Waste and fraud form the MIC two small 15 cent washers for one million dollars

a reply to: Azureblue

Perhaps you might like to consider the possibility that what you think is waste, is in fact not waste all but piggy banking. 

Piggy banking in that they are using a range of different devices to hide money and later transfer it into a piggy bank that was set up for a particular top secret project. 

Don't consider this very long, though, because this is exactly how it does not work. That's how someone would go to jail.

originally posted by: jjkenobi
Anything the govt is in charge of will have fraud and wasted funds.

Why anyone wants to give them more power and put them in charge of more things is maddening.

This is quite true, which is why as you say the solution of "let the government do it" should always be a last resort. Military is one of those areas where you kinda don't have a choice, unless we just go to a mercenary army. Most other things can be done cheaper and more efficiently by the private sector.

a reply to: 3n19m470

 I don't doubt that waste/corruption is rampant, I'm just saying you gotta look into the details. 

So many details that can give context but are never given. What if I need washers of a certain strength and temperature- or shock- resistance (or even size) that are not commercially available or even exist yet? Sometimes through the design phase, a lot of prototyping and testing and redesign goes on. Sometimes you make exactly what you were told they wanted, and it doesn't fit because the dimensions they gave were off by some small percentage. You can't just grind it down and call it good. Oh, and they want it yesterday, so everybody wrack up the overtime to make them happy and get this finished and out the door. And every part has to pass MILSPEC and come from an approved supplier-- so no matter what it is, if it's new, I have to pay people at my lab or someone else's to put it through the paces and try to destroy it and make sure it passes the specs. A lot of times, the customer (the government) will want a detailed examination of the production process. Sometimes that includes about an environmental impact study (or three).

So if someone contracted me to make two very specific washers on Contract 2019: xyz-123abc, all of that preceding paragraph from design engineers, to guys in the industrial shop, to testing processes, impact studies etc gets billed to Contract 2019: xyz-123abc.

All I can say is anyone who thinks they can justify ONE MILLION dollars for a couple of washers must be connected to the MIC as they seem more than happy to not even blink an eye at the absurdity... They even try to justify such a ridiculous item's cost.

The F-16 pulley puller for over 13,000 is a piece of metal with 4 bolts you can hold in a child's hand with an initial cost of 13,000+ that none of them worked on the first production run; oh well !.. Even after the redo each pulley puller cost 8000+ for something a high school kid could make in a metal shop...

The more I see of pricing like this the more I believe the money is not for the part but skimmed for a project that shall remain secret; so secret that the cost can not even be revealed . Probably a good idea as the R&D money for the new super weapon could probably pay off every student loan and buy everyone in America a million dollar house; washer not included (sarc).

IMO it is stuff like this that will have us in a world of hurt if we ever have to fight a first tier battle as our few in numbers low mission ready gold plated, ships, planes and military hardware will be over run by crap that does not have million dollar washers installed !

originally posted by: 727Sky
All I can say is anyone who thinks they can justify ONE MILLION dollars for a couple of washers must be connected to the MIC as they seem more than happy to not even blink an eye at the absurdity... They even try to justify such a ridiculous item's cost.

No one here is "not even blinking an eye". Pretty much every one that has said anything has said there's a lot of FWA going on.

The F-16 pulley puller for over 13,000 is a piece of metal with 4 bolts you can hold in a child's hand with an initial cost of 13,000+ that none of them worked on the first production run; oh well !.. Even after the redo each pulley puller cost 8000+ for something a high school kid could make in a metal shop...

Except that it can't be "something a high school kid could make in a metal shop". If you want someone working on the plane you're flying using tools that aren't aircraft certified, and using parts that can be bought in a car parts store, then have fun flying that plane.

IMO it is stuff like this that will have us in a world of hurt if we ever have to fight a first tier battle as our few in numbers low mission ready gold plated, ships, planes and military hardware will be over run by crap that does not have million dollar washers installed !

Those Russian and Chinese planes cost as much, or more than a stealth plane built in the US. So do the parts for them. An Su-35S cost Russia $83-85M a copy. An F-18E/F cost us $70.5M in 2017 dollars for the flyaway cost. A Chinese J-15 cost them $61M in 2017.

There is always some overrun and out of control costs, but there's usually a justification for at least some of that cost. When you have 150 pages of regulations for building a part, that's going to drive costs up to ridiculously high levels.

originally posted by: 727Sky
Probably a good idea as the R&D money for the new super weapon could probably pay off every student loan and buy everyone in America a million dollar house; washer not included (sarc).

I think your math is way off.

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: 727Sky
Probably a good idea as the R&D money for the new super weapon could probably pay off every student loan and buy everyone in America a million dollar house; washer not included (sarc).

I think your math is way off.

Not everyone would want a million dollar house because the taxes would eat them alive, so take the million and buy a nice 200,000 house away from the left coast and pocket the rest until tax time..

You are probably correct about the student lone debt since it is so high that it would maybe take 10+ years of the fraud, abuse, black budget, whatever to cancel/pay off that debt. Unless this is correct www.forbes.com...

This column is co-authored with Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

In our prior column, Mark and I wrote about $21 trillion in unaccounted government transactions, primarily on defense. The DOD's (Department of Defense) as well as HUD's (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Offices of Inspector General (OIG) reference these transactions as "unsupported journal voucher adjustments." This is polite accounting language for lost, hidden or stolen money. If such "adjustments" were small, it would be one thing. But they totaled some $21 trillion between 1998 and 2015!

The origin of our column was a report, released some nine months ago, by Mark and Catherine Austin Fitts. Catherine is a former (under Bush 1) Assistant Secretary of that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).Billions in unaccounted government transactions ($278.5 billion in 2015 alone!) emanating from HUD originally caught Catherine's attention in 2000 in connection with subsequent responsibilities as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Catherine was unable to secure an explanation for HUD's lost money and became concerned that something terribly inappropriate might be going on at HUD and DOD and in the related financial markets without the public's knowledge. She has remained concerned for years and shared her concern with Professor Skidmore more than a year ago. From then till now, Fitts and Skidmore have repeatedly asked the DOD's OIG to explain why it can't account for trillions in apparent irregular if not illegal outlays. They've received no response whatsoever apart from acknowledging the requests.

Maybe I am becoming a Democrat as all this stuff is making me FEEL like something is very wrong with the whole scheme of rip offs and lies. If I start to turn democrat blue I will off myself..

Yes I have heard about the excuses offered about "the money is not really missing" and if it was really that amount the government would have gone belly up long ago.. Yet there continues to be smoke and innuendo about trillions not accounted for. As far as I am concerned one trillion if not one billion is to much when the government can't account for where the citizens tax dollars are being spent. I guess I am weird about stuff like that as when I owned a business I had to account for every dollar so uncle sugar would stay away from auditing me. Yet since it is government they do not need to comply by the same rules they make for everyone else..

a reply to: 727Sky

Just to give everyone in America a million dollars would cost over 300 TRILLION dollars. Even if you bumped it down to just adults, you're talking in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Student loan debt is about one trillion.

For comparison, the Pentagon's entire budget is about $700B a year, only a small portion of which is fraud, waste, abuse and black budget. No matter how you spin it, the idea is absurd. I think you've been listening to too much propaganda about how much money the military gets.

a reply to: 727Sky

Also, regarding the missing money thing, it's not simply an excuse that "the money isn't really missing." It's actually not missing. That should be an important detail to you don't you think? That's the entire premise of the claims that the Pentagon "loses" billions or trillions of dollars. The money is actually accounted for, they basically just don't have all the receipts. Like they were appropriated x amount to buy y materials, and the y materials were procured but they don't have all the paperwork.

It's like giving your wife $100 to go to the store, she comes home with $100 worth of food but no receipt, and you accuse her of just pocketing the money or spending it on other things. That's basically what these claims amount to. The stuff got bought, there's just some problems with the documentation. Now does that make it possible that some money got moved around to do other things? Of course. But the idea that trillions of dollars is completely MISSING is simply untrue.

If you don't care about those facts because they don't support the narrative you're trying to push here, then yeah you might be becoming a Democrat. There are people here who know a lot more about this stuff than you apparently do and are trying to educate you. Only you can force yourself to remain ignorant on the subject. You'll be woke as # though.

a reply to: face23785

At one point just about every program office had a different accounting program. So they all had their own documentation, but none of them talked to the main system used to run the budget.

a reply to: face23785

Hopefully you are correct and all the authors and articles who have reported the 21 trillions of missing money are wrong...

As far as an agenda I am not pushing anything other than reporting what I have read that others have found. Maybe they (to include the GAO) are all lying and have an agenda..? You statement reminds me of the King who kills the messenger because of the bad news; think about it...Since you are so knowledgeable you should write Forbes or the authors ( Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University) and set them straight.. Do a counter article and get paid.. and I will even post it on ATS saying, "looky here nothing to see after all" ! That sounds like a jest but it is not.. If you got the goods show them otherwise you are just another screen name talking with no links to back up your statements.

If all the articles are fake news someone needs to set them straight and who knows you may just be the person for the job.. I would bring paperwork for your argument because from what I have seen the authors have the paperwork to back up their claims; maybe Zap could help you out there. Kinda like the million dollar washers in the video with dates and time; if fake sic em ..

Military material acquisition is a two bladed sword as all one has to do is look at the item cost and hardware. If the needs of the service are for "X" number but due to COST you end up with 30% or less of the original number requested what does that say ? Piss poor prior planning or cost and cost overruns not to mention delayed deliveries are the real culprit ?

Look no further than the F-22 program with 195 originally built and supposedly no way (to costly) to start the production line back up even though the need is still supposedly there ... The Navy has its very own never ending screw-ups ... As a matter of fact it would take about 5 minutes to find programs where billions were spent (all services) and the program got cancelled or the finished product (after 10+ years behind schedule) does not meet the mission needs and even after delivery it is broke most of the time needing million dollar washers or some other outlandishly expensive part or software upgrade to get it up and running..

I should link this thread to Trump.. Him being a businessman maybe he could order someone to clean up this mess who would actually do something instead of just pass the buck with a wink and a nod. Anyone have the address ? hahah I am so far away from the USA they would have to go to a lot of trouble to suicide me (since when has cost or to much trouble stopped them from doing a regime change or popping someone?).... at my age probably no great loss except to the family who still seems to like me.

I want our service men and women to survive (not to mention the country) in a tier one conflict where our only option left is nuclear because our stuff does not work as advertised or we ain't got enough of anything to make a difference.. We do not need ineptness and stuff that does not work running the show; I guess I am old fashion in that way.

a reply to: 727Sky
This is how they launder those trillions of dollars of fictional money created every year whenever the consumers of the world swipe, tap, or click their payment as an electronic transfer. It is not that the tax payer is actually billed, this is simply the paper trail to explain where all the money comes from.

Most of the funds for infinite warfare could never be covered by taxes alone. So how do they launder the drug money and the trillions in annual electronic fees? With one million dollar washers that cost fifteen cents in reality.

Remember folks, every time we swipe our card, we are giving them the power.

originally posted by: 727Sky
a reply to: face23785
If all the articles are fake news someone needs to set them straight and who knows you may just be the person for the job.. I would bring paperwork for your argument because from what I have seen the authors have the paperwork to back up their claims; maybe Zap could help you out there. Kinda like the million dollar washers in the video with dates and time; if fake sic em ..

They stories aren't fake, but the money is unaccounted for, not missing. The $21T figure came from "unsupported journal voucher adjustments". The computer systems don't talk to each other, so they have an estimate of property and equipment value. Then when all the money is spent, and the data is input, if there's a difference between the estimate and actual value, that difference is input as an adjustment. It's not actually money spent. The US Army, in 2015, had $2T in adjustments on a total DoD budget of $560.4B.

It comes from an analysis of the Pentagon’s “unsupported journal voucher adjustments,” by Mark Skidmore, an economist at Michigan State University. The term refers to improperly documented accounting adjustments that are made when different financial ledgers do not match.

In other words, $21 trillion is the total value of adjustments made to the Pentagon’s financial records over those years that could not be traced.

That is not the same thing as $21 trillion in spending.

David Norquist, the Pentagon’s comptroller, explained in testimony to Congress in January that the adjustments occur after money is spent because “we have systems that do not automatically pass data from one to the other.”

For example, Mr. Norquist said, the Army’s general ledger may initially estimate the cost of property and equipment. That estimate is later updated with a more specific cost, based on the actual value of property.

www.nytimes.com...

Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made
when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these
journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting
documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific
accounting transactions. While many adjustments are valid, having
too many journal vouchers may be an indicator of underlying
problems, such as weak internal controls.
For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red-flag for transactions not
being captured, reported, or summarized correctly. Auditors must
judge whether the errors that triggered the journal voucher are
isolated or systemic, leading them to select more transactions to test.
If the auditors cannot estimate the magnitude of the errors, they may
not be able to complete the audit or issue an opinion on the financial
statements.

Comptroller 2015 presentation

Look no further than the F-22 program with 195 originally built and supposedly no way (to costly) to start the production line back up even though the need is still supposedly there ...

Production can be started back up, and relatively quickly. But it would cost far more per aircraft than the original production run did. You'd be looking somewhere in the neighborhood of $400-500M in non-recurring costs just to stand the line back up, and somewhere around $200M per aircraft for a similar sized production run.

As a matter of fact it would take about 5 minutes to find programs where billions were spent (all services) and the program got cancelled or the finished product (after 10+ years behind schedule) does not meet the mission needs and even after delivery it is broke most of the time needing million dollar washers or some other outlandishly expensive part or software upgrade to get it up and running..

That's what happens when you have programs changing requirements halfway through EMD, or wanting an aircraft that does 200 things. They initially wanted weaponized AESA on the F-22 and F-35, but by the time they were flying, radar development hadn't kept pace, and the range if they tried would have been barely into double digit miles. So now they have a radar upgrade required. That's just one example.

I want our service men and women to survive (not to mention the country) in a tier one conflict where our only option left is nuclear because our stuff does not work as advertised or we ain't got enough of anything to make a difference.. We do not need ineptness and stuff that does not work running the show; I guess I am old fashion in that way.

Everyone else wants to see our service members survive too. Our equipment works, it just has issues, like everyone else. Our procurement process is broken, but nowhere near as broken as others, and steps are being taken to fix it. The B-21 is a major procurement process, and it's going along incredibly well. As are several other current weapons programs. The process is broken, but at least it's been recognized as being broken. It's not going to be fixed overnight, or even in a year or two, but it's getting there, and it will get there.

Overcharging for the normal stuff is how they get their funds for the Alien Black Project Research.

a reply to: Zaphod58

This is a great post with lots of information but apparently it's not good enough. You need to spend about 15 years going to journalism school and building up enough of a reputation to get hired by Forbes or NY Times so you can publish a rebuttal article in order to be credible to the OP. Nevermind the evidence you used to support yourself or the easily-understood, common sense explanations you provided.

a reply to: 727Sky

There was a company during the iraq war that was doing some crazy genius fraud (until they got caught). They were shipping hardware (screws/nuts/bolts) to the war zone and the system was set up to automatically approve shipping costs. So they'd sell boxes and boxes of screws for way cheaper than anyone else, so they'd get the bid. Then they'd charge tens (or sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars to ship them. No one ever saw the cost of shipping until audits years later. They ended up in prison. If they had just been smart and fled to a no extradition country after making their millions, they'd be a lot happier about it lol.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks Zap that was well written with details. We have not been hearing a bunch of negative stuff about the B-21 so hopefully the program is better managed and will deliver as promised.

I am also glad there are others who realize our procurement process is broken and are taking steps to try and fix it as I can not understand how anyone could put up with this much less make excuses in the vein of something like "boys will be boys oh well" or "hey this stuff is hard so expect delays and cost over runs for the next zillion years"..

The end of the year "spend it or lose it" would be another area I would try to get control of.. But I am not in charge so the MIC is safe from me. Carry on etc etc

I realize I come from a different war zone than some of the replies in this thread. The M-16 as sold and advertised got our people killed PEROID. The F-4 and no guns but had rockets that did not lock on much less seek their target; always fire two and hope one hits, B-52 assigned the same route and altitude getting shot down over North Vietnam are just some of the reasons I look at this stuff and wonder if anything has or ever will change. We had a chance during WW2 to get caught up and deliver and produce weapons that worked; look at from start to finish the P-38 and even the P-51.. that is a luxury we may not have in the next 10 years with a tier one conflict.. Hopefully that is one conflict that can be avoided but I would not bet the farm either way..

China is either FOS or they are serious about their territorial claims as the warning to such allies as the Philippines on May 19, 2017, "if you drill for oil in these here parts that will be an act of war". Taiwan is another flash point along with several other countries in this region; Cambodia appears to be embracing the dark side as they are already becoming tight with China and not playing nice with the USA..

I could find it amusing if we ended up fighting along side the Vietnamese in some future conflict if the conflict would not be so horrible, but, if that happens it will be one big cluster fook IMO.

South Vietnam likes us and even the North can be a great trip once they realize your Asian wife is not Vietnamese... the south could care less as long as you spend money.
www.reuters.com...

So like I said great post Zap and thanks

One million dollars in research funds to determine the correct washer required. They dont wanna over build, that would be wasteful.