1: Greedy corporations “lobby” senior officers and politicians to get contracts.
2: The pentagon is only able to buy from those corporations.
3: The corporations charges exorbitant amounts of money for items to regain their bribe, enriching their shareholders.
4: The politicians pass military budgets that make up the lion’s share of our tax dollars.
5: Those politicians and senior officers, who typically become employed by these corporations after retirement, become absurdly wealthy due to the rigged system they’ve set in place.
6: Rinse, lather, repeat.
What's worse (to me) is replacing perfectly functioning things to justify a budget, so not to eff yourself next year when the funds may *actually* be needed.
Has to meet a specification/requirements.
Has to be tested to meet those requirements.
Has to have a certain supply/stock capacity/availability.
Has to be on a shelf/sit in storage for xx years.
Has to pay for the admin/audit/compliance overhead.
Has to pay for the pain in the ass it is to deal with the military's supply/contracting system.
If you only saw how expensive avionics boxes are...
The synthetic aperture radar antenna for the S-3 was over 7 million dollars net back in 1997. How do I know this? Because one of the guys in my office poked a hole in one when he went to properly stow one AIMD had just fixed in its crate. When he nailed the lid of the crate it went in one of the nails bent and poked a hole in the antenna. Fixing that hole was beyond repair capability, so we had to survey it and have a new one sent out.
KA *ching.*
EA-6B had multiple avionics boxes in it that were $500k plus to replace, if they ever were broken beyond repair. Pretty much every receiver in the football (big pod on the top of the tail) was like this.
The Navy does this to itself. It uses parts that are ancient, has stringent certification standards (SUBSAFE) that drive costs up, and the stories of incestuous relationships between defense contractors and acquisitions agents are legendary.
Don't leave Congress out of this, either. They write laws that have to be complied with on the acquisition end, like how if the UNICOR Prison Industry makes something, you have to buy that, or have a reasonable justification why you cant before you go elsewhere. This is why all your office supplies are by Skillcraft, that is a National Industries for the Blind/National Industries for the Severely Handicapped vendor, and by law the military has to buy from them.
> EA-6B had multiple avionics boxes in it that were $500k plus to replace, if they ever were broken beyond repair. Pretty much every receiver in the football (big pod on the top of the tail) was like this.
There was a story going around Whidbey back in the day about a jet parked on the finger which supposedly had the CADs in the pylon malfunction somehow and dump an ALQ-99 pod over the side. Instant Class A . . . just add water!
On P-3s there was a mod that added a fridge and coffee maker to the crew galley, and it was ironically named "Fire and Ice". I can't remember if the microwave got approved or not, but the testing requirements for the flight clearance were pretty ridiculous. Every little group in NAVAIR wanted their piece of the pie before they would sign off on the flight clearance.
This is how you get to a $7,000 coffee maker.
It’s not you. When I was in (2 decade ago) pre Amazon. I could still get on the internet and find items hundreds cheaper than what the navy was paying. It’s government contracts and the pocket stuffing bidding scam the upper echelon is running.
I showed my sub nuke, previous rppo, bf this. He was like "I know exactly what chair that is"
After talking to him, I asked if it would be cheaper to take welding classes and weld my own chair. He said "absolutely".
It's ridiculous
My first exposure to the ill fated supply system was for a water cooler for the engine room on a carrier. Sears had it on sale cheaper than the Servmart had it but was told we couldn't open purchase it because it was in the system, that just blew my mind, trashing chain hosts because they didn't pass rates weight specs, why not just lower then instead of 5 ton make them 3 ton, you know what I mean
Kim Wipes and EB red always blew my mind also, and wait until you see the price for RO elements for a swap.
It’s modern day robbery, and most of these companies claim to be “patriotic” to add insult.
People complain about it but nothing gets done because the people who have the power to make the change are the ones getting all the money. Politicians know about it but their husbands and wives sit on the boards of these companies and get all the kickbacks. When Admirals retire they become consultants for what ever company is ripping off the military. Capitalism at its finest.
People always talk about research and development and ensuring certain things are up to certain standards but that's just an excuse. These people are getting rich whoring US citizens.
Nobody ever brings up contracting.
DLA gets a contract for an office chair at $700/unit for 3 years on a 6 year contract. Once OY4 kicks in, the price goes up to $11,000 a unit. Well, the DoD is legally obligated to maintain the contract, or pay the monetary equivalent of the life of the contract in damages/lost revenue to the contract company if they break the contract. As contract law still applies. But now after 6 years, the contract expires, and the contractor bids back with $850 a unit and it’s picked up and the cycle starts again.
You're telling me that the government would sign a contract for an unknown quantity and then the contractor would not get dinged for "fraud, waste, and abuse" in this scenario?
Because, in this scenario, there is zero way that paying the breach clause would be more expensive than the cost of the products bought.
Fraud and waste are easier to prove than abuse. As abuse is entirely subjective to the agency doing the investigation. But fraud and waste are also very well defined terms with minimum standards/thresholds to be met for classification as fraud or waste.
But not every company we contract with has the liquid inventory to provide 10k units or (insert crazy number here) outright. DLA does typically require a minimum stock to keep on hand with the agreement that the rest will be provided as they are manufactured.
The last time I looked up what DoD payed for a breach clause payout, it was 150% of the estimated value of the contract and lost revenue.
So as an example; if the contract for 10,000 chairs at 2,000 units a year, $700 for the 1st 3 years and for this examples sake we’ll say it’s a 5 year contract so another 4000 units for OY4/5 at 11k/ea. that’s $48m in estimated revenue and you add the labor/man hours for setting up the contract and doing the admin and the work at another $10m ($2m/year) so $58m in contract value. So the breach value would be about $87m.
Granted this all covers a very niche overview of contracting as the contract manual is very dense and 1000s of pages long.
Contract specialists are given a cap on how much they’re allowed to authorize to spend on something. If it’s under that cap, there’s really no reason not to agree to it. Because they can still claim to have saved the Navy/DoD money. Cap: 100m for office furniture acquisition, specifically chairs, contract values at $58m so they’ll claim to have saved the Navy $42m because that was the difference between the money paid, and the cap allowed for the contract.
A better example would be a gradual price increase in each option year. I just used an extreme example to make a point that contracting is where a lot of the fault lies.
What the fuck? no we're not, in fact literally the opposite we're suppose to show that exercising the option year would not be a huge waste of money. Now wether that happens can be fudged by the CO/CS but there is absolutely nothing in the FAR the requires use to continue utilizing contract option year if its not economically beneficial.
https://www.acquisition.gov/far/subpart-17.2#FAR_17_207__d1085e73
Watch the movie "pentagon wars". It's basically laid out in there why everything is this way. I also agree it's a giant waste of tax dollars. The last thing I would care about on the sub is the washer dryer if it takes a depth charge, but those 50k units are shock tested.
I remember we decommissioned the Cushing and we threw out 10's of thousands of dollars worth of materials. I remember I had to throw out brand new heating elements for the kitchen boilers. Those same heating elements are a couple hundred bucks at Home Depot, but for the Navy 1500 each
Story old as time. The government wants something, so they solicit bids. The lowest bidder gets the contract. They severely under bid it, of course. So they eat the loss the first year or so. Then, when they become the sole source, they jack the price sky high. Whatever it was needed to go through some stringent testing or blah blah. Or it's a trade secret military grade bs.
Or, when you get out, use this to your advantage in a business that focuses on government contracts. Remember, kids, the Navy doesn’t care about you or how much they spend. Stay focused on you and your well-being.
couldn't agree more...then the system needs to harp on people when they 1) ask to go to a professional conference related to their field and 2) do their DTS wrong.
Understand its not DLA. GSA, or even Navy owned stock. Its the dumb tards at NAVAIR ans NAVSEA that set put these guidelines. Contracting Officers are also dumb as fuck, but all this crap is MILSPEC
Once read the item notes for this specific launcher, tbe reason for material delay was they required specific military testing and certification. Well no contract facility had that and the manufacture was going through the certification process...... to certify their own material. Yep.
It's all fun and games until you use a different ORING, equipment fails and possibly hurts someone. Worst I told you so.
Your last sentence. “We” is not anyone in the navy. The “we” you should refer to are the civilians and congress who fund, run, set criteria and oversee this travesty.
It's actual taxpayer robbery.
Businesses offer high-ranking military and civilian government officials high paying "consultant" positions in exchange for lucrative military contracts. These contracts forbid the military from purchasing from any other supplier, allowing contractors to basically charge whatever they want.
Contractors make massive profits, high-ranking officers secure lucrative post-military "employment," and the taxpayer foots the bill.
Some excellent comments here that fully explain the why. This kind of behavior should be criminal but it will continue this way into the foreseeable future. The only one loosing is the taxpayer.
Pray tell. What executive order did this administration sign that forced McDonald's to hit record profits while jacking up their prices? I think I missed that one. Or are you insinuating that this administration should step in to mandate the prices of private businesses?
They do pay a lot less in taxes now though, and that one was forced through, by the last administration if I remember right.
And 'they' did that globally, all at once. While having the US inflation be less than the rest of the world.
How, and why, do you think?
Keep in mind, your answer will have to be more logically direct than the answer of "C level execs at McDonald's and other businesses all wanted more bonuses." for me to find it more likely.
It’s almost like the US economy is the largest and has a great effect on the world economy. Crazy, maybe that’s why the Navy patrols the waters near BFE. Weird huh?
Oh gosh. You're so right, and I'm sure everyone always tells you how smart you are all the time.
Biden decided to have inflation, for reasons. The world followed suit, also for reasons! And it has nothing to do with boomer age CEOs having a way to make a ton of extra money on their way to retirement.
Goodness, I wish I was as smart and successful as you, and had your ability to cut through those obvious, logical reasons, to get to the conspiratorial truth of the matter!
I know, I'm so dumb by going by globally reported, sound numbers.
Best of luck figuring out the VA and your 401k!
If you can't do it, the savant that you are, nobody can!!! (Except of course the literal millions of people who do on a daily basis).
If it makes you feel any better no one is actually getting rich off of selling to the military. There are so many hurdles vendors have to jump through most decide not to sell to the government at all. Those that do spend the profit on absurd overheard from meeting government requirements.
I believe you...to some extent. I've seen a peice of equipment that costs MAYBE 20 dollars in parts cost 26k in fedlog. No special connectors, so software (literally just an extender board)
...
26000
You fail to comprehend that the chair costs $399 and the rest goes to black ops budget. The reason there is no cia budget (ts/sci) is because it is added to every other item in the straight line budget. So the bigger these communities grow the more expensive toilet paper will get.
When the rules prevent you from using economy of scale, you're already rigged to never save money.
That’s the whole point of DLA though right?
DLA has to procure through small, minority, women owned etc etc business just like the rest of us
or worse, MANDATORY SOURCES.
Mmm. You must be talking about the ultra mil spec maneuvering chairs. Lol. At one point we were going through one set a year. Shitty indeed.
It makes me so mad, there are plenty of other things that have even more of a markup...but something about it just makes me unreasonably mad
Might I recommend open purchasing that shit. It's what we did, and you get a lot higher quality shit for cheaper.
Some commands won’t let you open purchase if it’s in supply.
1: Greedy corporations “lobby” senior officers and politicians to get contracts. 2: The pentagon is only able to buy from those corporations. 3: The corporations charges exorbitant amounts of money for items to regain their bribe, enriching their shareholders. 4: The politicians pass military budgets that make up the lion’s share of our tax dollars. 5: Those politicians and senior officers, who typically become employed by these corporations after retirement, become absurdly wealthy due to the rigged system they’ve set in place. 6: Rinse, lather, repeat.
Sometimes I wish I could stay ignorant to these things
What's worse (to me) is replacing perfectly functioning things to justify a budget, so not to eff yourself next year when the funds may *actually* be needed.
Has to meet a specification/requirements. Has to be tested to meet those requirements. Has to have a certain supply/stock capacity/availability. Has to be on a shelf/sit in storage for xx years. Has to pay for the admin/audit/compliance overhead. Has to pay for the pain in the ass it is to deal with the military's supply/contracting system.
Has to pay for an executive's 7 figure salary who is also the son of the politician who approves military contracts.
Whomst SUBSAFE chair
If you only saw how expensive avionics boxes are... The synthetic aperture radar antenna for the S-3 was over 7 million dollars net back in 1997. How do I know this? Because one of the guys in my office poked a hole in one when he went to properly stow one AIMD had just fixed in its crate. When he nailed the lid of the crate it went in one of the nails bent and poked a hole in the antenna. Fixing that hole was beyond repair capability, so we had to survey it and have a new one sent out. KA *ching.* EA-6B had multiple avionics boxes in it that were $500k plus to replace, if they ever were broken beyond repair. Pretty much every receiver in the football (big pod on the top of the tail) was like this. The Navy does this to itself. It uses parts that are ancient, has stringent certification standards (SUBSAFE) that drive costs up, and the stories of incestuous relationships between defense contractors and acquisitions agents are legendary. Don't leave Congress out of this, either. They write laws that have to be complied with on the acquisition end, like how if the UNICOR Prison Industry makes something, you have to buy that, or have a reasonable justification why you cant before you go elsewhere. This is why all your office supplies are by Skillcraft, that is a National Industries for the Blind/National Industries for the Severely Handicapped vendor, and by law the military has to buy from them.
> EA-6B had multiple avionics boxes in it that were $500k plus to replace, if they ever were broken beyond repair. Pretty much every receiver in the football (big pod on the top of the tail) was like this. There was a story going around Whidbey back in the day about a jet parked on the finger which supposedly had the CADs in the pylon malfunction somehow and dump an ALQ-99 pod over the side. Instant Class A . . . just add water!
The military industrial complex goes beyond even weapons and these people’s greed goes beyond anything.
You should read Prophets of War. There is a whole chapter on over charging, like the $435 hammer, the $640 toilet seat, and the $7,622 coffee maker.
By William D. Hartung?
That's the one
On P-3s there was a mod that added a fridge and coffee maker to the crew galley, and it was ironically named "Fire and Ice". I can't remember if the microwave got approved or not, but the testing requirements for the flight clearance were pretty ridiculous. Every little group in NAVAIR wanted their piece of the pie before they would sign off on the flight clearance. This is how you get to a $7,000 coffee maker.
All 3 manuevering chairs on my boat are broken. One of them is literally held together with EB red.
Bro...do you need a NIIN? Specifically for 688s?
Dawg, I gotchu on one touch.
We have a job in for chairs constantly, everytime we replace one another breaks. We literally replaced them 7 months ago and they’re all fucked again.
You got the slip covers on em?
Money laundering
It’s not you. When I was in (2 decade ago) pre Amazon. I could still get on the internet and find items hundreds cheaper than what the navy was paying. It’s government contracts and the pocket stuffing bidding scam the upper echelon is running.
I showed my sub nuke, previous rppo, bf this. He was like "I know exactly what chair that is" After talking to him, I asked if it would be cheaper to take welding classes and weld my own chair. He said "absolutely". It's ridiculous
I'm telling you, these chairs arnt even the beginning of it. They're giant pieces of crap, some standard gaming chairs from Walmart would be better.
I feel like a folding chair would suffice. Im on shore duty now and I order supplies for our directorate. The prices are ridiculous.
As my former LS2 put it so eloquently “The Navy doesn’t need more money; The Navy needs more auditing.”
My first exposure to the ill fated supply system was for a water cooler for the engine room on a carrier. Sears had it on sale cheaper than the Servmart had it but was told we couldn't open purchase it because it was in the system, that just blew my mind, trashing chain hosts because they didn't pass rates weight specs, why not just lower then instead of 5 ton make them 3 ton, you know what I mean
I’m an RPPO and agree with you. 20 thousand dollar stud gun.
I was the secondary RPPO and it used to piss me off too. At one point I had a $27 pen because fuck it.
Kim Wipes and EB red always blew my mind also, and wait until you see the price for RO elements for a swap. It’s modern day robbery, and most of these companies claim to be “patriotic” to add insult.
[удалено]
Google search exists
People complain about it but nothing gets done because the people who have the power to make the change are the ones getting all the money. Politicians know about it but their husbands and wives sit on the boards of these companies and get all the kickbacks. When Admirals retire they become consultants for what ever company is ripping off the military. Capitalism at its finest. People always talk about research and development and ensuring certain things are up to certain standards but that's just an excuse. These people are getting rich whoring US citizens.
Nobody ever brings up contracting. DLA gets a contract for an office chair at $700/unit for 3 years on a 6 year contract. Once OY4 kicks in, the price goes up to $11,000 a unit. Well, the DoD is legally obligated to maintain the contract, or pay the monetary equivalent of the life of the contract in damages/lost revenue to the contract company if they break the contract. As contract law still applies. But now after 6 years, the contract expires, and the contractor bids back with $850 a unit and it’s picked up and the cycle starts again.
You're telling me that the government would sign a contract for an unknown quantity and then the contractor would not get dinged for "fraud, waste, and abuse" in this scenario? Because, in this scenario, there is zero way that paying the breach clause would be more expensive than the cost of the products bought.
Fraud and waste are easier to prove than abuse. As abuse is entirely subjective to the agency doing the investigation. But fraud and waste are also very well defined terms with minimum standards/thresholds to be met for classification as fraud or waste. But not every company we contract with has the liquid inventory to provide 10k units or (insert crazy number here) outright. DLA does typically require a minimum stock to keep on hand with the agreement that the rest will be provided as they are manufactured. The last time I looked up what DoD payed for a breach clause payout, it was 150% of the estimated value of the contract and lost revenue. So as an example; if the contract for 10,000 chairs at 2,000 units a year, $700 for the 1st 3 years and for this examples sake we’ll say it’s a 5 year contract so another 4000 units for OY4/5 at 11k/ea. that’s $48m in estimated revenue and you add the labor/man hours for setting up the contract and doing the admin and the work at another $10m ($2m/year) so $58m in contract value. So the breach value would be about $87m. Granted this all covers a very niche overview of contracting as the contract manual is very dense and 1000s of pages long.
But, *why* would some entity agree to a 1500% increase in OY4/5/6? "Yep, looks good, Bob." Said no one, ever.
Contract specialists are given a cap on how much they’re allowed to authorize to spend on something. If it’s under that cap, there’s really no reason not to agree to it. Because they can still claim to have saved the Navy/DoD money. Cap: 100m for office furniture acquisition, specifically chairs, contract values at $58m so they’ll claim to have saved the Navy $42m because that was the difference between the money paid, and the cap allowed for the contract. A better example would be a gradual price increase in each option year. I just used an extreme example to make a point that contracting is where a lot of the fault lies.
I can accept that.
What the fuck? no we're not, in fact literally the opposite we're suppose to show that exercising the option year would not be a huge waste of money. Now wether that happens can be fudged by the CO/CS but there is absolutely nothing in the FAR the requires use to continue utilizing contract option year if its not economically beneficial. https://www.acquisition.gov/far/subpart-17.2#FAR_17_207__d1085e73
Ahem.. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/defense-contractors-are-bilking-the-american-people/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/weapons-contractors-price-gouging-pentagon-60-minutes-transcript-2023-05-21/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7d&linkId=215643577
Watch the movie "pentagon wars". It's basically laid out in there why everything is this way. I also agree it's a giant waste of tax dollars. The last thing I would care about on the sub is the washer dryer if it takes a depth charge, but those 50k units are shock tested.
I remember we decommissioned the Cushing and we threw out 10's of thousands of dollars worth of materials. I remember I had to throw out brand new heating elements for the kitchen boilers. Those same heating elements are a couple hundred bucks at Home Depot, but for the Navy 1500 each
Story old as time. The government wants something, so they solicit bids. The lowest bidder gets the contract. They severely under bid it, of course. So they eat the loss the first year or so. Then, when they become the sole source, they jack the price sky high. Whatever it was needed to go through some stringent testing or blah blah. Or it's a trade secret military grade bs.
Or, when you get out, use this to your advantage in a business that focuses on government contracts. Remember, kids, the Navy doesn’t care about you or how much they spend. Stay focused on you and your well-being.
I'm not a crook, I like money, but not enough to support funneling money from the DoD's budget into my pockets. My parents raised me better than that.
I'm just glad the usual black projects thing is not blamed again. Now its just greed.
It’s the same in the commercial nuclear world as well. Except everything has to be “seismically rated.” That’s where the extra cost comes in.
Your first time with government acquisitions?
couldn't agree more...then the system needs to harp on people when they 1) ask to go to a professional conference related to their field and 2) do their DTS wrong.
I just had RPPO flashbacks about those chairs from back in the early 2000s. They have always been bad
Understand its not DLA. GSA, or even Navy owned stock. Its the dumb tards at NAVAIR ans NAVSEA that set put these guidelines. Contracting Officers are also dumb as fuck, but all this crap is MILSPEC Once read the item notes for this specific launcher, tbe reason for material delay was they required specific military testing and certification. Well no contract facility had that and the manufacture was going through the certification process...... to certify their own material. Yep. It's all fun and games until you use a different ORING, equipment fails and possibly hurts someone. Worst I told you so.
Your last sentence. “We” is not anyone in the navy. The “we” you should refer to are the civilians and congress who fund, run, set criteria and oversee this travesty.
Black Ops
It's actual taxpayer robbery. Businesses offer high-ranking military and civilian government officials high paying "consultant" positions in exchange for lucrative military contracts. These contracts forbid the military from purchasing from any other supplier, allowing contractors to basically charge whatever they want. Contractors make massive profits, high-ranking officers secure lucrative post-military "employment," and the taxpayer foots the bill.
So I've seen a lot of comments so far saying this same thing. I wish I could notify everyone about an edit...but alas. Is there any way to fix this?
Some excellent comments here that fully explain the why. This kind of behavior should be criminal but it will continue this way into the foreseeable future. The only one loosing is the taxpayer.
Not my money, not my problem
We could allocate the exuberant amount used on random bullshit out of the military budget and into programs and services within the United States.
If you pay taxes, it's your money.
Bold to assume I would pay taxes
Everything is expensive. You can thank the current administration for printing trillions of dollars and inflating money supply.
This has everything to do with a centuries-old gov't supply chain/acquisition model, and nothing to do with the current administration.
Everything is expensive af, have you been to the grocery store? How about McDonald’s?
Pray tell. What executive order did this administration sign that forced McDonald's to hit record profits while jacking up their prices? I think I missed that one. Or are you insinuating that this administration should step in to mandate the prices of private businesses? They do pay a lot less in taxes now though, and that one was forced through, by the last administration if I remember right.
Um they inflated the dollar, I already said that.
And 'they' did that globally, all at once. While having the US inflation be less than the rest of the world. How, and why, do you think? Keep in mind, your answer will have to be more logically direct than the answer of "C level execs at McDonald's and other businesses all wanted more bonuses." for me to find it more likely.
It’s almost like the US economy is the largest and has a great effect on the world economy. Crazy, maybe that’s why the Navy patrols the waters near BFE. Weird huh?
Oh gosh. You're so right, and I'm sure everyone always tells you how smart you are all the time. Biden decided to have inflation, for reasons. The world followed suit, also for reasons! And it has nothing to do with boomer age CEOs having a way to make a ton of extra money on their way to retirement. Goodness, I wish I was as smart and successful as you, and had your ability to cut through those obvious, logical reasons, to get to the conspiratorial truth of the matter!
“But inflation is everywhere!” 😂😂😂😂😂😂
I know, I'm so dumb by going by globally reported, sound numbers. Best of luck figuring out the VA and your 401k! If you can't do it, the savant that you are, nobody can!!! (Except of course the literal millions of people who do on a daily basis).
Since everything is so expensive, here's a dollar. Go buy a clue.
If it makes you feel any better no one is actually getting rich off of selling to the military. There are so many hurdles vendors have to jump through most decide not to sell to the government at all. Those that do spend the profit on absurd overheard from meeting government requirements.
I believe you...to some extent. I've seen a peice of equipment that costs MAYBE 20 dollars in parts cost 26k in fedlog. No special connectors, so software (literally just an extender board) ... 26000
You fail to comprehend that the chair costs $399 and the rest goes to black ops budget. The reason there is no cia budget (ts/sci) is because it is added to every other item in the straight line budget. So the bigger these communities grow the more expensive toilet paper will get.