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.

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Money

Waste

Time

Edited >1 y ago

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LTC (Join to see)

Edited >1 y ago

Posted >1 y ago

My favorite example so far is on my most recent mobilization, I spend two hours of my life doing the initial ACAP training, watching 90 min video, which was only 5% useful material for me. I'm fully employed on the civilian side, and intend to return to my job, I don't need help getting a job, and none of it pertained to me. Yet because it is congressionally mandated there are no waivers. The kicker is that I have to meet with a counsolor and go through another session at the end. As far as me a fully employed reservist is concerned, this is a waste of govt time and money. For a career military soldier, or others this may be appropriate training, but there should be a way to decline the training also.

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SSG (ret) William Martin

Posted 11 y ago

I have seen units cleaning out their excess property or other things such as MREs, and some how sealed boxes end up in the dumpster. To me, that is a waste of tax payer funds.

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SGT John Phillips

Edited >1 y ago

Posted >1 y ago

The F-35, there is a big waste of money. Common sense has to kick in at some point. 2 Billion this year alone allotted for a new engine design. This aircraft is billions of dollars over budget, and not even close to ready. I understand staying on the cutting edge, but there has to be a cut off. The projected over-all cost of this thing is going to be around 2 or 3 trillion dollars if memory serves correctly. It's just an insane amount of money, that could be better used somewhere else, or not at all.

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LTC (Join to see)

>1 y

Can you do the mission better with 2000 planes that cost 1 million dollars, or 200 planes for 10 million dollars. Does every weapon have to be the be all end all. 11Bs in the Army are equiped with the m16/m4, costing what $1,000 each. Are we better served equiping the whole marine and infantry with a top of the line state of the art rifle, than buying one extrememly expensive jet, which can crash or get shot down or have mechanical failure. Cost vs reward. What is the chance that the plane will get use, what is the chance a rifle will get used. An endless debate. Politics and powerplays have alot to do with spending.
I like you example SGT Phillips

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SPC Charles Brown

Posted >1 y ago

To me the biggest waste of time and money is sending our troops to foreign countries that should by rights be able to handle their own internal affairs. This would save not only the military, but our federal government money. We must spend millions of dollars a day flying our service members back and forth, the avgas must be really expensive. Bring all our men and women home, reopen the closed bases and provide jobs for those who otherwise would not be able to get one. Saves money, creates jobs, and bolster the self image of the unemployed in the areas where these closed bases are located. Any complaints?

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SGT James Elphick

>1 y

By countries that should be able to take care of themselves are you referring to our continued presence in Europe, Japan, and Korea? Or are you referring to our attempts to nation-build (if you can call it that) in countries the cannot handle their own affairs? Also, are you suggesting employing people for the sake of employment with no actual benefit to the military/government from said employment? I'm quite confused

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SPC Charles Brown

>1 y

Reopening the closed military bases would provide the ability to house military units that have no military stations here in the states, such as the 8th Army in Korea, 2nd Infantry division also in Korea. Bring our soldiers home from Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and any other installations around the globe. Utilizing the closed bases as home bases for these units would save fuel costs of flying soldiers around the globe. As for nation building, that should be left to the nations in question such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Who made us the worlds watchdog in the first place? The civilian jobs that could be created on these newly reopened bases would benefit the soldiers and the government in that it would decrease the national and local unemployment numbers, more money for uncle sam to take from the working man. Any further questions?

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1SG (Join to see)

Posted >1 y ago

Sir I have read the responses here and just want to say this: While a lot of the services put in place (like ACAP) may not help you or many but it does help some Soldiers. We have to get out of the mindset of "this wastes MY time" and start being happy that the Soldiers that truly don't have a clue are getting some potentially helpful info. Just like with all the safety training we do, it is evident to anybody that it does not stop ALL accidents, but if it does save one life then I say it's worth it.

We have all these homeless vets who can't find a job and probably either don't know how to properly market themselves or are just lazy. Those that don't know how to market themselves properly, probably heard from so many senior leaders how "useless" ACAP is and that is just a "check the block" to seperate from the military, and probably didn't pay attention to anything that was briefed.

Now you want to talk about a waste of time???? My whole BNCOC class in 2006 (13 of us) were all recently seasoned combat veterans. Our SGLs that instructed the "FTX" portion of the course were all slick sleeved minus one, who had been to desert storm. We spent an entire day on them teaching us how to stack on a house, and how to patrol on foot. Obviously we all did what they said as it was a graded portion and required for graduation, but they had no real clue about what they were teaching us.

Again I just want to say that as leaders, we should be pleased that our Soldiers are getting good info upon seperation from the military to set themselves up for success in the civilian world. If they choose to use it properly is totally up to them.

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SFC William Swartz Jr

>1 y

SFC(P) Gilley, I had the same experience with my ANCOC class, all in my small group except one were OIF veterans , myself and one other were also branch certified as tank PSGs while our SGLs were "slick-sleeved"...funny thing though, all of them made the MSG list that came out right before our graduation...

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LTC (Join to see)

>1 y

I agree that the information is good for some, but not all. My problem get to be when there are too many boxes to check and it bogs down and paralyzies the system. Just like TOO many safety breifings or notices waters down the system, and numbs the mind.

Example - emails, Just got my new email for my new posting. Within 72 hours has 20 emails. Most were repeating info and notices.

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SGT John Phillips

>1 y

There needs to be a separate ACAP for soldiers being medically separated. I was medically separated after about 11 years of service. ACAP wasn't a total waste, but there was a lot it didn't cover that it should have.I was never made aware of the many VA benefits available to me, how to use them or how long I had to use them. I think those are important things that every soldier should be made aware of when exiting the service.

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LTC (Join to see)

>1 y

SGT Phillips, I agree. My issue is the one size fits all training. Good points.

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SFC (Join to see)

Posted >1 y ago

anything that gets bought by the government is a waste of money, they overpay for everything and anything

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LTC (Join to see)

>1 y

Why do you think they do that? How can we we fix that? What about the system is broke?

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CPT (Join to see)

>1 y

On some things I agree, but on others, that's not true. When we upgraded to the new Lifepaks, our price was right about $18,000 per unit. The same exact model and setup for the city was about $32,000 per unit. Much of the supplies and mainstream equipment are purchased at a great price.

Some of the things purchased are more than they need to be, but, in many cases, that is due to regulations that require things to be bought from companies with disabled employees or from American companies. That is not that big of a price difference, especially when the money is made back in taxes.

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