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Pentagon Spent $5 Billion For Weapons On Day Before Shutdown
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "John Reed at Foreign Policy reports that the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts Monday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month. Some of the more interesting purchases from Monday's dollar-dump include the $2.5 billion award the Defense Logistics Agency gave to aircraft engine-maker Pratt & Whitney for 'various weapons system spare parts' used by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, $65 million for military helmets from BAE Systems, $24 million for 'traveling wave tubes' to amplify radio signals from Thales, $17 million for liquid nitrogen, $15 million for helium and $19 million on cots. The Air Force, traditionally DOD's biggest spender, was relatively restrained; it dished out only 17 contracts including $49 million to help France buy 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones, $64 million to Lockheed for help operating spy satellites that are equipped with infrared cameras, and $9 million to URS Corp. for maintenance work on the Air National Guard's fleet of RC-26B spyplanes that help domestic law enforcement agencies catch drug dealers. The air service also spent $9 million on a new gym at the Air Force Academy that includes areas for CrossFit training, space for the academy's Triathlon Club and a 'television studio.' It just goes to show, says Reed, that 'even when the federal government is shutdown and the military has temporarily lost half its civilian workforce, the Pentagon can spend money like almost no one else.'"
This is a pure politics story. Why the fuck is this on slashdot? Its not news for nerds and not stuff that matters to anybody but political junkies.
Fuck Yeah, What You Gonna Do When We Come For You!?
Aside from it being incrementally more legal than just handing the money directly to the manufacturer, why would the US be helping France pay for MQ-9s? Is there any way in which this isn't a pure handout to General Atomics, essentially Uncle Sam offering a manufacturer's rebate on their behalf?
Stop whining for money.
Stop envying money.
Stop money.
It will be cool.
This article is pointless--the Federal fiscal year ended on September 30th. Of COURSE the Pentagon's going to spend money like crazy--just about every purchasing department in the Federal Government waits until the very last day to fill out their orders. Doing so allows them to negotiate for better deals to benefit us taxpayers, or allows them to be told how much they've got to spend. This is not a surprise, folks. It's just timing, that's all.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Wouldn't a more useful comparison for 'perspective' be a year on year comparison, not one comparing the last day of the fiscal year to the previous month? I would check the article to see if this is covered, but it's behind a pay-wall, so I can't (won't).
Does anyone else think that this type of gratuitous spending fosters innovation that would not be otherwise funded?
Cut back on military spending. Even @ 50% US will still be #1 in fire power.
Course that's also the surest way to commit political suicide, so it's never gonna happen.
If they didn't spend all that money, how would they ever justify asking for that much and more next time?
Will be turned against minorities for pettey crimes like smoking MJ?
Are we really getting our money's worth?
There are teenagers in Texas with life sentences for MJ possession. Never makes the mainstream press.
Larry Ellison picked the wrong time to go out watching the America's Cup races.
I thought we had ban on exporting weapons to nations in war.
Oh yeah, wars on abstract words don't count even if they include direct action.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The government continues to spend money on whatever it wants.
The government, after the shutdown, spent money to rent barricades to close off national monuments that are normally open 24x7 with no means of closing access.
They also spent money and time to turn off things like the "Panda Cam" that they could have just kept on until it failed.
Any actual layoffs or closures are wholly there to annoy you and make you think you need government more than you do.
Reject closures and go where you like. It's your land.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This article is pointless--a fiscal year ended on September 30th. Of COURSE the business is going to spend money like crazy--just about every purchasing department in the company waits until the very last day to fill out their orders. Doing so allows them to negotiate for better deals to benefit the shareholders, or allows them to be told how much they've got to spend. This is not a surprise, folks. It's just timing, that's all.
There. Tweaked it a bit, just to drive home how moronic this article is.
I may or may not agree with their mission and goals, but given the fact that the government shutdown was more or less known about for months ahead of occurring, I'd like to think that the bureaucrats at the pentagon were simply doing their job by making these large contract awards instead of pretending that the shutdown wasn't going to happen.
e.g. it's a lot easier to deal with a delay in paying for spare parts on the tail end than it is to do without those parts on the front end.
Pretty much any large organization with annual budgets burns through any remaining money before the fiscal year runs out. The reasoning is simple: if you don't spend every penny, budget planners inevitably use that as evidence you didn't need the money and will give you less the next year, even if you then turn out to need it.
In addition, there may be special projects the authorization for which expires at the end of the fiscal year.
Lastly, the people selling the stuff have targets of their own to meet and will often give special deals if you close the deal before the end of their fiscal year.
Our military is important. It's probably the most important element of the executive branch. Most of the purchases that are referenced look important and useful except maybe the Air Force academy's new gym.
Cannot just hand out grants to scientific research in the last few hours of the day. Nor the NIH.
Shit like this is what makes me angry at the priorities of the US. There is a very good reason that the NSF program directors can't hand out money to their buddies - proposals need to be submitted, evaluated, debated, etc. But were there multiple competitors for the money given to Pratt and Whitney? Did they have to read, deliberate, and have experts from various organizations debate the merits? Or did some guys get together and say - 'we have a really tough job to do; we need to distribute several billions in a few days/hours'?
And the priorities won't change because of short-sighted citizens being deliberately misled by politicians. If even $500,000 (which isn't really that much for research - it basically hires two or three graduate students at a university for 3 years) gets spent on video game or emperor penguins research, there will be blustering in front of the camera, decrying spending on ivory-tower academics (despite a lot of NSF money going to work that can be of immediate use - but politicians cherry pick programs for outrage) while 'Average hard working blue collar church going Americans are out of jobs and millions go to researching fruitflies'. Want to give a couple million dollars to your buddies in Lockheed or Raytheon? 'We are fighting a war on ... Can't afford to show weakness in the international stage... must maintain superpower position...' And the short-signed public goes... "No to Fruitflies, yes to bombs."
Sometimes I wish that some form of achievement was necessary to vote. For your local and county, everyone in that locality gets to vote. But for higher, more powerful positions, you need to prove atleast a rudimentary understanding of the issues before being allowed vote. Nowadays it is more like a popularity contest. Say the right things on stage, flash a smile, kiss some babies, and never-ever say - 'Hmm... this is a nuanced problem that has multiple tradeoffs that needs to be analyzed'. Instead, go with 'Raise taxes on the rich' or 'cut welfare spending'.
"We spend more money by 9 AM than most countries do all year"
"only 17 contracts including $49 million to help France buy 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones" I'm confused. Why are we helping France buy drones again? Shouldn't they be buying their own? And if its our technology, shouldn't they be paying us?
Good thing I spent $5 billion on tin foil the day before the shutdown.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
It could be worse, they could have spent that money to let creepy uncle sam rape you at the doctor's office. Thanks for doing what in the people's best interest! (People that don't donate to election campaigns aren't REAL people!)
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It only seems that way because they signed the deal with Lockheed for the F-35 LRIP6 and LRIP7 contracts on the 24th of September, which together total $7.8Billion.
unfunded requests
you would budget for lots of things but there wouldn't be enough money for it
at the end of the FY there was a huge pot of money left over that would be divided up and spent. every last penny because if you come in under budget then next year's budget is cut.
i used to have a government credit card and had to buy lots of worthless stuff just to spend money
I am betting it is C.O.T.S being Commercial-off-the-shelf hardware.
And everyone here poo-poos all the posts relating to wasted helium. This whole situation is outrageous.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
Supposedly said by Everett Dirksen when he appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. There seems to be some question as to whether he actually said it but there are lots of sources that attribute it to him. Unfortunately, the archives for the Tonight Show don't go back far enough to include his appearance.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Really? Since when did helium, radar stations and helmets become weapons? $5 billion was spent, some on weapons, some not. Don't lead readers on by saying that it was all weapons up front.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here!
You don't think some naive teabagger malcontents in the House are going to interfere with biddness as usual, do you?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Re: It just goes to show, says Reed, that 'even when the federal government is shutdown and the military has temporarily lost half its civilian workforce, the Pentagon can spend money like almost no one else.'"
He just needs to connect with reality. As noted above, *all* organizations built on human behavior clear their books on an annual cycle and start again. And as also noted, the *fiscal year hadn't ended yet* so half the workforce wasn't gone when the procurement work was being done. I'm sure there is a lot less money going out the door of the Pentagon today.
This gentleman should be sent back to making coffee and running the copier and encouraged to observe the working staff to see how journalism and commentary works in the real world. This article is kind of an embarrassment to FP, which I usually find a thoughtful source whether I agree or not. Adults must have all gone home.
pr0fits 3ithout and executes a of user base for
no no no no no. They've got it all wrong.
It's for five million FEMA coffins.
For five million vampires.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Pentagon budget is roughly 700T. Given 250 working days per year they need to spend about 3B a day. So at the end of the month they tend to spend a bit more to catch up. $5B is just BAU (Business As Usual).
Nothing to see here, just move along.
Why the flip are we fronting cash to France? The military industrial welfare state is sending it's cash to the socialistic French welfare state? I mean how can you be a Red state fiscal conservative and just ignore the trllions of dollars borrowed from China to pay for these trinkets? And then for us to give rebates on the cost...to France!? Did they have a groupon?
And yeah, I'm well aware that blue state liberals are happy to become war-mongers if it helps the Lockheed factory in their district...
That Obama is a liberal and not a warmonger. It's what he campaigned on in 2008.
The facts of his administration notwithstanding.
wrong...you're taking some kind of 'in lab conditions only' perspective and you're dead wrong
this is not a lab or poly sci theory class...this is 21st Century American military spending...it's been fucking anarchy for them since Bush/9/11 and Obama is doing his best to reign them in
want specifics? for starters, these projects are unnecessary and over-budgeted...they are **typical** miliary/industrial complex contract giveawys...Republicans work in lockstep with the leaders of these corps
you're turning a blind eye to how far out these interests I speak of have gamed the system
this is just flat untrue...there is absolutely no reason waiting in this manner would help at all...
look, accept it...these contracts were **WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY**
the congnitive dissonance on this is off the charts for conservatives, GOPers, and "libertarians"...they never shut up about 'budget crisis' and 'deficit reduction' but they always, always, always bend over and take whatever the military/industrial complex asks
its a corporate giveaway...that's what this is!
Thank you Dave Raggett
I didn't say this was a good thing or fiscally prudent. Just that using it to agure: "Look at how horrible our government is." it's not really a good example, as it occurs in pretty much every single large organization that uses annual budgets and breaks them into pieces.
We use annual budgets because "making things up as you go along" (expense planning on an "as-needed" basis) gets quite exhausting and makes advance planning difficult. In response, pretty much every large organization uses annual budges, and expecting something other than this would happen is simply not realistic, given human nature.
This is no different than an IT budget that gets to the end of the year, realizes it still has some extra money, and then goes and makes a few extra purchases before the money disappears. I really don't see why this is such a big deal.
The problem is not that they renewed all these contracts at the EOY, the problem is that while the asshats in washington are bitching about spending on things like social programs and health care (not saying they are good or bad programs) the asshats at the Pentagon are spending money like a /.er at Frys and no one is discussing that.
I would love the discussion to be about whether or not we need to make these purchases given the state of our government budget and the global military situation.
Do we need to bribe France to buy war machines from American defence companies? Especially when we are sending home kids in Head-Start?
Is it really necessary for government agencies to shut down access to public datasets and post messages about how everything is shutdown on their websites?
The systems are still up and running, Internet connectivity still up they just decided they would actively disable access to information wasting employee time to implement these changes for seemingly little to no productive reason. It is one thing to pull the plug if there is no money but they clearly have not done so.
I could see pressure to mine public attention in an effort to get shutdown lifted as soon as possible and everyone back at their jobs. Still the "sabotage" seems rather childish.
I can understand most of the spending listed mentioned above, but $19M on cots seems a little silly. I mean, they only cost a couple hundred bucks each, if that.
The cutoff date was also the end of the third quarter of 2013, and budgets have to be overrun or it would get cut next year (provided Congress and the President ever came up with a budget). My guess is that there's a flurry of spending on 9/30 (or the Friday directly before then if 9/30 falls on a weekend) every single year going back a couple of decades.
It's sort of like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's argument against one of the 2012 scares about planetary alignment: The planetary alignment the worrywarts were claiming was a disaster was going to happen on December 21, 2012, but it also happened on the winter solstice in every year before that.
I am officially gone from
Keeping a website up costs money in terms of bandwidth and electricity. If they have no money to pay for either of those and they haven't paid in advance, it actually could cause a site to go down...
Why is this in quotes? Just because the poster has never heard of a technology, it doesn't mean that the technology doesn't exists. Why not use a "web browser" to go to "Wikipedia" and "read" about them?
I have been told they will be "Overlords" and that many here, including myself, are welcoming them.
Obamabots heads are ready to explode. They need to refer to their manuals 1) blame the republicans till 2) you can come up with a excuse why this is ok. For examples for "drones"
You want to prove me wrong? Want to win this debate? read on...but first, I don't need your reductive lecture on how procurement works.
I used to be in the Air Force and worked with procurement people. I've been to the contractor trade shows.
It's a free for all corporate giveaway. The **prime** example of government waste that shows the glaring lies of Obama's critics and GOP'ers in general.
To falsify my point, say your ramblings about imaginary and unapplicable replacement cycles is true. Almost all government divisions that have budgets for contractors do exactly as you say. Fine.
In that scenario you are still wrong.
Why? The question is, is this spending justified?
The answer is no...no matter when people spend their budgets on contractors, the problem is the same **IT IS A WASTEFUL GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATIONS FOR NO GAIN TO CITIZENS**
That is the greater point....**we can go line by line, I'm in, but first you have to demonstrate that you are capable of rational discussion** ....you are dodging and trolling...and you didn't address at all the hilarious congitive dissonance over budget spending on this issue for consveratives like yourself.
Thank you Dave Raggett
...but a nightmare has the benefit of waking up.
$24 million for 'traveling wave tubes' to amplify radio signals from Thales
Why in quotes - do you honestly think that's a made up item? They're quite real, and important in high-powered radar systems.
Traveling-wave_tube
Pentagon, please remember to order mämmi with the hand grenades for your cafeteria so that you can present the Easter delicacy to your fellow officers as chocolate mousse and then observe their faces when they consume the first spoonful. A proven joke tested with real Americans.
... and I reported it to the waste, fraud and abuse line every year I was in the military even though I knew it wouldn't be taken seriously.
You get what you pay for...
That doesn't make it right - it is an artifact of use it or lose it (and then have next years budget cut because it is clear that you don't need it).
This has nothing to do with budget battles and government shutdown.
Bureaucratic self preservation at its finest. I am sure this has been pointed out many times above.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
US itself weight for 50% of word military expenses. US and NATO allies weight 80%. Considering the numbers, one could ask who is the enemy that is worth such an expense. If such an enemy exists...
The Marines have a tactic called the "Mad Moment."
If a Marine squad is surrounded and the enemy is openly calling for the surrender, the Marine squad will stall for time.
In that time the squad will procure all munitions available and send raiding parties to steal munitions from the enemy.
They well take the munitions and use detonators and wiring for a ... "big bang."
When all is set, they will fain wounded and pretend to need assistance with evacuating the injured.
The enemy feeling victorious will of course comply agreeably and enter the Marine camp.
Then, the enemy realizes all too late ... a trap ... and the "Mad Moment" begins.
Very few Marines have survived the "Mad Moment", and the enemy are all dead.
Government efficiency at its finest.
Yes it is all a very silly stunt and both sides are playing games to try to rub in their point. Did you expect anything else?
that's not an answer...'because we had a guy fill out a procurement spreadsheet' is absolutely no justification to give corporatations a blank check
this conversation is a non-starter...you managed to use blockquotes but still are 'Straw Man'-ing me...no, jerk, of course i'm not against all government contracting...I am a government contractor...
everyone who's reading is free to scroll up and read my point...I don't think anything of value has transpired in our conversation because you are simply justifying your cognitive dissonance
Thank you Dave Raggett
They got twenty hammers and a dozen toilet seats?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This story is about contracts signed on Sept. 30th, correct? Yes? Well, two things then: 1) the government was not shutdown at that point, and 2) that was the Pentagon spending the rest of its 2013 fiscal year money. This happens in every business that has a budget in every office around the world. The only difference here is scale. Federal budgets aren't "well we want to set this really big cap that we hope you stay under", rather they're "this is roughly how much we expect you to spend this year, don't deviate too far from it."
This is somewhat misleading in that most large contracts require long lead times due to federal purchasing requirements (posting bids, choosing bidders, justifying sole source, etc). The big ticket purchases began the process months ago and were just finally awarded at the last minute because the purchasing folks were clearing their backlog before time ran out. So yes, they were purchased on sept 30, but the purchase request was probably initiated in June, July, or August. (even earlier for the multimillion dollar purchases)
So TWTs are "interesting"? If they ran out of spares, a lot of satellites, comm links and radars would go dark. THAT would be "interesting".
I wish more people like all of you would explain this sensible logic to that doomsday religious apocalypse group making horrible videos and scaring the ignorantly misinformed that seem to think they understand every aspect of the world now that they plugged a cord into the wall and discovered the Internet. I really don't understand how people can just take another persons word for fact especially when their sources are just other people pages. Also seeing how it takes the same effort to look for ones self as it does to take them time to watch BS videos