Report: US Military Is Wasting Millions On Satellite Comms

An anonymous reader writes: Fast information exchange is the key to a powerful military, and satellites have been an incredible boon to the commanders of modern fighting forces. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the U.S. military is vastly overpaying for its satellite communications, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. They say the Department of Defense "has become increasingly reliant on commercial SATCOM to support ongoing U.S. military operations." You see, every part of the DoD is required to go through the Defense Information Systems Agency when procuring SATCOM equipment. The problem is that this process is incredibly slow, and fraught with red tape. Because of this, many in the military skip DISA and go straight to commercial providers — at a steep markup. The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.

Comments

45 million? Tha's all?

[Registered Coward v2]

Given how sliw the procurement process works and at the end you get the lowers"qualified" bidder who may or may not provide what tou need it isno wonder people bypass it any way they can. Of course, DOD can't just have one giant blanket purchase agreement because that wouldn't spread the wealth around to enough businesses in as many congressional districts as possible.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[dcw3]

When I read tens of millions, my first thought was "chump change among billions", but the summary is wrong. Here's the text from the actual article:
If the GAO is correct, then the military could have gotten that same service for about $45 billion less.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Martin Blank]

That's just for this part of things. One of the problems with putting in mechanisms to deal with fraud, waste, and abuse--a major part of the red tape--is that it adds waste to the process. Financially, this is acceptable up to the cost of the waste it's fighting, but after that, it becomes a bigger drain and should be curtailed.

Any large system is going to have some level of fraud, waste, and abuse, and it should be dealt with to a degree. Perfection in such systems cannot be obtained, so a certain amount of loss must be tolerated. Unfortunately, that's a lesson that politicians can never publicly learn.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[6ULDV8]

Looks like TFS is correct and the article is wrong.

> The most recent data available show that the military paid more than $1 billion for satellite capacity in 2011, according to GAO. That year, about $280 million worth of satellite capability was bought outside the DISA process. If the GAO is correct, then the military could have gotten that same service for about $45 billion less.

It's hard to save $45 billion on a total expenditure of $280 million.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[OhSoLaMeow]

Hell, a Pentagon toilet seat costs that much.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Mr D from 63]

Given how sliw the procurement process works and at the end you get the lowers"qualified" bidder who may or may not provide what tou need it isno wonder people bypass it any way they can.

Also, there is an added cost to go through a bid process for both the vendor and the government, and there is added cost to move to a new vendor both in schedule in interface development. I would hope they took this in to account when estimating the savings, but I haven't read the detailed report. But $45 million out of a $1 billion set of contracts is not that bad. Of course, it all adds up.......

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[smoot123]

I just read TFA. It is millions with an M, our of a total spend of $1 billion. That's mouse nuts. I mean, that's a chunk of change in absolute terms but it's around 15 cents per citizen.

If you want to get outraged there are higher priority issues. Just apply Amdahl's law to budget reduction: you have to reduce where the money is spent.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[bluefoxlucid]

It does not add up; it multiplies. There is an important difference: multiplication is addition across a span of repetition.

$45 million out of $1 billion? Let's take that as a bench mark. It's 4.5%. Let's say that kind of waste is all across military discretionary spending only (not the mandatory military spending), since we know that's about $500 billion. People make a lot of noise about this number, since they can compare all discretionary spending and show the government throws some 80% of its discretionary spending at military, and then claim the US Government spends 80% of our tax money on military--sly manipulation of numbers.

What's 4.5% of $500 billion? $22.5 billion. We're still not into staggering numbers here. With 300 million Americans (more like 224 million adult taxpayers), that's some $75/year. Our welfare system--most of it, excluding Medicaid and Medicare, as well as higher education support (both of which you could argue are welfare, since they supply non-state services to people who can't afford them themselves)--cost $1.62 trillion in 2013. The welfare system, if cut back and redistributed as a Citizen's Dividend (essentially an expansion of social security to pay lifetime benefits instead of retirement benefits--if you save your lifetime benefits all your life, it comes out to about equal your retirement benefits now), would amount to $563 per person per month, distributed to all American adults.

We should absolutely look into fixing the DISA processes, making them more efficient by straightening out the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, bureaucrats like rules, regulations, processes, systems; they want new rules to justify their existence, not slimmed rules to expedite the process. Wealth is simple: people cost money, and every cost in everything you buy is people labor; cut half the people labor, you cut half your costs, you can drop your prices by that much, and you make the same amount of profit, leaving more money in consumer hands, opening new markets, and creating new profit opportunities while undercutting your competitors on price. Expedite the bureaucratic process and you need fewer clerks handling forms, since it takes less human time to shuffle those forms around, and thus you can fire the bureaucrats; bureaucrats have all kinds of explanations about checks and balances and regulation and the important function of having these forms pass constantly through people's hands to sign off on without really thinking about the impacts, much of which never actually occurs in practice.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[bobbied]

I just read TFA. It is millions with an M, our of a total spend of $1 billion. That's mouse nuts. I mean, that's a chunk of change in absolute terms but it's around 15 cents per citizen.

If you want to get outraged there are higher priority issues. Just apply Amdahl's law to budget reduction: you have to reduce where the money is spent.

Oh, but you DON'T touch that third rail of politics. You cannot even slow the growth of things like Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs (like Obama Care, Welfare, Head Start, School Lunches what have you) without getting accused of outright hate, racism or worse.

Where both sides play lip service to deficit reduction, balance budgets and the like, FEW politicians even dare to get specific because they will be castigated in the press, by their opponents and otherwise vilified for suggesting we not spend the money "for the children" or some other such nonsense...

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[myowntrueself]

Given how sliw the procurement process works and at the end you get the lowers"qualified" bidder who may or may not provide what tou need it isno wonder people bypass it any way they can. Of course, DOD can't just have one giant blanket purchase agreement because that wouldn't spread the wealth around to enough businesses in as many congressional districts as possible.

$45 million is like one drone strike on a wedding party.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Martin Blank]

It can be easily argued that any money spent to reduce waste that results in expenditures above what the waste would cost is itself waste. If you have a $1 billion project and identify that $100 million of it is waste (whether through fraud, abuse, or inefficiency), spending money to reduce the waste only makes sense as long as the combined costs of waste and waste-reduction are equal to or less than $100 million. Anything more than that and you're just adding to the waste.

When you have a more complex situation like a federal budget, it might be argued that the money can be more effectively spent elsewhere, and that's where it can get subjective, but that doesn't stop money spent to avoid waste that costs more than the waste becoming waste.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[bobbied]

For Pete's sake... It's not like the expensive toilet seat was available at the local Home Depot... It was an aircraft part as I recall, one that the manufacturer stopped making decades before, and had to set up to build. So the costs wasn't for the seat, but the tooling, setup and manufacture of a one off airplane part and documentation to prove it met the original manufacturer's specifications for use on an aircraft.

If you have EVER seen how the federal government works it's supply systems, specifically the defense department and the Federal Stock System, it's abundantly clear WHY things are so expensive. It's not about the actual thing they need, but the paperwork that proves that what the supplier sold to the government was EXACTLY what the stock system requires.

I actually know about the $250 hammer first hand.... Let's just say this hammer was for a specific job and had specific requirements because of where and how it was used. It had to be made of specific materials, be of a specific shape, weight. It had to be manufactured in a specific way. Each of these requirements had justified reasons and $250 was a deal for it if you ask me.

Re: 45 million? Tha's all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like the affordable care act are just putting a bandaid on a bigger problem. Which is private companies with a medical monopoly gauging consumers for all they are worth. There should not be a free market where health is concerned because it's quite obvious that just means - price life saving drugs and procedures at the highest price possible - not the lowest.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[briancox2]

$45 Million out of a budget of $525 Billion just to get results?

Excuse me for a moment. *Yawn*

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[fustakrakich]

Perfection in such systems cannot be obtained, so a certain amount of loss must be tolerated.

Yeah really! I mean, like, what's the big deal, right?

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[jbolden]

The problem is pretty simple.

If you talk generally about spending cuts this has 70% approval / 30% disapproval
If you talk specifically about any particular spending cut that has 30% approval / 70% disapproval.

The problem isn't the politicians it is the electorate being inconsistent and fantastical. As Russel Long put it, "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree!".

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[MachineShedFred]

That's like the old joke about foreign aid bills - 57% of those polled disagree with foreign aid, and 45% think it should be cut... ... leaving 12% that disagree with foreign aid, but are just fine with the budget for it.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[ShanghaiBill]

It's not about the actual thing they need, but the paperwork ...

Indeed. My personal favorite form was the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 compliance form. It was a form that you filled out and stapled to every other form to indicate that the attached form conformed to the requirements of the paperwork reduction act. I was in the military at the time, and we used PWRA compliance forms by the truckload.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[dcw3]

They corrected the article. My post above was a copy/paste directly from the original text.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Registered Coward v2]

If you have EVER seen how the federal government works it's supply systems, specifically the defense department and the Federal Stock System, it's abundantly clear WHY things are so expensive. It's not about the actual thing they need, but the paperwork that proves that what the supplier sold to the government was EXACTLY what the stock system requires.

Exactly.

Bolt for nuclear submarine piping: $2

Paperwork to prove it meets all the mil spec and you can trace the manufacturing back to the raw material source: $1000

Being able to surface at end of cruise: Priceless

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[DarkOx]

Which is exactly why sequestration actually worked and why we need more of it.

There isn't political will to cut any specific program. Its like a comment up that page said "oh its only a nickle per tax payer" so the generally electorate does not get excited and won't vote for you because of you tough stance on support of Emu breading research. On the other hand the handful of Emu farmers and researchers out there will be very concerned about and run scary ads about how you are killing all the jobs in the Bumbfuck County [Insert Square State].

Congress is to freckles to deal with any specific budge line item or even any specific department level budget. On the other hand if you push big cross the board cuts it may leave all of our problems of in appropriate allocation in place, but at least you bring the aggregate numbers down.

In the best case:
Someone figures out away to save a few million by negotiating better contracts and eliminating some waste.

In the next best case:
That leaves the folks on the ground in a position to say well we don't have enough budget to do all this mandated activity lets divert resources from this effort we know really does not work so we can maintain this other that does or this other that is more important. Sure we have to "officially" still research Emu breading but will just have a intern book an hour to it once a month.

Worst case:
Some actually productive and beneficial program / policy gets short shrift-ed because the money isn't there even though plenty of money is still being foolish spent elsewhere.

Still this is the best we can do in the current state of political system. Until some real calamity forces people to get real I don't see things changing. I thought the financial crisis might have done it, but the pols managed to kick the can down the road by printing their way out and our biggest trade partners were sufficiently upside down as well that is kept a lit on inflation. With Asia now getting the shakes they can probably get away with it for another decade.

The next president is going to be one luck SOB or DOB? whoever it is. They going to get to continue to enjoy the real stimulative effects of the low interest rate, policy, and the benefits of all the medical industry growth which is already a sixth of the economy. Obama care is going to be good short term here. It will move a lot of money around. 9-10 years from now when the next guy is on his way out office though its going all come off the rails.

1) Demographics will be further screwed older
2) We will likely be even more a service economy having seen little growth in real wages
3) The Debt will be larger, meaning more borrowing will cost more
4) The once insatiable appetites for our bonds in foreign markets that is now gone will still be
5) Even if the dollar is still the reserve currency of many alternative currency markets for commodities like oil will probably exist.
6) Mandatory health insurance while having prevented a handful of personal bankruptcies will have further reduced the savings rate among the general population.

I don't think the formula from 2008-10, which barely worked then will get us out of the next hole

 

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[DarkOx]

So the costs wasn't for the seat, but the tooling, setup and manufacture of a one off airplane part and documentation to prove it met the original manufacturer's specifications for use on an aircraft.

That right there though IS THE PROBLEM with BIG government. That sort of thinking. When it turned out the seat could not be easily sourced. Some other mandate to keep that particular air craft in service effectively put the government in a position of doing whatever it takes to keep that bird in the air.

Nobody stopped to say gee maybe we should just run the risk of using an 'out of spec toilet seat'. Its not likely to bring the plane down after all. How much could a injury law suit really cost us for this?

You get the point where the few ways to satisfy all the competing directives, agendas, rules box you into doing things that would be irrational in any other context.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[merky1]

Ummm... sequestration did not work, and was not the massive deterrent that it was made out to be. Pure pork programs like the F-35 were completely untouched. The only consistent aspect of sequestration was that federal employees (common people, not the asshats in congress) took a 5-10% paycut.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[jbolden]

Which is exactly why sequestration actually worked and why we need more of it.

Yes I agreed with you during the George HW Bush time. I was at that time very much supportive of cutting government spending and was furious at the lack of cuts. This round of sequestration has also been a huge success for spending cuts. Congress is starting to freak because it has been so succesful on defense.

___

Some comments:

1) Demographics will be further screwed older

True but health is rapidly improving. Also not as much as people imagine: http://www.crmtrends.com/image...

2) We will likely be even more a service economy having seen little growth in real wages

True. But corporate profits are huge so that's going to be easy to fix.

3) The Debt will be larger, meaning more borrowing will cost more

Huh? Interest rates are at record lows. If they stay low more borrowing by definition will cost little.

4) The once insatiable appetites for our bonds in foreign markets that is now gone will still be

Truncated. And my answer is possibly. But that translates into a very weak dollar. Which fixes problem #2.

5) Even if the dollar is still the reserve currency of many alternative currency markets for commodities like oil will probably exist.

Not sure why that matters except to borrow more.

6) Mandatory health insurance while having prevented a handful of personal bankruptcies will have further reduced the savings rate among the general population.

Savings are dropping off and direct investing is replacing it. That's just cutting out intermediaries. The USA economy doesn't need much saving as long as there is lots of investment. The traditional main purpose of savings is for banks to consolidate them into investments.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Chris Mattern]

because of you tough stance on support of Emu breading research.

Mmmm, fried emu.

Re: 45 million? Tha's all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like the affordable care act are just putting a bandaid on a bigger problem. Which is private companies with a medical monopoly gauging consumers for all they are worth. There should not be a free market where health is concerned because it's quite obvious that just means - price life saving drugs and procedures at the highest price possible - not the lowest.

You are correct.
People shouldn't ask how are we going to pay these huge medical costs, they should ask why these costs are huge.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[khallow]

And compared to the tremendous fraud that occurs in countries without this kind of paper trail, it's probably worth it. Not that things couldn't be improved, but it's not all senseless. Accountability is expensive.

Now, if only they'd do the same for the large scale projects. They can procure a fighter jet with the right kind of screws, but they can't procure a fighter jet that does what they want it to do.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[afidel]

It wasn't just a freaking seat, it was the entire bathroom, and they had to make large injection molding dies to create the new bathroom. The seat was just one of the parts that went into the new bathroom and the project cost was spread over x number of pieces of deliverable parts. Any time you deal with injection molding or just about any significant manufacturing process there are large upfront costs that lead to VERY expensive parts if you don't produce a lot of something (heck, even business cards get stupid expensive if you order less than a few boxes at once, which is why I have a few thousand business cards I'll never use as it's WAY cheaper to order me 10x more than I need then it is to even occasionally need an additional batch run). The alternative to the new bathrooms was scrapping the airframe and designing a new one, and if you haven't been paying attention lately to the way Air Force procurement is done that would have resulted in a LOT more cost than some $640 toilet seats. Btw thanks to those new bathrooms the P-3C Orion is one of a handful of aircraft to serve over 50 years bringing the cost per flight hour down quite a bit over building new replacements =)

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[tsotha]

It's not a big percentage of the total, but that money could have been spent somewhere else. $45m is enough to buy a brand new F-16, depending on exactly what you buy.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[reboot246]

It's just money, phony fiat currency that has been created out of thin air.

And the taxpayers have very deep pockets! They can pay any price.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[smoot123]

Ummm... sequestration did not work...

I guess that depends on how you define "work". Based on 30 seconds of Googling, total federal spending has been more or less flat since FY 2009 so something worked. Maybe budgeting by continuing resolution isn't all that bad. Sequestration certainly had a role in halting the increases, as did divided government (yay gridlock!). Interestingly, it looks like both defense and welfare spending peaked in 2011 and have dropped since then.

I'm getting my data from here, YMMV.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[smoot123]

Yes I agreed with you during the George HW Bush time. I was at that time very much supportive of cutting government spending and was furious at the lack of cuts. This round of sequestration has also been a huge success for spending cuts. Congress is starting to freak because it has been so succesful on defense.

I loved the Base Closure Commission process. I'm still amazed we managed to close a bunch of military bases. I'd love to have a Spending Cut Commission which could offer a non-negotiable package of cuts for an up-or-down vote.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[bobbied]

The problem with the F35 is that it's being designed with too many requirements, making it too complex and unreliable. It's going to be all things to all the services who are involved in the procurement, plus a few foreign governments.. Being a "jack of all trades" makes you a "Master of none" especially in the fighter jet world. It will be a mediocre fighter, struggle to drop bombs in the close air support role, and it won't be all that stealthy.... Of course they plan to make it up in volume, having common spare parts, training and maintenance facilities.... I for one am not buying it...

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[bobbied]

Thanks, I didn't recall/know the details of this, but I understood that this "toilet seat" thing has always been a bluster about something that actually made sense overall and wasn't a waste of government resources, but was putting an older aircraft back into shape so we could use them longer....

That's not to say the government doesn't have huge amounts of waste.... I heard a story where the FSN of an "anchor chain" used to hold a dust cover on a piece of test gear differed from an "anchor chain" used to moor a ship at sea differed by ONE digit. The hapless electronics tech ordered the wrong one of course, which arrived on a number of flatcars after what seemed to be an extremely long wait... DMRO had fun with that one....

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[dryeo]

That's only true from an accounting perspective. There's also other perspectives such as the perception of massive fraud which leads to the project losing support. It may be worth more then $100 million to show the public/congress that fraud won't be tolerated and by discouraging future fraud may still save money long term.
The same can be true for other forms of waste but fraud is something that people really don't like and even spending money to prove that fraud does not exist can help the project as perception is important.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[jbolden]

We had that. It was the Simpson-Bowles commission. It needed 14 out of 18 for supermajority to pass with amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[afidel]

Hehe, nice story. Btw I looked it up and the air force did decide to build a replacement for the P3, the new P8 is based on an ~$100M 737NG airframe but so far the cost per P8 is ~$1.1 billion, those were some damn cheap seats if they allowed us to kick that kind of cost down the road 30-40 years.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Martin Blank]

The accounting perspective is what the General Accounting Office examines. What you're talking about is more of a political exercise.

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[cwsumner]

I think the extra cost for the satcom was for getting -now-, when it's needed, instead of sometime in the future...

Re:45 million? Tha's all?

[Registered Coward v2]

I think the extra cost for the satcom was for getting -now-, when it's needed, instead of sometime in the future...

Exactly. The operational forces can't say to the bad guys "Timeout while we wait for the administrative folks to get us the comms we need to launch an airstrike. Take a bresk and we'll get back to you in a few months."

Re: 45 million? Tha's all?

[khallow]

70% of the cost of your health care bill is either directly, or indirectly caused by insurance. Abolish all insurance that is related to health care, and your health care costs will drop by 70%.

Unless, of course, that doesn't happen. There are two things to note here. First, a huge part of the insurance is to pay for other peoples' inflated health care costs. Insurance would be considerably cheaper, if health care costs were cheaper. A nationalized program doesn't reduce peoples' consumption of health care any more than capped cost insurance does.

And it's worth noting that the rest of the developed world doesn't have health care costs that are 30% of the US's. For example, if we look at Wikipedia, the US clearly spends a third more on health care as a fraction of GDP (almost 18%) than its nearest neighbors (Netherlands, France, and Germany 11-12%). Nobody on that list (OECD countries) manages to achieve a 70% reduction as a fraction of GDP compared to the US. And everyone's health care costs as a fraction of GDP have been going up.

Second, the US has in particular a terrible history of reforming its health care. I wouldn't count on the claimed level of savings merely because of the US's considerable, demonstrated capacity to fuck things up. My view is that you should be able to achieve considerable level of savings adopting an insurance-based health care system, should the US choose to do that.

Worry about drips while an river floods

[msobkow]

Talk about worrying about drips while the river floods. Hundreds of billions wasted on the F35's alone, and someone is worried about $35 million for satcom.

No wonder there are never any *real* cuts to the military budgets with "prioritization" like this.

Re:Worry about drips while an river floods

[NoKaOi]

And which is a better use of funds, providing medical care to people that need it, or developing a fighter jet that is years behind schedule, billions over budget, and that we didn't need in the first place?

Re:Worry about drips while an river floods

[fermion]

To put this in perspective, If we were to send a single bomber to Iran with a single bunker busting conventional bomb, it would cost more than this. As far as slowness, the pentagon can't even get an American made cross trainer on soldiers feet because the bureaucracy is so vast. So yes, the pentagon does need to be slimmed down and made more efficient. On the other hand, I suspect that the reason we are spending 45 million dollars a year extra for the communication is because it would cost an order of magnitude more to refit with the new technology and train. This is not a small firm that can refit everything for 100K, and many of the soldiers are kids right of high school, many of who have trouble reading and writing. I have seen kids do well on the ASVAB that have great difficulty passing a state graduation test.

Government wasting money. Whaaa...?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Government wasting money. Whaaa...?

>> many in the military skip Defense Information Systems Agency

Oh, I see. This article was planted to whip military buyers back into the corral of politically-connected overspending that is DISA.

Patriotism

[chilenexus]

Nothing says "Patriotism" like ripping off the military and the government in general, does it? They're only screwing over the 315 million people in their own "home".

Re:Patriotism

[jimbolauski]

They are not over charging the government, the commercial sat comm company is only turning about a 15% profit if all the costs are the same. 15% is not an obscene amount of profit and is probably in line with other large capital investments.

Re:Patriotism

[DNS-and-BIND]

Where did anyone get the idea that military contractors are patriotic? Did we just assume that? They care nothing for the American people. They have a lot in common with the progressive liberals who would like to gut them. Their common foe is US.

Re:Patriotism

[chilenexus]

I don't think they're patriotic, that's just the image the put forth to help increase their sales.

Pure Pork

[koan]

Yum

Uh huh.

[fahrbot-bot]

The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.

So about $450 million over the last 10 years opposed to how much spent in Afghanistan and Iraq over the same period? How about checking into that? Oh right, that stuff is "off book" and not accounted for - though probably still affects our budget, economy and taxes. The SATCOM bill is chump-change by comparison. While we're looking at blips in the account, why not also cancel Public Radio and NASA - they probably also cost us each a nickel.

Yes, it may be an unnecessary expense that can be avoided by fixing the in-channel SATCOM process but our Government (and specifically Congress) is notoriously penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Re:Uh huh.

[dcw3]

No, it's $45 Billion... With a B, according to the actual article.

Re:Uh huh.

[cdrudge]

No. If you read the actual article, it's million, with an m. The actual article quote (emphasis added):

The most recent data available show that the military paid more than $1 billion for satellite capacity in 2011, according to GAO. That year, about $280 million worth of satellite capability was bought outside the DISA process. If the GAO is correct, then the military could have gotten that same service for about $45 million less.

News at 11: Government paid $45m more then it had to. Citizens shocked that it was only $45m.

Re:Uh huh.

[OzPeter]

So about $450 million over the last 10 years opposed to how much spent in Afghanistan and Iraq over the same period? \

There was some statistic a few years ago about how the cost of air-conditioning for the troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East exceed NASA's budget.

Re:Uh huh.

[Mr D from 63]

I thought it was $25 williou, but I was looking at it in the mirror.

Re:Uh huh.

[Mr D from 63]

oops, meant $52 williou... in my ceiling mirror.

Re:Uh huh.

[dcw3]

Then they just corrected it.

Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[The Raven]

Chump Change. 45 million is 0.01% of our military budget, and it is a waste of time to worry about it. This is a distraction from budgetary issues that do matter, such as the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on the F35.

I have no problem with the military going around red tape to get communication satellites up faster. If we go by the general idea that a life is worth $9 million dollars, then these satellites going up faster only need to save 5 lives and they have done their job.

Spend your attention wisely; don't quibble about the theft of a penny by a child while your bank account is being emptied by your brother.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[dcw3]

Summary is wrong...it's $45B not M.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[The Raven]

Well damn, now I feel stupid. I doubt the comm sats would save 5000 lives or equivalent. So yeah... something to be concerned about.

Thank you for the correction.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[Martin Blank]

Sometimes looking at the smaller items gives a better idea of systemic problems that contribute to larger amounts elsewhere. The procedures meant to prevent losses have gummed up the works to such a degree that an alternate path was found that, while more expensive, got the job done. It might provide some opportunity to alter how things operate and ultimately save money later. (I'm not holding my breath, but it does sometimes happen.)

This is pretty common in the military. Red tape is just an obstruction to go around.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[Martin Blank]

It's not a correction. It's a lie. The original article says $45 million, not billion. The total revenues for the commercial satellite industry were about $195 billion in 2013, and that includes satellite TV, photography, and communications. Even the US military isn't providing a quarter of that industry's revenue.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[asylumx]

Are you sure? I can't tell where the summary got that number but the article also references "tens of millions." -- do you have another source with better info?

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[inhuman_4]

Hundreds of billions wasted on the F-35? Are you serious?

The whole program over it's 50 year life span is expected to cost $1T. The expected cost is about $600B for maintenance training, etc. About $250B for actually buying all ~2,000 planes. And about $150B for development. Even if the the whole development of the F-35 was a waste and all 100 or so planes already built were dumped in the scrap heap it still wouldn't amount to "hundreds of billions".

I understand some people don't like the F-35, but the hyperbole has gotten way out of control.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[dcw3]

I'm sure that they corrected the article to show M instead of B now. I'd copy/pasted the original text in an earlier post above.

Long story short...let's not waste more time quibbling over M when B are being wasted.

Re:Waste of Time vs Waste of Money

[AHuxley]

The numbers have been around for years in public. The US gov/mil is fixated on buying from the private sector every decade.
"The High Frontier" (Broadcast: 02/05/2005)
"Outer space is open for business. It’s a booming $50 billion a year industry"
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners...
from the transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners...
".. makes $100,000,000 a year, buying and selling airtime on communication satellites. ...."

I thought they *used* to launch their own

[whitroth]

But y'know it's *so* much cheaper to outsource the launches and satellites so that a) the people who actually *build* the stuff get the same salaries and bennies as government employees, or a good bit less (how much was assembled in, say, China?), but whose profits and execs make up for that by earning *so* much more, tens of times what, say, the President of the US earns.

I think I remember when the military launched its own satellites with its own rockets....

                mark

Re:I thought they *used* to launch their own

[shaitand]

"tens of times what, say, the President of the US earns"

That's probably still true but lets not pretend that government salary represents any notable portion of what the president, presidential appointees, or congress critters make. Not even when you only consider the bribes in the form of high salaries and benefits without actual duties that are paid on leaving office and offered while in office for favors.

It may actually represent a savings!

[Anonymous Coward]

The choice field commanders face isn't expensive vs. less expensive. It's communicating vs. not communicating! So, the real question is how much field capability would be lost during the wait needed to save that $45M?

The key to having maximum flexibility and nimble response is abundant communications.

Can you imagine a commander saying: "Sure, we'd love to handle that deployment, but we can't until DISA sends us our SATCOM gear."

I suspect it would cost far more than $45M to provide redundant force levels to compensate for the late gear arrivals.

Re:U.S, the land of the bullshit

[sims 2]

If were going off in this direction again I have to say I am all for paying for more preventative care. Emergency rooms should be for !@#$%^& emergency's not things that could have easily been prevented from needing anything further.

But no we are cheap we don't think we should have to pay for others health care....but you can't refuse to provide emergency care. That would be wrong WTF america?? Emergency care costs a fortune in comparison to preventive care!

What rip off?

[Comboman]

Nobody is "ripping off" the military. They negotiated a bulk buying discount through the DISA. To save time/avoid some paperwork, they decided to go around DISA and pay commercial rates like non-military customers. You can't buy your groceries at the local 7-11 and then claim you should get the lower Costco prices because you're a Costco member but just could be bothered to drive to Costco.

Re:What rip off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be bothered by? Our fucking mission is over before DISA can get their head out of their ass and read what we need. covering 30% of our needs is not adequate, acceptable, or worth the wasted brain cells spent trying to manipulate DISA into doing their damn job.

Seriously?

[shaitand]

The DoD is wasting hundreds of billions and $45m is the noteworthy issue?

In Related News....

[GlennC]

Water Found to have Physical Quality called Wetness.

Bears seen Defecating in the Woods.

Pope makes Declaration, "I am a Practicing Catholic."

Sun to Set over West Coast.

Fixed it for you...

[jddj]

"...the Government Accountability Office says the U.S. military is vastly overpaying for its satellite communications, to the tune of three sixteen-pound hammers."

Spelling

[Vonotar82]

Remember, you can't spell "Disaster" or "Disappointment" without DISA.

Re:U.S, the land of the bullshit

[OhPlz]

I don't know where you live, but even my smallish town has a public health clinic. Many area hospitals also have walk in care for people that can't pay. These things are possible without overreaching federal legislation or abusing the ER. There's also the more recent trend of having urgent care clinics for things that are not life or death emergencies.

First hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC because I have first hand experience

As ANYONE who has worked govt jobs before - the poor people stuck there HATE central purchasing for a REASON. These group exist to generate red tape and waste. I'm serious.

They will block buy MASSIVE amounts of equipment that go unused. Why? So they can crow about their stupid 10% discount. The equipment goes totally UNUSED, but they "saved" lots of money.

Seriously, this satcom stuff is going to be like that. The question is not if it's 16% cheaper (I'm sure it is). The question should be, does anyone want to use it? My guess is utilization is horrible. Clunky terminals etc etc. Or you can independently provision some stuff commercially in a few days, deprovision when mission is over.

They are 100% inflexible. This can be insanely painful. Imagine you have a bulb out, 50 cents at the office supply store, but a nonstandard plug and not yet in central purchasing. Rule is you MUST purchase lightbulbs through central purchasing.

They don't include overhead costs of their own operation. Anyone who has seen the accounting knows this. Central purchasing saves you 10% on something that goes totally unused, but then (separately) bills back their costs to all departments as a beneficial resource. If you add up all the wasted time by each department, plus the overhead of purchasing, that 10% is gone, even IF the stuff they bought was useful.

They apply their approach to fast moving areas like IT. As an example, only outdated IE6 and obsolete Java versions are allowed for the "central purchasing systems interface" because it was "certified" for that. Still on Windows XP? For sure. Meanwhile users are constantly having to try and avoid accidentally upgrading by dismissing all the security warnings Java throws up.

And then the auditors show up with this type of BS.

You wonder why govt has trouble attracting smart hardworking folks.

Re:First hand

[Whorhay]

One of the most humorous examples of this kind of thing that I've seen involved a busted faucet in a break room. The faucet was leaking and had to be replaced. So the facilities people came in and removed it. Then as they didn't have a replacement part, put up a sign saying the part had been ordered and would arrive in a few weeks. This is the main break room that gets lots of use throughout the day. Someone printed up a map showing directions from the building to a nearby Home Depot, along with a part number for a cheap replacement available there.

Government Is Wasting Millions

[mi]

There, fixed the title for you. You didn't really think, it was only the Military, that wastes money — or that satellite communications is the only sinkhole?

Re:Gotta make ice bowls somehow or another

[bluefoxlucid]

Excess labor is self-buffering. We have welfare systems for that (and I advocate a better one because it's time). Even in the appropriate economic conditions for full communism (which may never occur, even though we can define them easily), you would run out of shit to spend your money on (nothing you want or need), and so simply take shorter working hours (and give up part of your income), requiring the hiring of more employees, until everyone is working 10-15 hour weeks, or 1 hour work weeks, making a full salary: you don't "implement" communism; it happens as a natural result of capitalism having expanded wealth beyond what any human society can spend. The Soviets missed this, else they would have realized it won't work unless it's already working.

Every time you improve efficiency--new tools (specialized hand tools, power tools, machines, automated machines) or management techniques (artisan, assembly line, cellular manufacture, advancements in project management)--you reduce the human labor required to produce a unit product or service. Those chairs you sell for $60 involve $40 of human labor; you cut that in half, you sell them for $40, you make the same profit. That makes unemployment, while the rest of consumers have more money in their hands (the extra $20, which is why they come to you and not your ass-expensive competitor still selling for $60; you just got to take away his business for free).

That means new markets can open to target that $20 with a new good or service, or existing markets can expand to sell more of a much-desired good or service. The cost of selling that thing? Ultimately, human labor. Volume discounts, competition, and all other price (read: profit margin) suppression factors later, that $20 employs exactly the same number of laborers your prior efficiency improvements displaced (if your profit margins overall for the new products are exactly the same--your profits, in total, will be higher).

Welfare buffers this turn-over by supplying a means to maintain the labor force in the interim. Even without welfare, as long as they don't die out, we keep the unemployment numbers we need.

Better welfare retains wealth: a Citizen's Dividend would cost as much as our current system (I computed profit plus risk margins; the numbers sound low, but they're on the order of ridiculous shit that will make me richer than Warren Buffet in under 3 years if I become a landlord), and wouldn't inflate in a recession (everyone is getting the dividend; everyone making under $625k is coming out ahead), while keeping the poor and unemployed operating as economic drivers (the poor buy food and housing, which creates employment for other less-poor, who can buy other products... it trickles up).

Functional economic drivers keep money in people's hands, meaning any efficiency gains which damage the economy by creating too much unemployment (AUTOMATION) will benefit even the displaced worker (cheaper goods), helping the economy to more rapidly recover, create more opportunities to sell cheaper goods to consumers who spend less on current goods, creating more need for human labor (someone has to run the machines--that it takes 2 people instead of 20 means you can make those new goods *really* *cheap*, so your market is bigger: more people have that much money to spend; it also means you can make and sell 10 new goods instead of just the one), bringing employment back up. Keeping the consumers well-monetized without giving the unemployed a luxurious lifestyle and without raping the rich and the businesses to fund the poor accelerates this process; as well, reducing labor costs (e.g. by providing for means of living, thus you can repeal minimum wage) helps slow the initial damage (machines don't become as cheap as people quite so fast, and not all at once) and speed the recovery (cheaper labor means cheaper goods).

We don't need fake jobs; that just destroys wealth by increasing costs, decreasing the amount the consumer can spend, slowing market growths, increas

Re:Who'da thunk

[bobbied]

There is the short term view, and the long term one...

You have a decidedly short term view apparently, because the logical extension of social programs IS communism in all it's glory. While keeping a military is actually one of the few examples of something our founding fathers actually had the federal government involved in.. They didn't print and spend bundles of money on "social welfare" programs, but they DID authorize a lot of defense spending.... Well that and outright land purchases.. But they where more concerned about the future well being of the nation as a whole than the "Let's give away money to the poor" short term idea.

"Give a man a fish and he's fed for a day, TEACH him to fish and he can feed himself for life..." We give away way too many fish...

ah, well...

[jddj]

Pound, Ounce...what's the diff? (Other than a factor of 16...)

Corporate equivalent = Shadow IT

[ErichTheRed]

I have almost exclusively worked for large corporations. In almost every one of them, there has been a central purchasing department that does nothing more than forward orders to a pre-approved supplier. I think you become a pre-approved supplier by kicking back a certain percentage of sales to the purchasing manager.

When faced with this, every place I have worked at has had a shadow IT department. Back in the pre-cloud days, this was the department buying equipment that IT didn't know about simply because the quoted price was too much or it took too long. These days, it's a manager whipping out the credit card and putting company data out on AWS or Azure. The usual "better to ask for forgiveness than beg per permission" applies here, and IT ends up supporting it anyway. Centralized purchasing doesn't work for IT stuff -- it *may* save you money on toilet paper and light bulbs, but IT is too complex to reduce to a line item in a PO.

This is just the government equivalent. The only reason we know about it is because the records are public.

Re:Who'da thunk

[Anonymous Coward]

Our founding father's were AGAINST a standing army FYI. They would shit themselves at the percentage of our taxes that go to our military complex...

Re:U.S, the land of the bullshit

[Grishnakh]

Poor people can't go to urgent care clinics: they require payment. So they go instead to ERs, where they're not allowed to turn them away until they're stabilized. This is the result of right-wing short-sightedness.

Have you even looked at their reports?

[Koreantoast]

Clearly you don't read GAO's reports: they have an entire section dedicated to all the problems in the Federal government including F-35 or defense acquisition as a whole. Unfortunately, the people who they report to, Congress, doesn't seem to really pay attention to what they publish unless it aligns with their scapegoat of the day.

Re: Who'da thunk

[ravenshrike]

Given the existence of superpowers, nukes, the airplane, and transportation reduction in general, this is unlikely. They would however mandate that our soldiers go armed at all times while on duty, this stopping any shooting incidents before they start. Fucking Clinton. They would also mandate all non-NBC weapons be available to the common citizen. Well, maybe not FAE devices.

Re:Useless in wartime

[PPH]

able to protect their SATCOM assets in orbit?

This.

China/Russia can probably take down the Iridium and Globalstar systems easily. The DoD owned satellite systems are probably better protected. But when you go through the DISA, what are you getting? A military system up/downlink? Or time leased from a commercial operator which will most certainly go off the air in a conflict with a capable enemy?

Re:U.S, the land of the bullshit

[OhPlz]

The ER isn't going to treat someone for a non-emergent issue unless it's something quick. They're going to point the person to urgent care or a public health clinic or whatever the equivalent is for the area. If it actually is an emergency, guess what? The ER treats them. You seem to think you can go to the ER for a flu shot and they're required to give it to you. Go try that sometime, tell us how it goes. If the person needs to be stabilized (by your words), then that sure sounds like an emergency to me. If they didn't seek out care before it became an emergency, that's their own damn fault. Like I said, there are services available. You just have to look for them. That requires effort though and this being America, I know that's a lot to ask.

What the "right-wing" doesn't want is to have clueless people like you destroying health care for those of us who realize that it is not actually broken.

Re:Who'da thunk

[lgw]

Our founding father's were AGAINST a standing army FYI. They would shit themselves at the percentage of our taxes that go to our military complex...

It's not the Cold War: we only spend about 16% of the federal budget on defense (don't be misled by "discretionary spending" BS). A non-trivial portion of that goes to basic research.

We spent 60% more on Medi* than on defense, and there's far more waste and fraud in that system. (Both must balance cost of waste and fraud vs cost of policing waste and fraud, and it's not obvious what the optimal balance is.) We spend 48% more on Social Security than on defense. It's not like we're ignoring social programs here.

For the curious, US Debt Clock has a great 1-page overview of spending, revenue, debt, and unfunded liabilities.

Perspective helps when talking about large numbers

[crmarvin42]

The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.

Lets put this into perspective. $45 million/yr works out to:

- 0.00129% of the 2014 total US expenditures ($3.5 Trillion)
- 0.00409% of 2015 Discretionary Spending ($1.1 Trillion)
- 0.00752% of the 2015 US Military Spending ($589.5 Billion)

Why is this news? I'm all for efficiency, but savings that small are not worth it in a budget that freaking large

For all x, the military wastes millions on x.

[Dr. Spork]

The military has a huge budget that has to feed and entire ecosystem of contractors and subcontractors. Of course such a system is wasteful, and the scale of military spending is such that it's almost certainly true that the military wastes millions on peanut butter, on underpants, on shampoo, on frying pans and on snake bite kits. Name all the items in your junk drawer, and I bet that the military wastes millions on each of those kinds of things. Wasting millions on satellite capacity doesn't even sound that stupid in comparison. The real shocker would be to find something on which the military actually gets a good deal.

Re:Perspective helps when talking about large numb

[AHuxley]

Re "Why is this news? I'm all for efficiency, but savings that small are not worth it in a budget that freaking large"
Go back over the years of getting:
"That year, about $280 million worth of satellite capability was bought outside the DISA process. If the GAO is correct, then the military could have gotten that same service for about $45 million less."
Back to 1990? 2000? 2010? The decades add up. The billions of $ needed to just to buy into the private sector can be very expensive.
The linked "DOD Needs Additional Information to Improve Procurements" at http://www.gao.gov/products/GA... had a "Full Report" pdf
http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/... has :
"DISA also estimated that if DOD used a capital lease or purchase of a single band satellite based on commercially available technology, the department could avoid
costs of about $4.5 billion over 15 years compared to the current baseline.
This was the lowest cost alternative identified by the analysis."

Re:Who'da thunk

[bobbied]

Ah, come on... Remember that Clinton took all that Social Security and Medicare spending OFF BUDGET....

We don't put budget money into those programs anymore... They are separately funded though that Social Security Trust fund "lock box" which only has a pile of IOU's in it.. Wait you say, what happened to all my social security taxes I paid in? Um, we SPENT that money and left you with I pile of US Government bonds, T-Bills, for which somebody will have to be taxed or money printed to repay.

We may not go down the same road as Greece.... But it will be similarly painful if we don't stop spending on social programs like we are...

Keynesian military

[manu0601]

Keynesian spending in military has been an US economy booster for decades. The major drawback is that it tends to get people killed. Pooring money on military satellites seems a better way to fuel the economy.

What this is really about

[Karmashock]

Bureaucrats are pissed that they're being bypassed by military departments that have neither the time nor the inclination to waste the lives of soldiers on these pencil kings.

Here is the salient point: The military departments find the process too slow to be useful and so bypass it.

That's the story. Full stop. Not that the military over pays for stuff. But that this budget approval office is SLOW.

Fix that and the military will route their orders through them instead.

Here they'll say "we need more money to do that"

Okay... now we're doing a cost benefit analysis. Is it cheaper to over pay for some stuff or cheaper to pay the bureaucrats to make sure we don't over pay?

Ehm? I think we'll find it is probably a wash. Just my bias here. You'd think some bureaucrats were fairly cheap. Guys sitting there with some spreadsheets pushing numbers around. How expensive could it be? Well... horrifically expensive in many cases. Which... again based just on my bias here suggests this office complaining that because they're not used we over pay for stuff... well, maybe they're actually a net cost and the best way to save money is to just terminate them entirely and tell teh military departments and commanders and generals to use their budgets as best as they see fit. Who after all understands what the military needs better than the military? You could have some corrupt general or something but generally they're not. And generally they'll make a serious effort to make every penny go as far as they can. If you give the Marines a giant pile of money and say "this is your money for the year, spend it how you choose". I frankly think they'll make better use of it than if you hand it to the pentagon and say "okay here is everyone's money, spread that around through everything somehow."

A big problem with all governments i've ever really looked at is that there is a belief that you make things cheaper/more efficient/better by combining and centralizing. This is sometimes true but it is often not true. The primary thing centralization does is make it easier for people at the top to understand and manage the whole system. But that's why we invented delegation. Just delegate it. Then you don't need to centralize, combine, or simplify. The recent F35 project was a giant example of how combining a lot of projects together into one project actually made it more expensive and less useful.

We also see that with the DHS. The concept there was not costs but rather free flow of information... but we don't actually have the free flow of information the DHS was supposed to give us and by all indications it is frustrating the effective execution of orders simply because we have some of this going on:
https://youtu.be/_iiOEQOtBlQ?t...

Every time some organization under the DHS wants to do something they have to run upstairs and ask the DHS for permission. That can't help but slow things down massively as well as limit the scope of the organization to whatever the DHS can understand which is going to be less than what all the various departments could individually understand collectively.

Re:Gotta make ice bowls somehow or another

[BoberFett]

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: Perspective helps when talking about large num

[crmarvin42]

And in each of those years, the saving were still infinitesimally small. Adding up a decade of savings makes the number appear bigger, but not if you also add up the budget over that same decade. At the end of the day, the savings are still a large drop in an much more enormous bucket and proportionally, not very significant. That is less than the price of one of the new joint strike fighters I suspect.

Stating $45million out of context helps no one. I'm sure there are much large potential savings in the defense budget, so why waste our limited time and attention on something so small, proportionally speaking.

Re: Perspective helps when talking about large num

[AHuxley]

Re "I'm sure there are much large potential savings in the defense budget, so why waste our limited time and attention on something so small, proportionally speaking."
The US seems fixated on moving data from satellite to satellite avoiding parts of the world and having to add extensive encryption to its own bespoke satellites. Data flow was the key from Australia, Japan, UK, Slivermine South Africa and other interesting locations.
The NSA and GCHQ seemed to distrust all other methods and hoped to stay ahead of the game buying ever more for the flow of gov/mil data.
The private sector soon learned of this need and set prices to match.
Why the interest? It shows the mind set of the US and UK going back decades vs a Russia or China who could only try to secure their networks or use http://cryptome.org/eyeball/ss...
The High Frontier Broadcast: 02/05/2005 http://www.abc.net.au/4corners...
has a transcript http://www.abc.net.au/4corners... thats suggests some of the US gov spending on communications in the private sector.

Re:Government wasting money. Whaaa...?

[vandamme]

They would if DISA cleaned up its act.