Report: Navy has billions in surplus

[308Mike]

Linkarooni

Report: Navy has billions in surplus

By Matt Kelley - USA TODAY
Posted : Friday Dec 19, 2008 7:15:56 EST

WASHINGTON — The Navy keeps an average of $7.5 billion worth of spare parts and other goods it doesn’t need every year because of poor planning and management, congressional investigators say in a report to be released today.

The Government Accountability Office report says the Navy hasn’t heeded repeated warnings since 2001 about longstanding problems with the military’s inventory management. The report from the GAO, Congress’ non-partisan investigative agency, says the Navy’s failure to keep track of changing requirements and a lack of communication among the proper officials led to surpluses of spare parts ranging from submarine sonar sets to engine fan blades for fighter jets.

More of this story..............

[Rich]

Which if the Navy follows the inspector's recommendations without question, will result in a helicopter not being able to perform it's mission because the part the crewchief ordered was replaced by a backorder form, all neatly and correctly filled out.

Just in time management, contributing to the demise of American infrastructure since Harvard Business School decided it was a good management practice. </sarcasm>

[308Mike]

[sarcasm]And you KNOW companies making things on government contract NEVER go out of business after filling the initial order, spares are always readily available when needed even while on deployment and/or during times of war or labor strife (UPS never goes on strike).[/sarcasm]

And don't forget, the cost of materials just NEVER goes up, and since it's always going down, we should wait to order additional parts until we REALLY need them, especially since the cost of transportation never changes.

Bean counting ASSHATS.

[Jered]

Bean counting ASSHATS.

Yeah pretty much.

[randy]

The Navy continues to store 19 copies of an electronics module for weapons systems purchased 20 years ago,

Yeah, and we all know that the military never keeps stuff around that long![/sarcasm]
(except for the B-52, A-10, F-15, F-16,EA-6, AV-8, AH-1...)

And of course, the bean counters are calculating the "surplus" based on peacetime usage rates (and, compared to a major war with say, Russia or the PRC, large parts of the Navy are at peacetime usage rates as far as material). Those surpluses are likely to disappear very quickly during any kind of major conventional combat operations, not only through increased OPTEMPO but due to combat losses, including the possibility of some those spares being lost due to attacks on supply ships and shore facilities.

[308Mike]

But what's scary is the incoming administration has NO military experience, neither of the top two asshats has ANY military experience, so hopefully they'll listen to those doing the job.

[Vonz90]

But what's scary is the incoming administration has NO military experience, neither of the top two asshats has ANY military experience, so hopefully they'll listen to those doing the job.

Excuse me while I hold my breath waiting for that to happen.