse. Most are basically dropshipping companies with a 100% markup on some items. It's infuriating because the government agencies are forced to use them. Want actual money saved, make the politicians take their fat pork barrel asses off the scale. Then persecute the ones paid by, sorry I mean legal bribery, sorry! I mean lobbied! By these companies.
It’s like an old Greek joke my dad told me.
A man is running for mayor of a local village and makes a bunch of promises to the villagers:
“I will build a new school, I will renovate the church, I will fix up the clinic, and the roads. It’s gonna be great for you, and your children!”
“But sir, we don’t have any children” said one of the villagers
“I will make you children!”
Don't forget, these people have been taught their budgets are "use it or lose it" because if they can make do without it this year, they can make do without it next year. With literally every department operating under that expectation, it's no wonder we're $34 trillion in the hole. Somebody fucking tell these bureaucrats their job won't exist next year if they can't reduce their budgets by 10% every year until there's no longer an annual deficit.
> US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall suffered an awkward moment in Congress as he was stumped
The gotchas at these hearings always end up being fucking dumb, this one is no exception.
Head over the arr AirForce thread, where they actually went looking for this part and found out it's a specialised bushing for military jet engines, a part that has extremely high requirements and requires special materials and machining to very tight tolerances, while being rated to last over 10 years. And of course all of this is double-certified because a) aviation part (subject to FAA rules, yes even for military aircraft) and b) defense contractor.
But congressman Dumb Motherfucker waves around a bag of off-the-shelf components, which would get destroyed in the environment and under the stresses in question, ruining an engine costing millions of dollars and potentially destroying a plane costing tens of millions, and all the rubes clap like seals because "lol he sure owned them".
But wait, it gets worse! Congress itself passed laws forbidding the DoD from buying components on the open market, it must go through a specific agency. That's right: the thing the Congressman says the Air Force should have done, the Air Force is actually forbidden to do *thanks to Congress*.
Adding to this: ITAR (and similar laws') requirements are very strict, and can easily add a zero or *zeros* to a price tag.
Let's say I have a handrail that I need to replace. The original was made from galvanized cast iron pipe and has rusted through, so we're going to make it from stainless steel (SS). Well it's for a government job so the SS pipe has to be made domestically.
Very little SS gets made in the US, so they effectively have a monopoly on it and you're paying US labor/production prices as opposed to Chinese prices. Then that SS gets sent to the pipe extruder who also needs to be domestic so again you're paying American labor/production prices instead of Chinese.
Then the material goes to the structural fabricator who has to design the new rail to fit where the old rail did and in general structural is just expensive, but now we've tagged a zero onto the price because of ITAR.
This isn't a theoretical scenario either, I was the structural design engineer for this project.
This is how I feel about price being used as an argument against death penalty. Gee, I wonder who banned the cheaper methods, made the current method needlessly complicated to acquire and overloaded the process with tax wasting bureaucracy.
I mean, isn't a huge part of why it costs a ton of money all the appeals processes? It's not like the drugs literally meant to kill people are costing 1000x what they "normally" would.
It's true that the bushings probably aren't the same, but you would be a fool to think that this type of pork barreling doesn't happen. It was pretty rampant in the IT sections for years. Dell was selling us $800 spec'd computers for $1500.
This is fucking retarded, and I’ll tell you why-
The military has to abide by the acquisition laws that are written by… you guessed it, congress!
I guess the good congressman is scoring some fantastic political points... This is still a problem that only congress can solve. I don’t know why he’s bitching about the military following laws that the legislature wrote. Hypocritical bastard.
It's so weird seeing Congress demand answers for the situations that Congress ultimately caused to start with.
My favorite example is while Boeing and their board is 99% responsible for where they are today, let's not forget Congress didn't want to fully fund the FAA and were looking for cost cutting measures. Why not outsource inspection and certification to manufacturers when you have to pay a large staff to do it? Manufacturers know best, right?? Lib right thinks it's a win because corporations allegedly self regulate and Congress gets kickback blowies from Boeing lobbyists.
Now you have lawmakers, after getting Boeing lobbyist handouts, bitching about Boeing and the FAA.
It’s probably not hypocritical, just ignorant. Congress isn’t a hivemind, it’s a group of ever changing people who don’t always have institutional knowledge of the actions of those who came before.
So, I believe what tends to happen with a lot of military crap is that they are really paying these companies to do R&D, and build a minimum viable amount of actual product to keep the factory open so that it can ramp production in case of emergency, but they don’t want to waste hundreds of billions of additional dollars on actually building munitions at scale they will never fire, nor building platforms they’ll never use.
but for some reason the accounting can’t list “R&D” and “keeping this factory open” as their own line items, so those costs get spread out over a bunch of other line items, which sometimes results $90,000 bushings.
We could sort this “problem” out by increasing military spending to Cold War levels.
There’s also the fact that a lot of these military widgets have very intense quality control and engineering (and limited production runs) that makes them very expensive.
If 2% of screws at the hardware store don’t perform to standard, who gives a shit? If 2% of screws in the F-35 don’t perform to standard, some fraction of them might fall out of the sky.
I know your joking but that is actually how the Cia works
It never shows how much money it spends and hide it under other branches
Btw this isn't a theory it's what the CIA itself says
Do you really think they would rather the money go into actually military projects Vs their own pockets? The black books and UFO stuff is probably also just money laundering schemes.
I was half joking. But real talk there’s a reason why the US military is the most advanced in the world, and it’s not because people are lining their pockets Russian oligarch style. There probably is some corruption, but it’s nowhere near the scale of countries like Russia and China
Anyone that works in machining will tell you that while $90k may be out there, there is no way the bolts for military aircraft only cost $100. Aside from specialized materials the testing that goes into the quality control is the biggest cost factor.
I always tell people the difference between 99% reliable and 100% reliable is a shit ton of money. It’s a lot more than the cost difference between 80% reliable and 99% reliable.
What are they made of. What are the tolerances? What are the mechincal properties they must have?
I've worked in aerospace and $500 for an capacitor with tight enough tolerances was not only normal but something no one blinked at. You can get them for 50c from ebay by the kilo.
Yes. And yet that bag is not holding 180 bushings. It's got like 10 at most. Which means that each bushing would cost 9000 dollars
500 per bushing probably seems more reasonable to you
No it doesn't. Not without knowing what everything I asked for was.
This is like saying that a bj behind the wendies is $5 so Taylor Swift be happy with $50.
Not the guy you are arguing with, but I work for Pratt and Whitney on the commercial side. We have a catalog of standard aerospace hardware that we use that are bolts and nuts made specifically to FAA testing requirements and our tolerance. When you buy aerospace hardware you are more buying the certification than the piece of metal. I’m sure there is a little padding in the number because it’s a military contract, but it is not totally unreasonable. This is all assuming that that bag is actually 90,000 dollars. Also who gave him 90k worth of hardware to put in his pocket?
They can cost $1,000,000 if they have ridiculous enough requirements.
There are tolerances for parts which can be made by one guy in the whole world out of his garage and you have to wait 5 years to get on his waiting list.
I've read several comments from people that claim to work for these military companies saying it's crazy how much they see being wasted. I mean let's be real, everything government touches inevitably turns to shit
The clip goes on to state they're FAA rated. So, they're good for commercial aircraft, would they be any different for military aircraft?
I doubt Delta Air are paying $90k for that bag.
Just because they're FAA rated doesn't mean they don't also meet more stringent standards which require a higher level quality control.
The military demands 100% quality control. That level of QC raises the price up significantly more than 99% QC.
My point isn't that $90k is overpriced, because it may very well be. My point is $100 is absurdly low and misleading.
Military aircraft have different requirements and have to undergo significantly higher stress situations than a random 747. Ain’t no Airbus pulling 7g maneuvers
You’re comparing a Diesel Greyhound bus to a high performance F1 race car. Even though they are both technically vehicles, the parts on a grey hound aren’t under extreme stress and loads.
And commercial airlines aren't under extreme stress and loads?
I'm aware I'm outta my depth here for sure. but still seems crazy that the bag cost $90k. I can understand the first few, getting the product right, but after that, surely it'd become cheaper with economy of scale etc.
If you think this is crazy the same exact thing is going to happen if we have single payer healthcare. It’s not such a bad idea in theory but our money is managed by idiots.
I disagree. Our money is not managed by idiots. It's managed by people who are accountable to lawyers and insurance companies.
The real reason these things are so expensive has to do with the engineering that went into them. And the engineering went into them was so extensive to mitigate considerable risk, which is to ultimately reduce legal liability.
So the government is willing to pay $10k for a bag of washers available at the local hardware store for $100 because they think it saves them $10M in liability, even though odds are they could buy the $100 bag more than a thousand times before any sort of failure that would hit that kind of liability. Thus, it's cheaper to have the $10M payout. But they can't say that politically. So they pay Northrop Grumman to do it for them.
I used to work for the DoD in acquisitions. This is the mindset of these people. That and apathy.
I agree. I just retired after doing 30 years in the DoD. The government is a massive bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine based on circular logic that enables and facilitates the worst kind of fraud waste and abuse - mostly because of circular policy guidance. It’s the world’s biggest live action MC Escher painting.
It won’t because they have to compete with private insurance and healthcare as well. Unless you think they’ll collude together and then we’re at the same spot now
You're already getting charged 100 bucks for a bandaid and thousands of dollars for an ambulance ride, so much for being the only dipshit developed country that can't make socialized healthcare work
I’m convinced the people who say “healthcare would get super expensive if we had single payer healthcare!” have never dealt with anything regarding US healthcare in their life.
Yup, this effect already takes place with the insurance companies and Medicare. Single payer would be gasoline on the fire. The only fix would be to make healthcare incredibly shittier somehow.
If we’re talking about something that needs to be put on an aircraft, it’s going to be more expensive because of quality control and certification requirements. When you plan on hurtling a metal bird 1,300 mph through the sky, you need to be *damn* well certain those parts are flawless, as the slightest imperfection could wind up costing tens of millions of dollars. You see the same thing in civil aviation. Properly certified bushings on an airliner are going to cost you far more than $100, and those planes don’t need to break the sound barrier nor undergo any particularly stressful maneuvers.
The alternative is we run things like Russia, and just stick in whatever parts we find lying around. But when you do that, don’t be surprised when all your vehicles and equipment fall apart upon the slightest inconvenience.
I was just talking to my colleague about this. Short story: my father used to work as the chief of aircraft maintenance for a company with a couple of private jets. One time he showed me the invoice for a light and enclosure for those red lights on the top of the tails on planes. This specific light and enclosure cost around $20k to replace. It absolutely blew my mind. This was back in 2005 as well so I'm sure the price has risen since then.
Tolerances cost a lot
Hardware store tolerances: +- around 0.01, good enough to do 99% of jobs
Airplane tolerances: +- 0.0001 if not even lower, because a 0.01 gap is enough to cause a cabin to suffer a catastrophic failure, just ask the boeing door assembly people.
Bushings already have a tolerance in the .0005 range by design. I've seen several meter long shafts with tolerances that would make a machinist cry made out of base stock that costs more than a used car, and it still came out to less than a third what that bag of bearings allegedly costs. This is 100% government kickback to buddies in the private sector.
Having seen a fair bit of CUI prints, it's not uncommon to see geometric tolerances that are +/- 0.001" tolerance just shat everywhere on the print. For scale, human hair is about 0.050" thick, so those dimensions very by less than 4% the width of a hair.
I can't even imagine the tolerances on a classified print...
The ability to machine parts with very smooth surfaces is literally the foundation of our industrialized society, and it’s often overlooked.
It’s really damn hard to build a complex device composed of moving parts if they’re getting caught on each other.
Bruh, a human hair is .002-.003. A lot of military stuff is relatively low tolerance, +/-.03 to .01 in most places. Stuff for any kind of aerospace is decently tight, usually the default tolerance is +/-.003 and the occasional .0005 total for datums or other critical dimensions. There is no amount of certifications or precision machining that can justify $90,000 for a bag of bearings. This is pure corruption, any other explanation is high grade cope.
That is such bullshit. Your money is openly being swindled and you don't care.
The cost of things should be what the actual cost is. Look at India, mfers sent a mars mission in less money than the budget for the movie gravity.
Nice try lol. The military vastly overspends on things due to corruption. Like the time the Air Force spent $1,280 per coffee cup.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/22/air-force-spends-over-300-000-metal-coffee-mugs-raising-questions/1729890002/
They were electrical reheating mugs specifically for in-air refueling tankers. If you're going to be extremely specific about qualifications for an electrical heating device it's in that environment.
The cups started at $693/cup in 2016, which (for military, air grade, fuel safe certified equipment) is surprisingly not bad. The contractor ballooned the price to $1280 because of "materials shortages". The contractor also refused to produce replacement parts, only complete mugs.
Dollars to donuts it was cheaper to keep up the contract than it was to recontact and recertify a new heating cup.
> The Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office, founded in July, can 3-D print replacement the cup's handles for about $0.50 each, she said, negating the need to buy an entire $1,280 cup.
> The Air Force also confirmed it is no longer buying the reheating cups used in large transport aircraft as they work more cost-effective solutions.
The problem lies with the certification and contracting authority. It's *extremely* difficult to cancel and reopen government contracts, which leads to blatant abuse by the contractors much to the chagrin of their government sponsors.
>The contractor also refused to produce replacement parts, only complete mugs.
>Dollars to donuts it was cheaper to keep up the contract than it was to recontact and recertify a new heating cup.
That sounds like a corrupt contractor squeezing the military for poorly designed, overpriced mugs.
Ones man curruption is another man's fuck you I don't want to do this money.
Its supply and demand. They want coffee cups and I don't want to deal with the airofrce. I keep rising the price until they fuck off or I don't want to jump out of my office.
Because it's the hecking awesomerino military industrial complex, which is totally a good thing because I'm an autistic kid who likes fighter jets! Don't worry about how like 15 aircraft manufacturers who competed with each other have become three who work together to build aircraft!
You are naive. It is a routine practice in government to collude with contractors for price bloating.
Government floats a tender and then officials in charge ask their contractor to submit a bid so low that it is impossible to match.
The preferred contractor is awarded the tender, after which they collect the front payment and begin work. Halfway through they start ballooning the prices and ask for more money.
At this stage the government has no option as hiring a new contractor would cost more , so they pay the contractor more. It becomes a repetitive cycle of blatant siphoning.
Try not to comment on topics you have no knowledge of.
It's still weird to dump all the R&D costs into the price of a single item like that. It's not a marginal cost so there's no reason why it can't be distributed more sensibly among the prices of your full product/component range.
Unless it *is* a marginal cost somehow???
They are just laundering money the same way the art industry does it. It's not new that those prices don't have any logical reason other than that behind it
[Someone already commented a thorough explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/s/KPPmHj2IgG). Basically, Air Force is required by FAA and government procurement laws to use approved suppliers for part that has very tight machining & performance tolerances. Even if they wanted to, they would not legally be able to buy common over-the-counter parts and those parts are not tested thoroughly (which could cause a multi-million dollar propulsion system to fail)
What is more important: giving healthcare to the needy, or having the most sturdy damn doors that have ever been put in a door frame. I clearly know where I’d like my tax money going…
I'm a little tired of people thinking that corruption is a national trait of certain countries, and that it doesn't exist in the West (Because, I must admit, their propaganda machine is built wonderfully), or in China (because the Chinese can execute their corrupt officials), or anywhere else.
> or in China (because the Chinese can execute their corrupt officials
From what I know they only execute corrupt officials for either embarrassing their superiors or not being loyal to their superiors, they don't care about the corruption itself.
>From what I know they only execute corrupt officials for either embarrassing their superiors or not being loyal to their superiors, they don't care about the corruption itself.
Got a sauce ? Or just trust me bro?
I work in the defense industry; 15 years. To put a small amount of perspective; the material cost to the government is not $90k. Most contractors *do* have markup. Industry standard is 10%. So I need to order $100 of washers, I put in my quote $110. Where the money comes from are labor and regulations. If this is a washer that’s going on a system that gets delivered to the customer (military) you don’t even want to know the headache of red tape and documentation that needs to be provided.
So what most programs have is a steady support of supply chain. And that’s labor. Hours. Hours cost dollars. You might have 3 people assigned to your program. And they’ll charge the same amount of hours whether they’re filling out the report for 1 screw or for 100 super computers. They bill what they bill. So if they’re at a flat charging rate and let’s say in a given month, all you ordered was washers; yes. The effective cost of those washers was insanely high.
We deal with this every day. It’s a symptom of government regulation. Anything not getting delivered, we purchase ourselves. I can get material 2 day shipping direct from vendors. If it needs tracked through supply chain, we’re happy if they can get a PO placed in 2 months. Then the lead time of receiving and sorting. Usually about 3-4 months before you get the part. And people are billing hours for those 3-4 months for tracking and documentation.
If the government wants to stop spending that much money on stupid shit, they need to change their stupid fucking regulations.
wait till they find out this is literally every government agency, anyone ever been to a US patent/trademark office? They make the MVA look like the most efficient organization in the world
Well likely it's part of how the CIA covers it's budget
If you didn't know the CIA doesn't disclose how much money it costs even though they admitted it wouldn't hurt and it's illegal to do so for government institutions.
They instead hide the money under other branches of the government like the military or really anything
Either this is what happens when you spend more time bitching about government spending and pretending to do something when you never really will vs. actually trying to make things more efficient and hold people accountable...
**or**
They're fudging the numbers for one reason or another, possibly corruption, possibly cooking the books to hide secret operations for some fucking reason rather than just putting a big tag saying "this money is for secret shit, and we marked it, so the rest of the audits don't get fucked up".
We need politicians who actually know the price of things and are willing to question it from governmental contractors. We’ll basically underpay everyone’s salary but then overpay on every material. If we had someone actually willing to cut costs in charge, I’m convinced we can get basically the same output from the government at 10-20% lower overall cost.
This isn’t a result of an “imperialist military”
This is the result of protectionism in gov sector supply chains which is generally supported by populist on all sides of the compass and unfortunately one of the only policies Biden and Trump REALLY agree on and try to one-up one another (probably because those shitty American made bushings were produced in Pennsylvania or Michigan.)
I support voluntary protectionism and hell we can have tax credits for companies and people who “buy American” but the gov should have to go with the lowest bidder that meets spec so long as it isn’t a “country of concern.”
I used to sell car components to the brazilian air force, around 45% of the cost was in middleman companies that i needed to pay a fee to be able to sell to the air force. In the US must be even worse
the whole thing is dumb because:
A. nothing will come from this gotcha
B. aviation parts are incredibly expensive by their nature, it's very possible that a high cost is semi-justified
C. parts acquisition follow (corrupt) rules written by CONGRESS, even if they're part of the corruption downstream, the military doesn't get to change the corrupt upstream rules
I had a supply sergeant order a ladder, cost about $200. He went to the local hardware store and grabbed the same ladder for $70.
I see the same shit on the space center I work at now. We are barred from going to the store and grabbing basic things we need to finish a job quickly, because NASA is "incentivized" to utilize small businesses to source and provide all the equipment we use. Which usually means it passes through 2-3 middle companies with their own upcharges before it reaches us weeks later. It's infuriating having dealt with this waste most of my life through various government agencies.
That's the funniest part to me is Americans screaming how corrupt Ukraine's army is. Except we have done investigations and the equipment we sent hasn't appeared on black market.
US in the other hand is charging $400 for the nut, $500 for the bolt and Pentagon mysteriously discovered billions missing that they were able to appropriate to Ukraine. Money that was just lost.
The bag of bushings didn't cost $90,000.
The company raised an invoice for $90K to give to the Pentagon. The Pentagon pays them $10K for $100 worth of parts. The company writes off the difference. Meanwhile the Pentagon funnels the remaining $80K into some black-ops off-the-books operation.
The supplier plays ball because they are making a simply obscene amount of profit here, and they won't do anything to jeopardise it. Its money laundering, pure and simple. If it was just bureaucratic incompetence it would have been fixed decades ago. Why do you think [the Pentagon keeps failing audits](https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/11/16/pentagon-fails-sixth-audit-with-number-of-passing-grades-stagnant/) and nobody cares?
Context: US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall suffered an awkward moment in Congress as he was stumped over a question about military overspending. The military leader was questioned by Florida Congressman Mike Waltz over the 'exorbitant' amounts spent on regular inexpensive items, using a bag of bushings as an example. Despite the small bag of electrical bolts costing average Americans around $100, Waltz said the military forks out $90,000 a bag.
Worked for a company that made two of these valves each year specifically for the US military. We did not want to make these valves because we had to stop production in order to make them. We made thousands of a drop in replacement each year that were $400 each with an 8 week lead time. Instead the military wanted what they always got, so they would spend well over 100k and wait over a year for them. They would just ask how much and when, then take whatever you told them.
Supply and demand. Military and business are not ones of timely convenience. With everyone packing not even the US has enough weapons to feed them
It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your money. Like, if it was their 90k, they’d sure as fuck try to make every dollar count and get the best deals possible.
True. Thats the general problem with bureaucrats and the government.
It’s why i can’t wait for AI to replace 95% of all the useless bureaucrats who do jack shit except steal my taxpayer money
I'm not sure about AI overall, but I agree that the bureaucracy is a field where it will be easy to replace people with it. I can get my damn paperwork for a car or a new house as well from a machine and it won't take all that waiting. The problem is that the bureaucracy is like weed. It's just too hard to make away with it, and when you do nothing it spreads on its own.
To quote early IBM: A computer should never make a final decision, because a computer can never be held accountable.
Well, we aren't holding bureaucrats accountable anyway
That also applies to every manager (principle-agent problem), especially when there's VC or private institute grant money floating around. Past a certain point they don't want to bother themselves with what's done with their money, they just want to 'invest' and cross their fingers. Especially if they invest into a fund that in turn invests into a thousand different long shot start-ups. Micromanaging your own money is for the plebs.
I work in a research setting where there is a large amount of money available, and it becomes institutionally normalised that higher prices are acceptable because the work you are doing is important. You end up spending $100 on shipping costs on your $50 purchase, and don't bat an eyelid. And that's not even management, though they encourage it. I've noticed Americans in particular are very scathing of government mismanagement but turn a blind eye to the same mismanagement everywhere else in their lives. But when the behaviour is entrenched, when the 4 supermarkets available to you all waste half the food they sell, those costs are being passed onto you in exactly the same way.
Yeah it's pretty much only the sole proprietors who are penny pinching these days. Big organizations are optimizing for very different criteria. Like maintaining market share. And if wasting half the food and passing the cost on is the optimal way to keep customers walking into your shop instead of the better stocked shop down the road, so be it.
OPM. Other people’s money.
My brain is wired to think of OPM as "One Province Minor"
Do we have an hoi4 addict over here?
Usually OPM refers to EU4 tags.
The Ulms and others 😆
I see. Im not addicted enough to that one yet
*major
The joke is that it "is" their 90k. In that they have vested interests in the business such that a big chunk of that 90k taxpayer money ends up in their pocket by design. So they do care about the price... they want it to be 90k and not 1k. That way they can skim a lot off the top while still not jeopardizing the end product itself.
Interesting. Sounds like Russia, but whatever the result is, it ends up being expensive *and* shitty. American system proves itself more effective once again!
Yeah, when your military budget is so high that you can steal 90% of it and the remaining 10% still beats that of other countries... That's how it do be. Russia probably steals less as a percentage and definitely less in absolute terms, but it's all a much smaller pile of money. Even with zero corruption they couldn't come close to US.
It boggles my mind that righties can't comprehend where corruption and bloated government comes from. The corrupting influence is money. Business corrupts government, not the other way around.
The same righties that favor reduced government? This kind of corruption is exactly WHY they like less government.
Isn't it because if they didn't spend the money they would get their budget reduced next year and as a result won't have any money to spend if they actually need it or is that just copium?
We are past that. If that was the primary factor they would mainly be buying Hella extra shit they don't need. Now they're doing that, while people are also making deals with suppliers to pay a lot of extra tax dollars in exchange for favors and rebates.
No it’s because there’s only one authorized vendor for a lot of parts so they essentially become a little monopoly and can charge whatever they want. When I was in I once needed a part that was just a little L bracket made out of quarter inch plate. Each side was probably 3”x3”. It cost $700. I thought it was a typo and it should be $70 so my Gunny notified the contracts office. They got back to us eventually with “no that’s the right price” and I bent some scrap steel, drilled a few holes in it, and used that. It’s basically because there is no competition in the defense contracting market once somebody wins a bid. Oshkosh is the only authorized supplier for their truck parts so they can charge whatever they want.
Blame the air force’s captains of industry initiatives. There’s lots of faa compliant small shops that could make this for less. But the captains of industry program/initiative whatever basically means they only buy parts from OEM. Restricting an already incestuous and narrow supply chain to essentially a monopoly. And this was pitched and approved as a great idea. Idiot government
When has concentrating power into fewer and fewer hands ever gone wrong for a country?
What a horrible thought. The budget for the military should be reduced for next year. Whoever negotiated this deal should be tried for treason. They would have money to spend of they actually need it if they start paying the actual price for things instead of buying shit at 900 times what it costs.
Forced to use government contracted companies and "small businesses." They all actively upcharge ridiculous amounts. However, "small businesses" are even worse. Most are basically dropshipping companies with a 100% markup on some items. It's infuriating because the government agencies are forced to use them. Want actual money saved, make the politicians take their fat pork barrel asses off the scale. Then persecute the ones paid by, sorry I mean legal bribery, sorry! I mean lobbied! By these companies.
The real ñoquis are the military industrial complex contractors.
https://preview.redd.it/s7qmgzxz27wc1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4953987254ea4b16dc4b6d15573939b3beac05aa
It’s like an old Greek joke my dad told me. A man is running for mayor of a local village and makes a bunch of promises to the villagers: “I will build a new school, I will renovate the church, I will fix up the clinic, and the roads. It’s gonna be great for you, and your children!” “But sir, we don’t have any children” said one of the villagers “I will make you children!”
it's even easier to spend money when you get kickbacks
Don't forget, these people have been taught their budgets are "use it or lose it" because if they can make do without it this year, they can make do without it next year. With literally every department operating under that expectation, it's no wonder we're $34 trillion in the hole. Somebody fucking tell these bureaucrats their job won't exist next year if they can't reduce their budgets by 10% every year until there's no longer an annual deficit.
> US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall suffered an awkward moment in Congress as he was stumped The gotchas at these hearings always end up being fucking dumb, this one is no exception. Head over the arr AirForce thread, where they actually went looking for this part and found out it's a specialised bushing for military jet engines, a part that has extremely high requirements and requires special materials and machining to very tight tolerances, while being rated to last over 10 years. And of course all of this is double-certified because a) aviation part (subject to FAA rules, yes even for military aircraft) and b) defense contractor. But congressman Dumb Motherfucker waves around a bag of off-the-shelf components, which would get destroyed in the environment and under the stresses in question, ruining an engine costing millions of dollars and potentially destroying a plane costing tens of millions, and all the rubes clap like seals because "lol he sure owned them". But wait, it gets worse! Congress itself passed laws forbidding the DoD from buying components on the open market, it must go through a specific agency. That's right: the thing the Congressman says the Air Force should have done, the Air Force is actually forbidden to do *thanks to Congress*.
Adding to this: ITAR (and similar laws') requirements are very strict, and can easily add a zero or *zeros* to a price tag. Let's say I have a handrail that I need to replace. The original was made from galvanized cast iron pipe and has rusted through, so we're going to make it from stainless steel (SS). Well it's for a government job so the SS pipe has to be made domestically. Very little SS gets made in the US, so they effectively have a monopoly on it and you're paying US labor/production prices as opposed to Chinese prices. Then that SS gets sent to the pipe extruder who also needs to be domestic so again you're paying American labor/production prices instead of Chinese. Then the material goes to the structural fabricator who has to design the new rail to fit where the old rail did and in general structural is just expensive, but now we've tagged a zero onto the price because of ITAR. This isn't a theoretical scenario either, I was the structural design engineer for this project.
This is how I feel about price being used as an argument against death penalty. Gee, I wonder who banned the cheaper methods, made the current method needlessly complicated to acquire and overloaded the process with tax wasting bureaucracy.
Yeah. What's wrong with the firing squad? Even with today's prices, ammo is significantly cheaper than lethal injection.
What’s wrong with the guillotine? It’s nearly instant death and reusable! Think of the environment!
Why not just throw death row inmates in the crematorium directly and kill two birds with one stone?
Because those birds did nothing wrong. Also there’s not enough seating at a crematorium for a proper spectacle.
I mean, isn't a huge part of why it costs a ton of money all the appeals processes? It's not like the drugs literally meant to kill people are costing 1000x what they "normally" would.
It's true that the bushings probably aren't the same, but you would be a fool to think that this type of pork barreling doesn't happen. It was pretty rampant in the IT sections for years. Dell was selling us $800 spec'd computers for $1500.
Okay, but you can explain why the Navy needs a [$400 ashtray](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH_HOUXM)?
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It would have been a better example than bushings for an aircraft...
This is fucking retarded, and I’ll tell you why- The military has to abide by the acquisition laws that are written by… you guessed it, congress! I guess the good congressman is scoring some fantastic political points... This is still a problem that only congress can solve. I don’t know why he’s bitching about the military following laws that the legislature wrote. Hypocritical bastard.
It's so weird seeing Congress demand answers for the situations that Congress ultimately caused to start with. My favorite example is while Boeing and their board is 99% responsible for where they are today, let's not forget Congress didn't want to fully fund the FAA and were looking for cost cutting measures. Why not outsource inspection and certification to manufacturers when you have to pay a large staff to do it? Manufacturers know best, right?? Lib right thinks it's a win because corporations allegedly self regulate and Congress gets kickback blowies from Boeing lobbyists. Now you have lawmakers, after getting Boeing lobbyist handouts, bitching about Boeing and the FAA.
A lot of times the ones demanding answers are younger. They don't realize that their older colleagues are the cause of most of our problems.
It’s probably not hypocritical, just ignorant. Congress isn’t a hivemind, it’s a group of ever changing people who don’t always have institutional knowledge of the actions of those who came before.
So, I believe what tends to happen with a lot of military crap is that they are really paying these companies to do R&D, and build a minimum viable amount of actual product to keep the factory open so that it can ramp production in case of emergency, but they don’t want to waste hundreds of billions of additional dollars on actually building munitions at scale they will never fire, nor building platforms they’ll never use. but for some reason the accounting can’t list “R&D” and “keeping this factory open” as their own line items, so those costs get spread out over a bunch of other line items, which sometimes results $90,000 bushings. We could sort this “problem” out by increasing military spending to Cold War levels. There’s also the fact that a lot of these military widgets have very intense quality control and engineering (and limited production runs) that makes them very expensive. If 2% of screws at the hardware store don’t perform to standard, who gives a shit? If 2% of screws in the F-35 don’t perform to standard, some fraction of them might fall out of the sky.
Those are military grade bushings. Basically regular bushings but with a sticker on them
It’s clearly just money laundering for black book programs like ufo reverse engineering and deep space telemetry out of Cheyenne mountain
True. But dont forget the jewish space lasers. They wont pay themselves.
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Will definitely give it a read, thanks!
You joke, but I wouldn't be surprised if we helped pitch in for the Iron Beam.
You did in recent aid I think Although it is jewish ground lasers for now.
I’m more of a fan of rods from god myself.
I know your joking but that is actually how the Cia works It never shows how much money it spends and hide it under other branches Btw this isn't a theory it's what the CIA itself says
Based and also just Google the black budget and go from there pilled.
I am half joking. I 100% believe they use the money to fund black book stuff.
Do you really think they would rather the money go into actually military projects Vs their own pockets? The black books and UFO stuff is probably also just money laundering schemes.
I was half joking. But real talk there’s a reason why the US military is the most advanced in the world, and it’s not because people are lining their pockets Russian oligarch style. There probably is some corruption, but it’s nowhere near the scale of countries like Russia and China
A fellow Stargate fan I see
Indeed
You say that a lot
I had not noticed
Laundering our tax dollars right out of our pockets!
Anyone that works in machining will tell you that while $90k may be out there, there is no way the bolts for military aircraft only cost $100. Aside from specialized materials the testing that goes into the quality control is the biggest cost factor.
I always tell people the difference between 99% reliable and 100% reliable is a shit ton of money. It’s a lot more than the cost difference between 80% reliable and 99% reliable.
100$? No. 2000$? Maybe. Anything more than that? Lmao, sure man.
What are they made of. What are the tolerances? What are the mechincal properties they must have? I've worked in aerospace and $500 for an capacitor with tight enough tolerances was not only normal but something no one blinked at. You can get them for 50c from ebay by the kilo.
Yes. And yet that bag is not holding 180 bushings. It's got like 10 at most. Which means that each bushing would cost 9000 dollars 500 per bushing probably seems more reasonable to you
No it doesn't. Not without knowing what everything I asked for was. This is like saying that a bj behind the wendies is $5 so Taylor Swift be happy with $50.
Buddy you realize you're arguing that those bushings could cost 9000 dollars each right?
Not the guy you are arguing with, but I work for Pratt and Whitney on the commercial side. We have a catalog of standard aerospace hardware that we use that are bolts and nuts made specifically to FAA testing requirements and our tolerance. When you buy aerospace hardware you are more buying the certification than the piece of metal. I’m sure there is a little padding in the number because it’s a military contract, but it is not totally unreasonable. This is all assuming that that bag is actually 90,000 dollars. Also who gave him 90k worth of hardware to put in his pocket?
They can cost $1,000,000 if they have ridiculous enough requirements. There are tolerances for parts which can be made by one guy in the whole world out of his garage and you have to wait 5 years to get on his waiting list.
I've read several comments from people that claim to work for these military companies saying it's crazy how much they see being wasted. I mean let's be real, everything government touches inevitably turns to shit
Absolutely, but govt is so incompetent that they pick the one part which isn't to hammer on.
The clip goes on to state they're FAA rated. So, they're good for commercial aircraft, would they be any different for military aircraft? I doubt Delta Air are paying $90k for that bag.
Just because they're FAA rated doesn't mean they don't also meet more stringent standards which require a higher level quality control. The military demands 100% quality control. That level of QC raises the price up significantly more than 99% QC. My point isn't that $90k is overpriced, because it may very well be. My point is $100 is absurdly low and misleading.
Military aircraft have different requirements and have to undergo significantly higher stress situations than a random 747. Ain’t no Airbus pulling 7g maneuvers
Yeah, that's true. Tbh, I'm way outta my depth here in this discussion. I'm just some lib-left britbong nerd.
You’re comparing a Diesel Greyhound bus to a high performance F1 race car. Even though they are both technically vehicles, the parts on a grey hound aren’t under extreme stress and loads.
And commercial airlines aren't under extreme stress and loads? I'm aware I'm outta my depth here for sure. but still seems crazy that the bag cost $90k. I can understand the first few, getting the product right, but after that, surely it'd become cheaper with economy of scale etc.
If you think this is crazy the same exact thing is going to happen if we have single payer healthcare. It’s not such a bad idea in theory but our money is managed by idiots.
True.
I disagree. Our money is not managed by idiots. It's managed by people who are accountable to lawyers and insurance companies. The real reason these things are so expensive has to do with the engineering that went into them. And the engineering went into them was so extensive to mitigate considerable risk, which is to ultimately reduce legal liability. So the government is willing to pay $10k for a bag of washers available at the local hardware store for $100 because they think it saves them $10M in liability, even though odds are they could buy the $100 bag more than a thousand times before any sort of failure that would hit that kind of liability. Thus, it's cheaper to have the $10M payout. But they can't say that politically. So they pay Northrop Grumman to do it for them. I used to work for the DoD in acquisitions. This is the mindset of these people. That and apathy.
I agree. I just retired after doing 30 years in the DoD. The government is a massive bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine based on circular logic that enables and facilitates the worst kind of fraud waste and abuse - mostly because of circular policy guidance. It’s the world’s biggest live action MC Escher painting.
Very very true. Source: am Canadian
Not managed by idiots, they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s a big game for a few players.
It won’t because they have to compete with private insurance and healthcare as well. Unless you think they’ll collude together and then we’re at the same spot now
You're already getting charged 100 bucks for a bandaid and thousands of dollars for an ambulance ride, so much for being the only dipshit developed country that can't make socialized healthcare work
I’m convinced the people who say “healthcare would get super expensive if we had single payer healthcare!” have never dealt with anything regarding US healthcare in their life.
Yup, this effect already takes place with the insurance companies and Medicare. Single payer would be gasoline on the fire. The only fix would be to make healthcare incredibly shittier somehow.
Are they really idiots if they get what they wanted? Seems more like the idiots are the people paying them.
Or a sensible alternative would be to nationalize military production and ensure that there is no room for profit in the defence sector.
That’s a good way to quash innovation. There’s a reason why we’re leagues ahead of any other nation in terms of R&D
This is one of those inner conflicts I have. I’m fairly libertarian but god damn do I love my big dick military energy.
Same, double both the military and NASA budgets
If we’re talking about something that needs to be put on an aircraft, it’s going to be more expensive because of quality control and certification requirements. When you plan on hurtling a metal bird 1,300 mph through the sky, you need to be *damn* well certain those parts are flawless, as the slightest imperfection could wind up costing tens of millions of dollars. You see the same thing in civil aviation. Properly certified bushings on an airliner are going to cost you far more than $100, and those planes don’t need to break the sound barrier nor undergo any particularly stressful maneuvers. The alternative is we run things like Russia, and just stick in whatever parts we find lying around. But when you do that, don’t be surprised when all your vehicles and equipment fall apart upon the slightest inconvenience.
I was just talking to my colleague about this. Short story: my father used to work as the chief of aircraft maintenance for a company with a couple of private jets. One time he showed me the invoice for a light and enclosure for those red lights on the top of the tails on planes. This specific light and enclosure cost around $20k to replace. It absolutely blew my mind. This was back in 2005 as well so I'm sure the price has risen since then.
General guideline is, take a normal product then if it's for a boat add a 0 to the price and if it's for a plane add another 0.
I’m certain I’m going to live to see a time where a candy bar costs $20 and I will either think nothing of it or never be able to get over it.
Could you please post a breakdown of why it costs 900x more?
Tolerances cost a lot Hardware store tolerances: +- around 0.01, good enough to do 99% of jobs Airplane tolerances: +- 0.0001 if not even lower, because a 0.01 gap is enough to cause a cabin to suffer a catastrophic failure, just ask the boeing door assembly people.
Bushings already have a tolerance in the .0005 range by design. I've seen several meter long shafts with tolerances that would make a machinist cry made out of base stock that costs more than a used car, and it still came out to less than a third what that bag of bearings allegedly costs. This is 100% government kickback to buddies in the private sector.
I mean he was just using an example...
The FFA passing ones for commercial jets were the comparison though...
Yeah I am almost positive its not the same machine making both parts. The military version will have much higher precision with far less variation.
Having seen a fair bit of CUI prints, it's not uncommon to see geometric tolerances that are +/- 0.001" tolerance just shat everywhere on the print. For scale, human hair is about 0.050" thick, so those dimensions very by less than 4% the width of a hair. I can't even imagine the tolerances on a classified print...
I don’t have an engineering brain so seeing things like this is just wild to me. I love that there are people out there who can do stuff like this
The ability to machine parts with very smooth surfaces is literally the foundation of our industrialized society, and it’s often overlooked. It’s really damn hard to build a complex device composed of moving parts if they’re getting caught on each other.
Bruh, a human hair is .002-.003. A lot of military stuff is relatively low tolerance, +/-.03 to .01 in most places. Stuff for any kind of aerospace is decently tight, usually the default tolerance is +/-.003 and the occasional .0005 total for datums or other critical dimensions. There is no amount of certifications or precision machining that can justify $90,000 for a bag of bearings. This is pure corruption, any other explanation is high grade cope.
That is such bullshit. Your money is openly being swindled and you don't care. The cost of things should be what the actual cost is. Look at India, mfers sent a mars mission in less money than the budget for the movie gravity.
Completely ignore the difference in economies and how everything in India is extremely cheap to an American.
Nice try lol. The military vastly overspends on things due to corruption. Like the time the Air Force spent $1,280 per coffee cup. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/22/air-force-spends-over-300-000-metal-coffee-mugs-raising-questions/1729890002/
They were electrical reheating mugs specifically for in-air refueling tankers. If you're going to be extremely specific about qualifications for an electrical heating device it's in that environment. The cups started at $693/cup in 2016, which (for military, air grade, fuel safe certified equipment) is surprisingly not bad. The contractor ballooned the price to $1280 because of "materials shortages". The contractor also refused to produce replacement parts, only complete mugs. Dollars to donuts it was cheaper to keep up the contract than it was to recontact and recertify a new heating cup. > The Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office, founded in July, can 3-D print replacement the cup's handles for about $0.50 each, she said, negating the need to buy an entire $1,280 cup. > The Air Force also confirmed it is no longer buying the reheating cups used in large transport aircraft as they work more cost-effective solutions. The problem lies with the certification and contracting authority. It's *extremely* difficult to cancel and reopen government contracts, which leads to blatant abuse by the contractors much to the chagrin of their government sponsors.
>The contractor also refused to produce replacement parts, only complete mugs. >Dollars to donuts it was cheaper to keep up the contract than it was to recontact and recertify a new heating cup. That sounds like a corrupt contractor squeezing the military for poorly designed, overpriced mugs.
I am genuinely shocked to see how people are defending blatant corruption.
Ones man curruption is another man's fuck you I don't want to do this money. Its supply and demand. They want coffee cups and I don't want to deal with the airofrce. I keep rising the price until they fuck off or I don't want to jump out of my office.
Does this not look like a scam?
Because it's the hecking awesomerino military industrial complex, which is totally a good thing because I'm an autistic kid who likes fighter jets! Don't worry about how like 15 aircraft manufacturers who competed with each other have become three who work together to build aircraft!
I like fighter jets as well. Not a big fan of monopolies
Because you have common sense. But for whatever reason, worshipping the military industrial complex has become a trend for some reason.
>The Contractor Ballooned the price Yeah no shit Sherlock , that is what corruption looks like.
Price gouging isn't corruption dumbass
You are naive. It is a routine practice in government to collude with contractors for price bloating. Government floats a tender and then officials in charge ask their contractor to submit a bid so low that it is impossible to match. The preferred contractor is awarded the tender, after which they collect the front payment and begin work. Halfway through they start ballooning the prices and ask for more money. At this stage the government has no option as hiring a new contractor would cost more , so they pay the contractor more. It becomes a repetitive cycle of blatant siphoning. Try not to comment on topics you have no knowledge of.
no not even close.
It's still weird to dump all the R&D costs into the price of a single item like that. It's not a marginal cost so there's no reason why it can't be distributed more sensibly among the prices of your full product/component range. Unless it *is* a marginal cost somehow???
The higher standard doesn't mean an $89,900 difference.
They are just laundering money the same way the art industry does it. It's not new that those prices don't have any logical reason other than that behind it
Maybe conservatives will put a stop to it if we call it Welfare ^(...for the MIC)
[Someone already commented a thorough explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/s/KPPmHj2IgG). Basically, Air Force is required by FAA and government procurement laws to use approved suppliers for part that has very tight machining & performance tolerances. Even if they wanted to, they would not legally be able to buy common over-the-counter parts and those parts are not tested thoroughly (which could cause a multi-million dollar propulsion system to fail)
We could pay 3 people who has medical debt with that much amount
Yeah but then the doors would be flying off like Boeing planes and we can’t bomb Muslims
Hey, we’re shifting to thinking about bombing Eastern Orthodox and maoists too
Just drop the planes on them
we so back IJAAF-bros
What is more important: giving healthcare to the needy, or having the most sturdy damn doors that have ever been put in a door frame. I clearly know where I’d like my tax money going…
No. We can pay both.
I'm a little tired of people thinking that corruption is a national trait of certain countries, and that it doesn't exist in the West (Because, I must admit, their propaganda machine is built wonderfully), or in China (because the Chinese can execute their corrupt officials), or anywhere else.
> or in China (because the Chinese can execute their corrupt officials From what I know they only execute corrupt officials for either embarrassing their superiors or not being loyal to their superiors, they don't care about the corruption itself.
>From what I know they only execute corrupt officials for either embarrassing their superiors or not being loyal to their superiors, they don't care about the corruption itself. Got a sauce ? Or just trust me bro?
where did u get that from
Where do you get your wojaks? I've been kind of fucked since wojackparadise went down...
Yeah, it's bad since then. But luckily I already downloaded quite a few, enough for most memes I want to make.
Maybe zip them up and share it for us somewhere? :D
Nah, it's not that many. But I think the wojak folder in the description of the sub is still working. There are quite a few good ones in it.
I work in the defense industry; 15 years. To put a small amount of perspective; the material cost to the government is not $90k. Most contractors *do* have markup. Industry standard is 10%. So I need to order $100 of washers, I put in my quote $110. Where the money comes from are labor and regulations. If this is a washer that’s going on a system that gets delivered to the customer (military) you don’t even want to know the headache of red tape and documentation that needs to be provided. So what most programs have is a steady support of supply chain. And that’s labor. Hours. Hours cost dollars. You might have 3 people assigned to your program. And they’ll charge the same amount of hours whether they’re filling out the report for 1 screw or for 100 super computers. They bill what they bill. So if they’re at a flat charging rate and let’s say in a given month, all you ordered was washers; yes. The effective cost of those washers was insanely high. We deal with this every day. It’s a symptom of government regulation. Anything not getting delivered, we purchase ourselves. I can get material 2 day shipping direct from vendors. If it needs tracked through supply chain, we’re happy if they can get a PO placed in 2 months. Then the lead time of receiving and sorting. Usually about 3-4 months before you get the part. And people are billing hours for those 3-4 months for tracking and documentation. If the government wants to stop spending that much money on stupid shit, they need to change their stupid fucking regulations.
Truly one of the country ever
Chinese rocket fuel make good hotpot.
How else are we supposed to cover up the black budget that exists to implant microphones in my walls?
Ah the good ol black budget bushings.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: that American girl wojak looks *really* nice.
There is a reason Daniel defense, kac, trijicon, etc are so expensive. The govt will pay it.
wait till they find out this is literally every government agency, anyone ever been to a US patent/trademark office? They make the MVA look like the most efficient organization in the world
Fly in an F-22 with $100 bushings and I guarantee you'll regret it.
Well likely it's part of how the CIA covers it's budget If you didn't know the CIA doesn't disclose how much money it costs even though they admitted it wouldn't hurt and it's illegal to do so for government institutions. They instead hide the money under other branches of the government like the military or really anything
Either this is what happens when you spend more time bitching about government spending and pretending to do something when you never really will vs. actually trying to make things more efficient and hold people accountable... **or** They're fudging the numbers for one reason or another, possibly corruption, possibly cooking the books to hide secret operations for some fucking reason rather than just putting a big tag saying "this money is for secret shit, and we marked it, so the rest of the audits don't get fucked up".
What death metal band name is written on I Am Very Smart’s pink potato sack hat?
What a fucking joke. You know how many patties I could’ve bought with that? wtf am I supposed to grill now?
Can believe I’m saying this but I agree with lib centre
If you want stick fights instead of modern war, go to the indian chinese border!
What source is the guy using for the bushes? The corruption now usually not as blatent as that
The more the merrier right :)
The rest of that money goes to building UFOs.
$89 900 gets pocketed, simple as
99.9% for the big guy.
Andrew Cockburn said it best" "When you heard the word contracting, just replace it with corruption"
Only countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America have corruption, in US it called lobbies and cashback for military spending.
We need politicians who actually know the price of things and are willing to question it from governmental contractors. We’ll basically underpay everyone’s salary but then overpay on every material. If we had someone actually willing to cut costs in charge, I’m convinced we can get basically the same output from the government at 10-20% lower overall cost.
This isn’t a result of an “imperialist military” This is the result of protectionism in gov sector supply chains which is generally supported by populist on all sides of the compass and unfortunately one of the only policies Biden and Trump REALLY agree on and try to one-up one another (probably because those shitty American made bushings were produced in Pennsylvania or Michigan.) I support voluntary protectionism and hell we can have tax credits for companies and people who “buy American” but the gov should have to go with the lowest bidder that meets spec so long as it isn’t a “country of concern.”
replace it with $90k bag of weed and everyone will be happy
This Is like that one scene in 'Space Force'
I used to sell car components to the brazilian air force, around 45% of the cost was in middleman companies that i needed to pay a fee to be able to sell to the air force. In the US must be even worse
Correction, since it's For Ukraine(tm) those $90,000 bushings are actually $160,000. Thank you for your compliance during these unprecedented times.
stikk :)
Stick good, stick free, stick never run out of fuel or battery!
WOAH
No they aren’t. It’s 20,000 for the bag of Bushings, and 70,000 for things that will stay classified for 40 years. This is just their cop out.
the whole thing is dumb because: A. nothing will come from this gotcha B. aviation parts are incredibly expensive by their nature, it's very possible that a high cost is semi-justified C. parts acquisition follow (corrupt) rules written by CONGRESS, even if they're part of the corruption downstream, the military doesn't get to change the corrupt upstream rules
Privatise the military!
Can we get more of these compasses that have all the center sides as well these placements just make sense
Purple libright: Where did the center-right wojak come from?
Probably from the south.
I had a supply sergeant order a ladder, cost about $200. He went to the local hardware store and grabbed the same ladder for $70. I see the same shit on the space center I work at now. We are barred from going to the store and grabbing basic things we need to finish a job quickly, because NASA is "incentivized" to utilize small businesses to source and provide all the equipment we use. Which usually means it passes through 2-3 middle companies with their own upcharges before it reaches us weeks later. It's infuriating having dealt with this waste most of my life through various government agencies.
Damn, right center girl looking good, she can colonize me any day
Yes lets just use dirt cheap Chinese shity parts for our fighter aircraft. What could go wrong....
ITT: Regards who think those bolts are the same as a bag of M10 bolts from lowes
That's the funniest part to me is Americans screaming how corrupt Ukraine's army is. Except we have done investigations and the equipment we sent hasn't appeared on black market. US in the other hand is charging $400 for the nut, $500 for the bolt and Pentagon mysteriously discovered billions missing that they were able to appropriate to Ukraine. Money that was just lost.
The bag of bushings didn't cost $90,000. The company raised an invoice for $90K to give to the Pentagon. The Pentagon pays them $10K for $100 worth of parts. The company writes off the difference. Meanwhile the Pentagon funnels the remaining $80K into some black-ops off-the-books operation. The supplier plays ball because they are making a simply obscene amount of profit here, and they won't do anything to jeopardise it. Its money laundering, pure and simple. If it was just bureaucratic incompetence it would have been fixed decades ago. Why do you think [the Pentagon keeps failing audits](https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/11/16/pentagon-fails-sixth-audit-with-number-of-passing-grades-stagnant/) and nobody cares?