Originally Posted by
Jesse
In my 20 years, the last thing the military ever took into consideration was stewardship of tax-payer dollars. That's not to say they didn't care about the costs; they didn't want to go over their yearly budgets, but when it came to whether or not something made sense or not, there was never a thought about actually saving the money and not spending it.
We in the Reserves are very concerned about becoming the "low-hanging fruit" in any round of budget cuts. Thus, we're hard over on efficiencies and never want to be seen as money-wasters (which we aren't - we provide incredible bang for the buck). That said, our direction is to fly the missions we're tasked. If it works out that we fall short of our flight-hour budgets, report the truth. If someone higher reduces our funding next year, the combatant commanders will ensure that we get our plus-ups if we need them.