Wait until they hear about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of all sorts of stuff sitting idle that has been purchased by the DoD and USG paid for by tax money.
At least that was the situation in the 2000s, no idea if that wackiness is still continuing
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/armys-new-tank-here-c...
It isn't as though they've been building the same old thing since the 2000s, they've been incrementally and steadily improving them as technology and materials science improves.
The pentagon has spent the past 4-5 years retooling for what they call “near peer” threats which is to say China in the Pacific and Russia in Europe. Tanks, and really good ones in specific, would be required to push back a Russian incursion into our allies.
Anyway, people is people, and after all the nuclear warhead are used, the survivors will seek revenge with conventional weapons.
Anyway I'm not sold on tomatotomato37's claim that recent levels of American tank investment are unwise, but also don't have enough information to know otherwise.
During the very first 48 hours (sustained) in the war in Afghanistan, a tomahawk missile was launched, on average, every 12 seconds night or day. The amount of boom those things made is unbelievable.
Now, I’m not saying I support this, far from it, but that’s (one of) the rationale(s).
It's not that easy. You loose knowledge and vendors and people. Going from 0 unit production per year to 10 per year is more difficult than going going from 10 per year to 10000 per year.
Pre-massive-globalization, we had no problem gearing up for WW2. Our industrial capacity was largely in-house. There were some things like rubber that were off-shore, but generally the industrial toolchain was domestically produced.
Nowadays, many domestic industrial producers rely heavily on these (bloated) military contracts to maintain relevance in a globalized industrial setting where the center of gravity for a lot of heavy industry and tool production has shifted to Asia.
I love international trade and I'm skeptical of military spending (and even more so of military adventurism), but this effect should be kept in mind when making trade policy. The military-industrial complex is keeping alive much of our industrial know-how that would otherwise be entirely be off-shored and retired domestically.
It would be amazing if WWIII broke out and we had to call on Tesla to manufacture tanks.
You may lose the ability to make widgets because it's easier/cheaper to buy them from another country, but in theory, you make it up by selling them sprockets, and through the overall economic gains.
This fact is supposedly a part of the reason the f35 went to lockheed vs boeing.
The UK faced a number of problems with their domestic construction of the Astute class nuclear attack submarines, as they had not built a nuclear sub in more than 15 years. The institutional knowledge of how to build such a thing had become scarce or retired.
https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...
'First rule of government spending: why build one when you can have two for twice the price?'
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy_2018...
Looks like the site moved to https://www.go-dove.com/
I never purchased anything off that site but I did turn stuff into the department that had the responsibility to list stuff on that site.
https://www.go-dove.com/asset/65/17113
And see monitors of various sizes and vintages, listed as "24 ea". Do you win all the monitors if you win, or is it first come first serve for the 24 highest bidders?
I'm guessing it's the former, but it's not like any of the FAQs on the site are going to clue you in. Instead they tell you that their web guys don't know how to scrub input properly:
Message received:
"Your bid is not in the correct format"
This means you have entered a dollar sign, or comma.
Here is an example: (Correct) 1000 (Incorrect) $1,000.00
2. Items that have no tag number and are of identical kind and condition may be grouped on one SPMD-1A. Example (25 ea. chairs, wood w/arms).
https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/rules/0690/0690-02.pdf
Suggests that you are bidding on all items with one bid--if you win you get all of them.
"24 ea" would generally mean that you're bidding one price for all 24.
Your price may be increased by a buyer's premium as well, but again, this is more common in live auctions than online auctions. Typically it would be in the paperwork you sign to register for the auction (...which online auctionhouses often don't do at all).
Granted stupid waste without any valid tactical or strategic edge case reasons aren't exactly unheard of in the military either.
the same happens in big companies. W have budget cycles so we buy test equipment when the money is in the budget even at the risk of it never being used. Otherwise you can't buy stuff when you actually need it because at that time the budget isn't there.
Same with hiring people. We are letting good interns go because there is a hiring freeze. 8 weeks later we scramble to find new hires because now we have headcount.
Not sure how to do better but it just shows that planned economies tend to produce waste, be it in a corporation or in a communist state.
Still pretty pointless, so.
In relative terms I'm probably at least as bad.
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/11/15/heres-what-t...
In the context of this .1% doesn’t sound so bad.
It is nice to know the cost, but it shouldn’t be an argument not to perform a critical task for the function of the organization.
I read it as a dismissal of the article because it seems like it was written just for clicks. An article about the government’s waste doesn’t get as many clicks.
What is your point? This is "whataboutism".
Do you not see a difference between government entities and private companies (owned in majority by one billionaire)?