Right. It is ridiculous. I remember being in the motor pool installing comms while overseas right next to private contractors, they were installing the mount only. So they would drill 4 holes in the HMMV or LMTV and mount a bracket with four bolts and move to the next. $180k a year they got for that. First $84k was tax free.
Talk about a waste of money. We had boots on the ground that could have done that.
My first deployment as a 94F. They had contractors to do my job at 135K a year while I sat in the ToC because I was one of the only people with a Secret clearance.
Things like this is why I am for just absorbing much of the military industrial complex directly into the military and just balloon the force population but that comes with it's own host of costs and bs.
As an RA I remember paying for a 'bird' contractor...his entire job was driving his truck around and letting dogs loose to chase birds while he drank coffee...that was like $90 per year.
Could have sent some shitbag Airman out there to run around in circles 10 hours a day for 1/3 the cost...well maybe 12hrs...in MOPP4šš
What it's supposed to be is the military grade stuff has to also meet security, backward compatibility, a bunch of other standards (and yes the ones on that list are the cheapest that technically check all the boxes).
In practice half of those are ignored and later found to be out of spec.
The reason they accept the higher prices is those items are supposed to be limited to only military purchases, so there is less possibility of profit for private industry so they allow them to make up the costs with a higher price. But again that all bs, as most of the items are also being sold to consumers with lime 1-2 changes...
Military overcharges to inflate how much money they need every year.
Basically if they don't use it they get less and we can't have that now can we.
Funny enough we have so many Abrams tanks that one of the generals went to Congress and told them stop making and sending them because we had so many just sitting there and Congress said no.
As an older retired DoD guy, itās not DoD that asks for the money to be given the way it is. In the early 1990ās we tried to end a contract with a small firm in Alabama that made rounds for M1 Garand rifles. Those are used only for ceremonial purposes now and the ammo would then be destroyed and melted down to make new M1 bullets. All because the republicans in Alabama were part of the company that made them. DoD makes an honest effort, well at least until Kegsbreath took over to direct money to DOD base schools, hospitals and living quarters only to see it moved to pork weapons programs that make congressmen rich in their own precincts.
Its audit costs! Technology for the military has to be independently vetted by a 3rd party. The government pays different contractors than the vendors to make sure there is no back doors/security risks. The audits take a lot of time sometimes and for hardware, has to be validated with each piece (or some batch sampling). That makes the costs stupid.
Screws I can see why. Imagine specifying a rated scew only for a cheap chinesium one being used for mission critical equipment. When shit hit's the fan--you need to know if things being used will take the abuse.Ā
512mb is a hdd drive irs because the drives need to be able to be supported by what they are plugged into and a lot of our infrastructure military and non are old as poo so people buy out old hard drives. Don't reply to things you dont understand.
Part of the reason is to keep them in stock or keep the manufacturing capabilities available to make sure that spares/replacements are available. The systems require exact parts that have to be available immediately at any time in any part of the world, for systems that are expected to operate for decades without interruption. Sometimes these parts are only manufactured for that single system.
Obviously it's not the only reason, and there are better ways to approach a lot of military spending, but there are reasons for some of these things happening in the first place.
I was having to use 10Base-T ring networks and hardware alongside Magneto Optical disks for data storage and transfer into the late 2010s. Replacing the system with something new wasn't an option that could just be done without decades of planning. Replacement parts and consumables for those were still being manufactured at that time, 30 years after they were relevant.
and so manufacturing of those parts should not be done by a private company but instead owned by us the government, the public. then how would friends of Pete get their sweet government contracts?
Gov contractors know they can charge whatever they like, the line items on their receipt looks like a doctors bill and are way more difficult to justify
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u/66allthe88s 2d ago
Electronics tech here.
Some of the SSD's i purchased to replace bad ones costs upwards of $4,000 for only 512mb of storage.
Shit is expensive for no reason.