The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit

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.

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?”

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