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

Sp4 Byron Skinner…The issue of policing brass. The soldiers are correct it is a waste of time, time better spent reviewing the training exercise. The Army contracts our reclamation and recycling of brass to a contractor. The Army does not resell the brass, it cost to much. The issue of reloading military brass, forget about it. The architecture of military shell casings is different from that of shell casing made for the civilian market thus military shell casings cannot be reloaded for sale on the civilian market…What things like policing brass or painting rocks say that the Army is not efficiently using a soldiers time. In entry training and AIT at least 20% of a soldiers time is take up with these needless activities. That is time that could be better used in the field or in a classroom being brought up to date on weapons platforms or weapons systems…The picture above illustrates this problem quite well. An officer is doing a job that could be done by a range safety NCO at a greatly reduced labor cost. I', sure that officer has more productive worn he can be doing the running a cleaning rod up a rifle barrel to verify that there is no round in the chamber.

Consolidating Class A, Dress White and Dress Blue uniforms into a whole NEW uniform - the ASU - that everyone was required to have. Why not just have done away with the Dress Whites and Blues and go to the Class A's, which everyone's had since Basic?

I spent an AT in Germany on a V Corps Warfighter Exercise. We were a small PSYOP Battalion staff attached to V Corps. We did not have our own barracks so we were spread out and there was no TP in the latrines. Units gave out individual rolls to their own Soldiers. Since we had no logistical tail there, we were stuck using MRE TP or whatever else we could find. Finding an almost empty roll was a godsend.

In Korea we didn't have that problem. There were always kids running around collecting the brass to sell or recycle. I remember a kid running along side of my HMMWV catching hot brass flying out of my M60 and putting it in an old sand bag that he also picked up in the training area.
Now, will go on my rant :-)
When they started closing down bases in Europe, thinking that the Germans would buy it all back from us. Instead we had to do all kinds of environmental corrections and basically pay them to take it back. It's because politicians forgot that after fifty years Germany was no longer an occupied country where we could do what ever we wanted they were an independent country with their own set of laws.
In way this links to policing up the brass after training. What happens fifty years later when the government ends the lease on the land and it reverts to the local government or the private land owner. Just ask what happened at Ft McClellan, AL. It was designated an EPA Super Fund site. The land was contaminated after years and years of training and dumping chemicals because the land wasn't occupied. I'm not one of those environmental wackos and I don't think leaving brass laying around is going to hurt anything, but we do need to make sure we aren't just using the land and dumping anything we want anywhere we want.

Taking out the Tabasco sauce bottles in MREs!

Sp4 Byron Skinner. Back in the Vietnam era if brass collection detail was asked for the the response to the person giving such a stupid order would f__K you. what are going to do send me to Vietnam? The response by the 1st. Sgt. about brass costing money is not correct. The price of the service persons labor far out weights the cost of the collected brass. A more efficient and cost saving way of doing this is to hire an outside contractor. The time not spent collecting brass could be devoted to more range time or on exercised longer to critique the exercise. Soldiers are not free labor and there is no such thing as over training. The closing price of copper today, the valuable part of brass which is basically if I recall my HS Chemistry class brass is copper and tin was 2.1514lb, the salvage price is usual half of cost or a 1.0807lb.. how many 5.56mm cartage casings are in a pound?

CARDBOARD DOORS ON THE SHOOT HOUSE AT FT. RILEY. THEN RANGE CONTROL GETTING MAD BECAUSE PVT'S PUTTING THEIR FOOT THROUGH THEM WHEN THEY WERE CAUGHT IN THE MOMENT AND A LITTLE OVER-ZEALOUS WHEN ENTERING ROOMS. SMFH.

First Sergeant, if I remember from my Fort Benning days (1982-1983): brass recovery was instituted after it was found some locals and Soldiers were getting rich from recycling/reselling brass and ammo cans. We had to turn everything back to ASP including the wooden crates the cans came in.
BTW, There's a creek there that has ALOT of M60 blanks, still in the cans, where we'd toss them rather than carry them on the march out to the training area.

Turning over Army lodging to the same people that run Holiday Inns. Staying at an Army guest facility costs nearly twice as much as staying at an Air Force Inn, for a comparable room.

You took the one I remembered. We did have a CSM who was huge on recycling stuff in the Battalion office. BTW, this was during my Army Reserves years...if you wonder why the photo doesn't match!!!