
The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit - joveian
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/
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avinium
Incredibly illuminating. I'm not an American, but anyone who decries
government waste should be forced to read it.

Sure, money gets wasted on benefits programs and other government departments.

But - if the article is true - these are _dwarfed_ by the absolutely galactic
amounts of money that seemingly disappear into the US military black hole. The
amounts are staggering. Any discussion about government waste which does not
include wasted defence spending is intellectually hypocritical.

Given how political it is, the problem won't be easily solved. But surely this
is the type of challenge that has a technical solution (and no - a military-
wide ERP does _not_ qualify). I guess there were some vaguely promising ideas
around blockchain-based solutions; presumably these died on the vine for the
same political reasons that shared ERP systems wouldn't work - the solution
can't assume cooperation between branches/departments.

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nwrk
A must read!

"In the first, the Air Force accidentally loaded six nuclear weapons in a B-52
and flew them across the country, unbeknownst to the crew. In the other, the
services sent nuclear nose cones by mistake to Taiwan, which had asked for
helicopter batteries."

"“What kind of an organization,” Andy asks, “doesn’t keep track of $20 billion
in inventory?”

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cascom
On the one hand this is appalling. However, if I A. wanted to obscure the the
size shape and scale of covert programs, and B. Had little faith in the
ability to secure such a spralling inventory system for adversaries, this
might be the solution

