Nothing is sadder than a chairborne ranger disrespecting the flag he sat under.

Would coward be too strong a word?

Perhaps you should move to another country if you don't like it, that was your suggestion to me, just a while back you were telling us how great everything was and how the system was the best in the world.

Confusing.

Perhaps we might consider the possibility of a broad systemic failure rather than the failure of individuals. You can put the best managers in the world into a sorry system and you will get sorry results.

 

I used to agree with this 100%...until I became the money guy for my squadron.

The laws that govern military spending are ridiculous. For recurring items, like office supplies, gear, and uniform items, you are allowed, by law, no more than three months of purchase in advance. And moving money between the various categories of purchases (uniform items, supplies, TDY/TAD, etc) is not a simple, straight-forward process. Often, it's easier to spend in one category than another. And EOY purchases have to meet certain criteria that other spending doesn't. That's why you saw 'stupid' purchases at the EOY spending spree.

You can't buy more than $3K worth of stuff from one vendor or same item with the GPC without specific approval and never more than $25K. If it's over $25K, it has to go through the contracting & bid process.

The challenge is headquarters' hoarding. They're told every year that they're not getting anymore money so they only divvy out a portion of that money to their subordinate units...and tell them that's all they're getting. This happens at every level from top to bottom. So the units have to build a budget based on this amount. Every quarter, the units have to justify what they've spent and beg for more. They may get a little more, but not much. It usually comes from other units who didn't spend as much as they thought rather than from HQ reserves. For the last quarter, they rack and stack their unfunded requests or wish lists.

Normally, only units with a documented and approved unfunded list get any money to spend and only for those specific items. Occasionally, these items are dictated "top down" too...like plasma screens. But as September closes in, the HQs do this same process and anything they don't spend gets sent down to subordinate units. This cascades from HQ to HQ and eventually to individual units.

Worse, this whole process is managed by a finance officer who knows nothing about ops and units often lose out in the rack & stack process.

I was fortunate to be in a relatively small group with only four squadrons and the group HQ to deal with. I was able to educate our finance officer, find creative ways to justify funding from other sources, and was able to justify things other units couldn't.

At the end of the year, I was eventually given five times the amount other units were because I could spend it. We bought junk we would've bought if money was no object, and we justified stuff that other units wouldn't even attempt to justify. It wasn't necessarily wasteful spending, but it wasn't smart spending and it was done largely $3K at a time.

Like I told them, we could've spent this money far better and more intelligently had we been given this budget at the beginning of the year rather than lump sum with 20 days to spend it.

...but therein lies the problem. It's not necessarily wasteful, it's poor management of the existing budget...at every level. And it's institutionalized by the way the money is given to the military. The "use it or lose it" mantra is more indicative of mismanagement than any perceived surplus or waste.

Yes, there is waste. I'm just trying to shed some light on some of those perceived wastes that aren't really due to waste, but because the system is set up poorly.

 

Accounting has rules based on reality, once you move away from established practices and into the world of fantasy, accounting loses meaning.

Budgets based on fantasy cease to have meaning and lack real measurement of performance with regard to cost.

 

It wasn't towards you.

I honestly think the AF just attracts more of a certain kind of D-Bag leader that the other branches don't. It might be due to the percieved (and sometimes true) "cushy lifestyle". I've just seen way too many instances of "leaders" putting themselves above the mission and the men/women that serve under them. It would take me another two pages to list them all to be honest.

In any case the point I was originally trying to make was that suspiscion of the military and congress is well warranted, as both are to varying degrees detached from the consiquences of thier descisions or lack thereof.

I don't despise the flag, I'm just wary of those who wrap thier self serving descisions in it.

 

And yet VERY RARELY, IF EVER, when someone posts about a retirement, or a passing, or a change of command, etc.....most often they are heralded as a "great American", a true leader, one-of-a-kind, etc...., so there must be a cadre of the GOOD leaders out there somewhere; but if these message boards are to be believed - there isn't an active duty officer out there worth a grain of salt.

I believe that these message boards, for a large part, attract types that certainly like to complain and voice thier complaints for others to hear. As with the piloting jobs/issues, and the complaints heard so often, the present and past military members like to complain about the experiences and it looks to others like there is nothing good about the military (or the airline industry) and we know even with the problems of both - there ARE goods and others in everything.

 

Since man has yet to build the perfect organization, it is the duty of every citizen and military member to provide well-founded, constructive thoughts derived from critical thinking.

There will never be a shortage of whiners, but I hope we never run out of men like Billy Mitchell.

 

Last edited by UnderOveur; Yesterday at 09:02 AM. Reason: Veterans above all others are entitled to their opinion, however inappropriate.

I respectfully disagree that non-vets have lesser rights to opinions.

 

True statement and I agree with you, but beware for the flak that will sure come your way. As you know some folks, veterans included, don't take to kindly to "outsiders" pontificating about subjects they have no first hand experience in. It doesn't mean you not entitled to your opinion, just be prepared to walk into a cigar party wearing a gasoline suit.

 

 

Everyone is always entitled to their own opinion, they are never entitled to their own set of facts.

Bring on the facts.

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Heinlein