What is the most ridiculous "cost saving effort" that you deal with in the Army?

No one likes policing up the brass, especially after a FTX where it's scattered all over the training range, but it does make good sense to do so.

1SG, I fully understand that large scale piece of this but spending hours looking for brass in the woods of North Carolina is a waste of man power. The dense vegetation and sand will makes it almost impossible to find brass. Small engagement while moving, good luck trying to go back and remember which tree you were using as cover so you can find the rounds that you fired.

I fully agree that trying to collect brass from a training lane can be a waste of time. If there was a stationary position where a lot of firing took place, that is one thing. But walking through woods to do that is crazy. I used to hate that.

All too often we spend dollars to save pennies. Policing brass on a range makes sense -- probably more for the sake of cleaning up the range than for any value of the brass itself. Trying to retrieve brass over a large field training area where small amounts of brass or even single cases are widely scattered among foliage is a total waste of time.

On many (perhaps most) army posts, policing brass is more about confirming that the ammunition was fired than about either recycling the brass (which is sold as scrap metal) or cleaning up the range. Apparently at some time commanders became concerned that units might not be firing up all the training ammunition they drew, so they established controls checking the amount of brass turned in. This "solved" the "problem" by causing units to shoot up any left over training ammunition, because it was much easier to shoot up ammo and collect the brass than to jump through all the hoops to try to turn in unused ammunition (if it could even be turned in at all).

On the other hand, there are some occasions where wasting time is deliberate -- or at least part of the plan.

I recall one such example from training that was part of one of those recurring programs that the Army keeps trying to adapt from the corporate world (I don't recall what that version of the program was being called at the time, but we have all seen such programs where we are told we need to think up smarter ways to do things). According the the well-documented events covered in our training was the experience of a team at an Army installation in the southern US. On this post, large numbers of soldiers were tasked with picking up pine needles that fell from trees in the cantonment area. The team figured out that the post could save money by hiring a civilian company that already had trucks equipped with vacuums to that would collect the pine needles. The company did a better job of picking up the pine needles and the cost was very low because the company used to pine needles to make mulch that they in turn sold. The project would generate significant savings by freeing up the soldiers who were being tasked to pick up pine needles. The project was reviewed and recommended for approval. It was only when the project was passed to the installation chain of command for implementation that anyone discovered that the reason soldiers were being tasked to pick up pine needles had nothing to do with needing the pine needles removed but was entirely busy work to keep the soldiers occupied! The soldiers who were being tasked to pick up pine needles were from the training units on post and were soldiers who had been removed from training, who were waiting for a course start date, or waiting for reassignment after completing training.

Most of the small increases are a joke anyway. If you live on or near a military installation, the government announces the pending pay raise and all of the stores in the area raise their prices.

SFC Ernest Thurston - Sounds like what happens when the government of cities, states and Feds raise the minimum pay, except for the most part it doesn't result in loss of jobs for many as it does in the private industry.

CPL Scott, Do you really think that is feasible to find every piece of brass that is expended during a small arms engagement in the woods of North Carolina. The dense vegetation and sand eats casings like a fat kid on cake. I can understand if you have a large scale exercise. I am referring to a small scale engagement while on the move.

It all depends on how often a certain area is used for these "small scale" exercises.