Is American military bureaucracy fundamentally wasteful and inefficient?

[suplex3000]

I have heard over and over again that bureaucracies waste time, energy, and resources.Many soldiers are confessing to huge amounts of resources being wasted in the US army. Is it just the American system, or is the private sector more efficient than government in every situation?
Are we spending too much for armed forces ineffectively?

 

[longknife]

The bureaucrats in DOD are not more - or less - inefficient and wasteful than all the other executive branch departments.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I would rather have the DOD running wars than Halliburton.

 

[Ringel05]

It's not the bureaucracy per se, it's the way funding is allocated by government mandate. Every year each command must justify it's funding allocation, in order to maintain or increase funding some commands have found "inventive" ways to justify their funding requests.
This has changed dramatically since we (basically) left Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more commands and their government/civilian support organizations have been hit with massive cuts across the board.

 

[Dragonlady]

I did a 6 month contract for our provincial government for their property management secretariat which gave me some insights as to why government seems to overpay for everything and a lot of it has to do with the tendering process.

Awarding contracts to the lowest bidders would seem to be one way of controlling costs but it actually has the opposite effect.

Companies will deliberately underbid the contract, submitting a price which would see them losing money if they complete the work as bid, just to get the contract, expecting that changes to the plans, which they will overcharge for, will put the project into the black.

The winning bidder will use the cheapest possible materials and subtrades, regardless of the quality of their work. This often leads to problems and delays.

There are also many more levels of oversight and management to ensure the public are not being ripped off. We had monthly appraisals of the value of the work completed on every project. This added to administration costs.

There was one contractor in particular which hadn't met a single deadline, whose work was shoddy at best, and at worst, had to be redone, and whose projects were plagued with liens filed by subtrades who hadn't been paid. In frustration, I asked why we were still doing business with these people. The answer was public tendering.

In the corporate world, there would be a caveat on the tender saying the lowest bid may not be accepted and the quality of the work and materials would be a factor in the winning bid. As a business manager, you would pick a quality builder and disqualify companies with a reputation for problem plagued builds or whose work or business practices are questionable. Government can't do that.

 

[whitehall]

The word you are looking for is "inherently" rather than "fundamentally". The stated purpose of every government bureaucracy is to get bigger and receive more funding and the U.S. Military is filled with career bureaucrats. The thing we need to realize is that the Military works for the civilian government. The best we can hope for is to hire government officials who care about how the taxpayer dollar is spent. About six months ago Americans did just that and the democrats haven't stopped whining about it.

 

[Dragonlady]

The Republicans don't care about the $$$ spent. They SAY they want to reduce spending but every Republican President since Nixon has spent like a drunken sailor on wars and the military. Republicans want reduce spending on the American people, on infrastructure and on entitlements, while pork barreling their pet projects at home and protecting American corporation interests abroad.

Every Republican President since Reagan has talked about reducing the size of government, and increasing freedom for individuals, but all have increased the size of government and the role of government in your life. W's gift to government expansion was the Department of Homeland Security, which provides a handsome retirement annuity for Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.

I laugh every time someone talks about Republicans reducing the size of government. Given their track record, only an idiot would continue to believe they will actually do it.

 

[whitehall]

The Republicans don't care about the $$$ spent. They SAY they want to reduce spending but every Republican President since Nixon has spent like a drunken sailor on wars and the military. Republicans want reduce spending on the American people, on infrastructure and on entitlements, while pork barreling their pet projects at home and protecting American corporation interests abroad.

Every Republican President since Reagan has talked about reducing the size of government, and increasing freedom for individuals, but all have increased the size of government and the role of government in your life. W's gift to government expansion was the Department of Homeland Security, which provides a handsome retirement annuity for Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.

I laugh every time someone talks about Republicans reducing the size of government. Given their track record, only an idiot would continue to believe they will actually do it.

Every military adventure in the bloody 20th century started during a democrat administration. Woody Wilson promised Americans that he wouldn't send their sons to fight in a foreign war and then he sent Americans to fight and die for France. FDR was so criminally negligent that we lost 3,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor and another 10,000 four months later when MacArthur abandoned his Army in the Philippines. Harry Truman sent Americans to Korea on an executive order without consulting Congress and his mismanagement turned victory into a 3 year stalemate at the cost of 50,000 American lives. LBJ used a fake crisis to send Troops to Vietnam and then he set the rules so the U.S. could win every battle and still lose the war. Bill Clinton decided to mask his sexual perversion with a bombing campaign on a defenseless country. About 35,000 people were killed at the cost of about 10 billion dollars in order to force one man to surrender.

 

[Dragonlady]

You're complaining that the US sent troops to fight in WWI and WWII?????

And it was Kennedy who sent troops into Viet Nam. Goldwater wanted to use tactical nukes in Viet Nam, thereby sealing his election fate.

I'm talking about Nixon, who lost the Viet Nam War, Reagan who invaded Granada??? just because he had all these toys and had to use them. Bush Sr., who lied about babies being killed in hospitals as an excuse to start Desert Storm, and W who lied to go into Iraq.

Republicans today are all complaining that the US has to go back into Iraq, which means they learned NOTHING over the past 10 years. Rand Paul is the only Republican with the good sense to stay out of it.

Why are you all so keen to waste all of your tax dollars fighting other peoples' wars? All you are doing is pissing off the Muslims, thereby guaranteeing an endless supply of crazy jihadists who want to kill Americans. You've already completely destabilized. Stay the fuck out of it and your country will be a whole lot safer.

Your country is falling behind the rest of the world in infrastructure, education, medicine, and personal safety, while you spend trillions of dollars fighting useless wars. Think of where the US would be if all that money had been spent at home.

 

[whitehall]

You're complaining that the US sent troops to fight in WWI and WWII?????

And it was Kennedy who sent troops into Viet Nam. Goldwater wanted to use tactical nukes in Viet Nam, thereby sealing his election fate.

I'm talking about Nixon, who lost the Viet Nam War, Reagan who invaded Granada??? just because he had all these toys and had to use them. Bush Sr., who lied about babies being killed in hospitals as an excuse to start Desert Storm, and W who lied to go into Iraq.

Republicans today are all complaining that the US has to go back into Iraq, which means they learned NOTHING over the past 10 years. Rand Paul is the only Republican with the good sense to stay out of it.

Why are you all so keen to waste all of your tax dollars fighting other peoples' wars? All you are doing is pissing off the Muslims, thereby guaranteeing an endless supply of crazy jihadists who want to kill Americans. You've already completely destabilized. Stay the fuck out of it and your country will be a whole lot safer.

Your country is falling behind the rest of the world in infrastructure, education, medicine, and personal safety, while you spend trillions of dollars fighting useless wars. Think of where the US would be if all that money had been spent at home.

I'm complaining that FDR invited a Japanese attack so he could get into the "real war" in Europe. The problem was that the inherent racist attitude that the administration held towards the Japanese caused the US to criminally underestimate the Japanese military. If it was a republican administration the media would have called for FDR's head after the debacle of Pearl Harbor. It was LBJ who created the fake "Tonkin Gulf" incident that opened the door for Troops in Vietnam. It doesn't matter what the left wing propaganda said about Goldwater. LBJ was president and he set the agenda until he tearfully quit on national T.V. just when America needed leadership. Grenada was a success story. Americans were rescued. As a matter of fact republicans never abandoned the Military even when times were rough. Democrats voted for boots on the ground in Iraq and then they undermined the mission every way they could for a couple of votes from their radical base. Never in the history of the Country has a political party ever maligned a U.S. General in combat like democrats did when they bought a 10,000 full page ad in the NY Times calling Petraeus "betray-us". The senate majority leader should have been perp walked to a federal prison when he tried to impact the morale of the Troops and the American public by announcing "the war is lost" just before the Troop Surge.

 

[Dragonlady]

I'm complaining that FDR invited a Japanese attack so he could get into the "real war" in Europe. The problem was that the inherent racist attitude that the administration held towards the Japanese caused the US to criminally underestimate the Japanese military. If it was a republican administration the media would have called for FDR's head after the debacle of Pearl Harbor. It was LBJ who created the fake "Tonkin Gulf" incident that opened the door for Troops in Vietnam. It doesn't matter what the left wing propaganda said about Goldwater. LBJ was president and he set the agenda until he tearfully quit on national T.V. just when America needed leadership. Grenada was a success story. Americans were rescued. As a matter of fact republicans never abandoned the Military even when times were rough. Democrats voted for boots on the ground in Iraq and then they undermined the mission every way they could for a couple of votes from their radical base. Never in the history of the Country has a political party ever maligned a U.S. General in combat like democrats did when they bought a 10,000 full page ad in the NY Times calling Petraeus "betray-us". The senate majority leader should have been perp walked to a federal prison when he tried to impact the morale of the Troops and the American public by announcing "the war is lost" just before the Troop Surge.

What a bunch of conservative revisionist bullshit. I'm not an American so I don't have the dubious benefit of a conservative brainwashing. The Tonkin Gulf incident was not the start of the US involvement in Viet Nam. Apparently American began prior to Kennedy when the US sent in military advisors to prevent Viet Nam falling into communist hands.

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina.[40][A 3] U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962.[41] U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.

As for the bullshit of FDR inviting the Japanese attack, I have never heard such a suggestion, and I doubt anyone with half a brain has either.

 

[whitehall]

I'm complaining that FDR invited a Japanese attack so he could get into the "real war" in Europe. The problem was that the inherent racist attitude that the administration held towards the Japanese caused the US to criminally underestimate the Japanese military. If it was a republican administration the media would have called for FDR's head after the debacle of Pearl Harbor. It was LBJ who created the fake "Tonkin Gulf" incident that opened the door for Troops in Vietnam. It doesn't matter what the left wing propaganda said about Goldwater. LBJ was president and he set the agenda until he tearfully quit on national T.V. just when America needed leadership. Grenada was a success story. Americans were rescued. As a matter of fact republicans never abandoned the Military even when times were rough. Democrats voted for boots on the ground in Iraq and then they undermined the mission every way they could for a couple of votes from their radical base. Never in the history of the Country has a political party ever maligned a U.S. General in combat like democrats did when they bought a 10,000 full page ad in the NY Times calling Petraeus "betray-us". The senate majority leader should have been perp walked to a federal prison when he tried to impact the morale of the Troops and the American public by announcing "the war is lost" just before the Troop Surge.

What a bunch of conservative revisionist bullshit. I'm not an American so I don't have the dubious benefit of a conservative brainwashing. The Tonkin Gulf incident was not the start of the US involvement in Viet Nam. Apparently American began prior to Kennedy when the US sent in military advisors to prevent Viet Nam falling into communist hands.

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina.[40][A 3] U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962.[41] U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.

As for the bullshit of FDR inviting the Japanese attack, I have never heard such a suggestion, and I doubt anyone with half a brain has either.

You already answered your own question. The (fake?) Gulf of Tonkin resolution gave LBJ the the authorization for Troops in Vietnam. It's interesting that a non-American would would defend the crooked old fool. FDR was elected in 1932 and the defense of Pearl Harbor nine years later in his 3rd term was his responsibility. The security of the Philippine Army was his responsibility. If it was a republican administration FDR would have been eviscerated for his negligence in the defense of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.Too bad the prog left seems unable to judge history including the FDR administration and the Truman Korean War debacle and LBJ's adventure in Vietnam, not to mention the pervert Clinton administration bombing of a defenseless country, by the same standards they seem to set for post 9-11 republicans.

 

[longknife]

I'm complaining that FDR invited a Japanese attack so he could get into the "real war" in Europe. The problem was that the inherent racist attitude that the administration held towards the Japanese caused the US to criminally underestimate the Japanese military. If it was a republican administration the media would have called for FDR's head after the debacle of Pearl Harbor. It was LBJ who created the fake "Tonkin Gulf" incident that opened the door for Troops in Vietnam. It doesn't matter what the left wing propaganda said about Goldwater. LBJ was president and he set the agenda until he tearfully quit on national T.V. just when America needed leadership. Grenada was a success story. Americans were rescued. As a matter of fact republicans never abandoned the Military even when times were rough. Democrats voted for boots on the ground in Iraq and then they undermined the mission every way they could for a couple of votes from their radical base. Never in the history of the Country has a political party ever maligned a U.S. General in combat like democrats did when they bought a 10,000 full page ad in the NY Times calling Petraeus "betray-us". The senate majority leader should have been perp walked to a federal prison when he tried to impact the morale of the Troops and the American public by announcing "the war is lost" just before the Troop Surge.

What a bunch of conservative revisionist bullshit. I'm not an American so I don't have the dubious benefit of a conservative brainwashing. The Tonkin Gulf incident was not the start of the US involvement in Viet Nam. Apparently American began prior to Kennedy when the US sent in military advisors to prevent Viet Nam falling into communist hands.

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina.[40][A 3] U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962.[41] U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.

As for the bullshit of FDR inviting the Japanese attack, I have never heard such a suggestion, and I doubt anyone with half a brain has either.

You are absolutely right about our involvement in Vietnam.

However, I DO agree that FDR set the stage so that Japan felt it had no choice but to go to war with the USA if it wished to strengthen and expand its empire. They realized they could not beat us in an all-out extended war and that was the reason for their attack on Pearl Harbor.

Big miscalculation.

 

[whitehall]

I'm complaining that FDR invited a Japanese attack so he could get into the "real war" in Europe. The problem was that the inherent racist attitude that the administration held towards the Japanese caused the US to criminally underestimate the Japanese military. If it was a republican administration the media would have called for FDR's head after the debacle of Pearl Harbor. It was LBJ who created the fake "Tonkin Gulf" incident that opened the door for Troops in Vietnam. It doesn't matter what the left wing propaganda said about Goldwater. LBJ was president and he set the agenda until he tearfully quit on national T.V. just when America needed leadership. Grenada was a success story. Americans were rescued. As a matter of fact republicans never abandoned the Military even when times were rough. Democrats voted for boots on the ground in Iraq and then they undermined the mission every way they could for a couple of votes from their radical base. Never in the history of the Country has a political party ever maligned a U.S. General in combat like democrats did when they bought a 10,000 full page ad in the NY Times calling Petraeus "betray-us". The senate majority leader should have been perp walked to a federal prison when he tried to impact the morale of the Troops and the American public by announcing "the war is lost" just before the Troop Surge.

What a bunch of conservative revisionist bullshit. I'm not an American so I don't have the dubious benefit of a conservative brainwashing. The Tonkin Gulf incident was not the start of the US involvement in Viet Nam. Apparently American began prior to Kennedy when the US sent in military advisors to prevent Viet Nam falling into communist hands.

Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina.[40][A 3] U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962.[41] U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.

As for the bullshit of FDR inviting the Japanese attack, I have never heard such a suggestion, and I doubt anyone with half a brain has either.

You are absolutely right about our involvement in Vietnam.

However, I DO agree that FDR set the stage so that Japan felt it had no choice but to go to war with the USA if it wished to strengthen and expand its empire. They realized they could not beat us in an all-out extended war and that was the reason for their attack on Pearl Harbor.

Big miscalculation.

FDR enjoyed the total support of the entire media at the time and the media writes the history books. The Navy warned FDR that the Fleet was vulnerable to attack at Pearl Harbor but that's what FDR needed to get into the "real war" in Europe. There was no National intelligence at the time and ridiculous assumptions about the Japanese were the basis for FDR's Pacific strategy if there even was a strategy. The rumor that permeated the FDR administration at the time was that the Japanese had physical defects that prevented them from building a ship that would float and a plane that would fly. Old WW1 Soldier MacArthur was called out of retirement to be the commander of the area most likely to be attacked by Japanese ground troops but he was busy hobnobbing with the Philippine elite and when the doo doo hit the fan it seems that Mac was paralized with indecision. The FDR administration had no strategy for defending or re-supplying the Philippine Army and they surrendered four months after hostilities commenced. That's a scathing criticism for an administration but the media ignored it and so did Americans.

 

[Dragonlady]

FDR's miscalculation was in believing that the Japanese wouldn't sacrifice their pilots in kamikaze attacks.

 

[whitehall]

FDR's miscalculation was in believing that the Japanese wouldn't sacrifice their pilots in kamikaze attacks.

The suicide bombers came much later in the war maybe after FDR suffered a series of strokes or was already dead. FDR's gross miscalculation was in believing that the Japanese would be a pushover.

 

[MarcATL]

The Republicans don't care about the $$$ spent. They SAY they want to reduce spending but every Republican President since Nixon has spent like a drunken sailor on wars and the military. Republicans want reduce spending on the American people, on infrastructure and on entitlements, while pork barreling their pet projects at home and protecting American corporation interests abroad.

Every Republican President since Reagan has talked about reducing the size of government, and increasing freedom for individuals, but all have increased the size of government and the role of government in your life. W's gift to government expansion was the Department of Homeland Security, which provides a handsome retirement annuity for Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.

I laugh every time someone talks about Republicans reducing the size of government. Given their track record, only an idiot would continue to believe they will actually do it.

Indeed, the Republican party is full of idiots.

 

[Flopper]

I have heard over and over again that bureaucracies waste time, energy, and resources.Many soldiers are confessing to huge amounts of resources being wasted in the US army. Is it just the American system, or is the private sector more efficient than government in every situation?
Are we spending too much for armed forces ineffectively?

Of course it's wasteful just like all government. However, it's more so because the military has very special needs and lives under rules not shared by other parts of government.

It think the major reasons for wasteful government spending, some avoidable and some not is that:

• The design, fund authorization, manufacturing, testing, and acceptance can take so long that by the time the system is delivered the need is gone.
• Weapon systems are extremely costly because the contracts can always be cancelled, be delayed, and modified. Components must be military grade which means they must meet qualification requirements which covers every possible environment.
• Weapons systems are often unique; that is they require specially designed components and tools, often in small quantities. A special hammer may be needed requiring a unique design and only 10 produced and the cost is $1,000 each.
• Congress is still fighting the cold war which means funding programs that should have been cancelled years ago.
• Of all government departments, Defense spending is most effected by politics and public opinion. A change in the control congress can mean changes in funding and direction.

 

[whitehall]

Anybody who has ever worked in a supervisory position in the public sector high enough to have influence in budgets is aware that you never give money back to the taxpayers. Bureaucracies always increase their budgets and it's no different for the Military. The U.S. Military is the greatest fighting force that ever existed on the planet but Congress signs the checks and fat asses in the pentagon attend congressional cocktail parties. The secret is (well there are no secrets anymore) is that you have to hire the best civilians to supervise the military budget.

 

[Flopper]

Anybody who has ever worked in a supervisory position in the public sector high enough to have influence in budgets is aware that you never give money back to the taxpayers. Bureaucracies always increase their budgets and it's no different for the Military. The U.S. Military is the greatest fighting force that ever existed on the planet but Congress signs the checks and fat asses in the pentagon attend congressional cocktail parties. The secret is (well there are no secrets anymore) is that you have to hire the best civilians to supervise the military budget.

They do more than sign checks. When fat military contract cut out their supporters, they call for reviews of the bids and investigations. They delay defense authorizations to keep bases in their state open that should be closed. They fight for their pet defense programs even though they are a waste or ineffective.