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The main shareholders of those companies work at the pentagon. So it makes sense
It’s the most powerful industry in the United States. It is why we spend over $800 billion on it a year with calls to increase it even further. They have insiders at all levels of the government doing whatever they can to maximize profits.
The government’s top negotiator for military weapons called a magazine a clip. My eye won’t stop twitching now.
In other news: water is wet.
I reported how a certain contractor was significantly overcharging for basic tools and office supplies to the Navy’s Waste Fraud and Abuse hotline back in the early 00s. Nothing changed. They don’t care.
Edit: a word
Shocker
Edit: I Googled it and the Pentagon has [never passed](https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/997961646/the-pentagon-has-never-passed-an-audit-some-senators-want-to-change-that) an independent audit
*Overcharge taxpayers
800B budget and somehow not enough ammo to fight a war. Hmm…
“You don’t think they actually spend $20,000 on a hammer? $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”
Overcharging for sure happens, but you also have to realize that the DoD is insanely difficult to do business with and they make their suppliers jump through an absolutely mind-boggling amount of hoops that all cost time and money.
So yeah, an MSP might charge an average business $500 to come out and install a printer, and then they might charge the government $2500 to do it, but what you didn’t see is that the vendor had to bid on the project for two years prior to the sale, then the field tech had to have a security clearance and a recent drug test, then the printer had to be manufactured in the US, then the printer firmware had to be checked for cyber security compliance, then the maintenance window could only take place from 5-8pm on a Friday, and on and on, ad infinitum.
What you have is Defense Contractors that have been enabled for so long that they are addicted to those profits. This monopoly offers ZERO confidence in long-term strategic defensive logistics. Companies looking to John Deer their repair programs need to be held to account otherwise it’ll only grow to get worse and even at some point unsafe.
It’s not their money, so they don’t give a shit.
It’s not even *YOUR* money. We’re running trillion dollar deficits. It’s the money of your grandkids who have not even been born yet!
And the politicians will be (mostly) long dead by the time this reckless spending crashes the dollar, because the average age of Congress is like 67, 70-something for the senate, so they don’t give a shit!
If the military isn’t audited then why should we fault the contractors? As scummy as they are, they basically can charge whatever amount of money they want as long as they have congressmen in their pockets.
End citizens united. Illegalize super PACs and unfettered corporate lobbying. Audit the military.
3 things that need to happen that never will.
a basic ass laptop in the Navy that is ‘military grade’ costs like $4,500.. I could go to best buy and get a better PC for 1/10th of the cost. the whole price increase was bc they are ‘drop’ resistant – yet you’d be replacing them for that exact reason. My MacBook Air is more durable.
What were the requirements on the contract the manufacturer of that oil pressure sensor needed to comply with? Were the requirements the same requirements NASA had when they ordered it? That includes documentation, Quality System, military packaging/shipping, DCMA approval/inspections, etc. etc. Sometimes $100 parts for military contracts turn into $1k parts just from all the red tape. I’m not saying price gauging isn’t happening, but I work in the industry, and I can say the expectation they have of their suppliers (rightfully so) in aerospace is pretty high and they pay for it.
I remember being underway needing some new RAM sticks for a shipboard system. Could have bought them on Amazon for like $40 each, but we were forced to go through the official channel (NAVSUP if I remember correctly) which would cost about $180 each. The RAM took 9 weeks to arrive, and two of them were faulty on arrival. In that time we had two mail calls, and many people received their personal Amazon packages.
Edit: don’t get me started on our ship having no functioning toaster for half a deployment because supply dept was required to buy a mil-spec toaster
Throw the executives into fucking prison and seize the companies for auction and this shit would end in a heartbeat. But because the consequences are infrequent and toothless it keeps going on.
Don’t forget even at the height of WW II, with human freedom hanging in the balance, defense contractors were stealing from the public coffers.
The crazy thing is how many of the contractors or their companies are prior military. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it as retirement plans for senior leadership…
Bid low then have unexpected cost overruns- saw it all the time..
President Eisenhower warned us over 60 years ago.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Breast pumps…..The Pentagon paid $1400 a piece for breast pumps that sold at Walmart for $192. $16,000,000 spent overpaying for pumps and parts by 92%
Duhhhhhhh.
yea, no shit. Did you just figure this out?
As a contractor that works on government projects, I would like to play devils advocate for a seccond.
Working on government projects fucking SUCKS…
Projects are run by huge committee’s of people who generally know fuck all about the actual technical requirements to complete the project.
Projects are changed and requirements altered at least 300% more often than a private project, almost always in disjointed ways that make previously completed work have to be redone and then sometimes said change will be reversed again, it’s extremely frustrating.
Govenment departments also insist on fixed prices for services while at the same time constantly changing things and causing huge headaches and delays to get extra cost variations approved.
The extra paperwork and many people having to be fully employed just to co-ordinate with the cluster fuck of instructions coming down from government is unbelievable even compared to a equivalently large private contract.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the shit we have to deal with, so you know what the answer is… We Write all the headaches and fuck around directly into the price, knowing we are still the best option they have and they can take it or leave it, and everyone in the industry does the same thing because the ones that did not are long dead…
That’s not a bug… it’s a feature.
Here’s the part that frustrates me.
Military contractor wins a bid, Tells Pentagon it will take them 3 years and 30 billion to complete (these are hypothetical numbers used to outline the problem, don’t get hung up on them. Project starts, due in 3 years.
4 years later, they tell the Pentagon they will need 2 more years and 40 billion more. They get it. They have now violated the terms of both the duration AND price. But rather than tell them to go fuck themselves and pick the next lowest bidder (or in fact anyone who bid under the now more than double original price), they just keep the contractor and stick with the plan.
Another 3 years and 50 billion later (instead of 2/40 as mentioned earlier), project completes. Promised at 3 years and 30 billion, delivered at 6 years and 80 billion dollars.
They get every penny of it, and the execs and shareholders in that contractor (some of which are politicians who passed the request themselves, totally not a conflict of interest) get to go on cushy vacations and buy new homes.
What SHOULD be happening is the contractor should be sued for reneging on their agreement, and paying back penalties direct out of bonuses and sold shares. They should be penalized for being over budget and late. Not rewarded.
The headline could stop at ” Contractors overcharge….”
People don’t realize how serious this is. This is potentially jeopardizing our nation’s security because these companies are so greedy and corrupt. People like to say we have the biggest military because of how much money we spend but when we are spending 10x what other nations are spending for equipment that isn’t functional it’s a serious problem.
Say it ain’t so!!
It’s almost like this has happened before (for like, the last 50-60 years or more.).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-30-vw-18804-story.html
When your budget is dependent on last years budget yeah everything is going to go up in price because “you have to spend the money”. So the contractors will fucking bilk you
I really think what this piece completely glances over is just how much meddling Congress and other government agencies manage to disrupt procurement programs which usually just serves to raise costs. It’s not even something unique to the military.
They briefly touch on the 90s government policy of “Peace Dividends”, which since the Soviets were no longer around, Congress and the President(s) went around slashing defense spending left, right, and center. What shouldn’t be a surprise, but for some reason is, many of the programs that survived this culling, took another 10-20 years to come to fruition, and ended up being way over budget. Looking at you F-35.
As for the inflating cost of some of these legacy systems, well it does still relate to the whole “Peace Dividend” issue, since there are a lot of weapon systems the US hasn’t really produced for almost 30 years at this point. Go figure when the government suddenly asks for 10,000 of this thing that hasn’t been produced in any substantial numbers in 30 years, the new price is bananas.
It’s not just the military either. Some people in Congress got upset that the new USPS NGDV with twice the capacity, air conditioning, and all the other modern vehicle bells and whistles, for some reason, barely got better MPG than the outgoing LLV. So they demanded the whole order be change to instead purchase BEV NGDVs, which don’t meet the RFPs requirement of a 20 year service life, or the requisite payload due to the massive 95kwh battery needed.
At the end of the day the fundamental problem with government procurement is that the boss deciding how the money is spent, changes every 4-8 years.
The auditors understand. It’s monopoly problem. If you have a sole source vendor of a critical part or a whole weapon system, that vendor knows it and will charge whatever you will bear. These companies want to be monopolists that’s fine; regulate them and cap what they can profit.
Couple that with a defense department whose ever larger budgets are never under any real scrutiny and never passes an audit yet no one cares (because those in power very much do not want you to know where that money truly goes)? What do you think would happen? We need to get the corporate bribes out of our politics because it’s literally killing our country, including our hallowed military whose budget is being gobbled up to pay for wall street stock buy backs and congressional campaign slush funds.
There’s a lot of people defending contractors in this thread, but I don’t think they quite grasp just how much gouging really is being done. Yes it’s expensive to fulfill government requirements. Yes working with the government is difficult. Even accounting for *all of that*, the amount of money they are extracting from the DoD is criminal, it’s going right into the pockets of the extremely wealthy and our political leadership, and it’s affecting our readiness. There’s literally no reason to be defending it. We could refund and staff up our auditors and hold both these contractors and the DoD accountable. We could get these bribes out of our political system. We could do all of that and STILL have a healthy, profitable, and cutting edge defense industrial base that benefits us all.
No its not, the GOVERNMENT is doing it to itself.
People been exploiting bidding for govt jobs for as long as the USA has been around.
Like you can literally get contracts to MOW THE GRASS in front of bases, other government buildings and make 100k+ a year? one of the buildings you have to mow the lawn? a city building with no grass. lol
As long as you can maintain the output they pay whatever to whatever person.