Posted on Apr 19, 2014
Best examples of the military wasting its members time?
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Give example of the mosted wasted time in military career. Time is money. Or example of government acting stupid with taxpay money.
-If you can think of any, is there any examples of the system being ahead of the game, saving money or resources. I want to be fair to both sides of the discusssion.
Money
Waste
Time
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 16
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IMHO, the biggest waste of Big Army's time/money was the BRAC move that brought the Armor School from Ft. Knox to Ft. Benning....Ft. Knox had all the ranges and training areas needed for the maneuver training that is conducted during A-BOLC, 19K ALC & SLC, not to mention the other courses taught by both 316th CAV and 194th AR BDEs. Benning did not and still does not have adequate training areas "assigned" to 316th for it's maneuver training due to environmental off-limits areas and the nature of the Good Hope Maneuver Training Area. Nice building for the classroom portions and also digital training environments, but the land used is a complete waste of time and money.
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LTC (Join to see)
Some things about BRAC were good, other not so good. I think the combined services school houses are good. Especially in the medical field. Medical training is universal - RN is a RN, a doctor is a doctor, and medics have similiar skill sets.
Several hospitals in the DC area offered dupication of services so merging made sense.
The BRAC process is flawed, doing massive changes all at once, instead of progressively closing one base, doing construction at another, etc. There needs to be a year look with minor BRAC like types changes done every year or two years.
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The biggest waste of funds that I see is the end of year funds. There is so much moneyt left that was budgeted for us but we didn't spend it so go buy something now or else we will not get the same amount next year. This drives me crazy if a corporation budgets an amount of money but doesn't spend it all for whatever reason that is a good thing and it stays in the coffers. However if the government makes a budget we have to spend it all or risk not getting enough next year. There should be a rewward for not spnding all the money.
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LTC (Join to see)
The old, if we don't spend it, we won't have it next year. The August/September spending on items to keep your $1,000,000 budget 1,000,000 next year. Say you have only spent $900,000 of your budget, you arn't rewarded for being 10% under, you are rewarded by having your budget cut the next year. No incentive for departments, managers, etc to look for ways to save.
The problem is lots of last minute purchases are just that, not thought out and best for the department.
You brought up a very good point. The budget system as a whole is flawed.
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SSgt Gregory Guina
Sir that is exactly what I am talking about. You have to budget an amount for maintenance and if things don't break well then it isn't going to be spent. Why then do we spend this money on things that we don't need just to spend it.
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LTC (Join to see)
How so....I hear stories of Headquarters being build, and then being moth balled, MRAPs being destroyed.
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CW2 Joseph Evans
Presence patrols in the safe zones, risk averse commanders that never left the FOBs, our presence reinforcing bad models of government and racism/classism/tribalism that keep infrastructure from being built where it is needed. Misappropriation of funds by B&R, Halliburton and everyone else that got a government contract. Excess civilian workforce that was never there to do their job. HQ elements with too much brass and not enough Joe to get the job done because someone needed their deployment Bronze Star to be competitive. Poor allocation of ISR assets because of a Commanders whim. Inadequate support and security for schools to make sure local populations actually learn to read the news and Qur'an for themselves. The amount of corruption we had to tacitly facilitate to accomplish missions that were undone the following week because of said corruption.
For every Commander in country that knew what s/he was doing, there were two that didn't care, didn't know, or were just to full of themselves.
For every Commander in country that knew what s/he was doing, there were two that didn't care, didn't know, or were just to full of themselves.
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SGT Rick Ash
CW2 Joseph Evans - Now THAT is one of the Best Replies I have ever seen on RP. Dead on Sir, Thank You!
Rick
Rick
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Sir, I have seen it from several sides. We used to play arts and crafts with medical supplies in the ED, just to do something. We created baseballs out of coban. They just renovated a firehouse on post, including brand new appliances, only to put in a contract to demolish it and build new on the same spot, Getting all new appliances. The two construction projects are within 2 years of each other. We send Soldiers for medical appointments out of state, just so they can be seen by a military doc or partner provider. Airfare is about $1600 a trip. The cost to send them to a non-partner, usually only the difference of $200-500. Using contractors and civilians to plow snow, when we have EN Co that can operate the vehicles and do the job for free. I can go on.
The ACAP process is a waste of time and money. It is great for many of the junior enlisted, but should be easier for the command to exempt a person. Most professionals do not need ACAP resources. They already know how to find a job and plan for education, etc. I spent 10 years making it on my own before the Army; i'm fairly sure the guy will not teach me anything I don't know. One of my NCOs has dual bachelors and a masters and worked as a teacher prior to joining; he shouldn't need to do it either. From what I understand, your command can write a memo exempting you from it, but what commander really wants to do that?
The lack of understanding and competence of the IT staff that run the Army infrastructure is amazing. Our network and computers go down so frequently, it's a joke. The NEC/BDE just marked a number of computers as non-compliant. Instead of allowing the S6 to install the updates and then moving the computer back on the network, they force the S6 to put in a work order to remove the computer information on the server and re-image it. Current time to re-image a computer is about 3-4 days. The updates can all be pushed to the computers at night. Instead, they push them in the middle of the workday and force restart upon restart on us.
I certainly feel your frustration.
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LTC (Join to see)
I work at a top hospital on the civilian side, and going military side again I see so many areas that can change. I'm going to see what I can do to do that.
Waste needs to end, not cutting soldier and bullet money. I like your examples LT Cooper.
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MAJ (Join to see)
Biggest waste of money I see in the military is that they cut funding on combat casualty research projects when the war ends - then they spend 10X as much when the next war starts to get all that research back going again. We're always operating years behind because we don't fund medical research at a stable level during peace time. We're still working with 5-10 yr old tech because combat medical research was halted up until 9-11, now we're still playing catch up.
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CPT (Join to see)
SIr, I'm inclined to agree with that.They could also cut the cost of research by working with schools and studying areas that have (as we in EMS refer to them) knife and gun clubs. Certain areas still have people getting shot and stabbed at large rates. We can capitalize on this too.
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LTC (Join to see)
LT Cooper - Army Reserve used to set up and treat trauma patients at Ben Taub County Hospital (Houston, TX) back in the 90s. Gave hospital and community resources, and gave Army health personnel exposure to gun shots and stabbings. Win/Win. We are trying to do that again with Memorial Hermann and another EMS service with medic ride-a-longs, but they are still in the infant stage.
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Army combat uniforms
Marine Corps combat uniforms
Navy combat uniforms
Air Force combat uniforms
Trying to make the TA-50 match all the combat uniforms
Iraq
Afghanistan
ISIS
Turkey
Syria
NATO
...
Marine Corps combat uniforms
Navy combat uniforms
Air Force combat uniforms
Trying to make the TA-50 match all the combat uniforms
Iraq
Afghanistan
ISIS
Turkey
Syria
NATO
...
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LTC (Join to see)
At least congress finally did something and said if you want new uniforms all branch will have to use that uniform. I've served for 13 years and during that time frame, ever branch went to a new uniform, and if they were lucky it was only one uniform, some branches got 2 or 3.
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I think one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money is when the military "allocates" billions of dollars into the BRAC demolition of "outdated" buildings just to turn around and build a brand new facility that meets the same purpose. At the same time our economy is in the toilet and the military is cutting the careers of thousands of active duty military folks.
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Paying contractors to do the jobs of soldiers at double or triple the pay rate. Also I saw a lot of unit level procurement that was absolute crap and should have never been bought. Everything from thermal sights that sat around to assault packs that fell apart on the first mission.
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As a District Stability Framework instructor working with USAID in Kabul, we were trying to teach them how to better manage their development projects, as to not waste money on things that were not directly related to issues causing instability. Then the Secretary of State mandates that 20% of USAID's development projects must be related to women's rights issues. In not a single case study could we find a district in Afghanistan where a source of instability was related to women's rights. Our calculations were somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars spent trying to fix something that wasn't desabilizing the country in the first place. In fact, intervention in this area simply caused additional problems, that required more money, etc, etc, etc....
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I think paying $30k for a hammer and $20k for a toilet lid in the 80s are pretty big waste to me.
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SGT John Phillips
Haha, pretty sure that's how special ops was funded. I remember reading somewhere that was all cold war cover to hide special ops spending. Been a long time since I thought about that.
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