“THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT (POGO) “The Bunker” – By Mark Thompson)"
“The GAO’s latest 259-page opus https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106059.pdf says that between 2020 and 2022, the number of major weapons the Pentagon was buying dropped from 84 to 75, an 11% reduction.
Nonetheless, that smaller number of programs’ total cost ticked up by 1%, and took 7% longer to deliver. Programs Are Not Consistently Implementing Practices That Can Help Accelerate Acquisitions”
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“THE PENTAGON’S LATEST REPORT CARD
Student plainly needs extra help
The Bunker just might as well hang up his helmet and call it a day. The Government Accountability Office’s 21st annual report (PDF) on Pentagon procurement reads like The Bunker’s Greatest Hits, echoing the lethargic inagility and bad decisions that have plagued U.S. defense procurement for decades. Sure, the GAO isn’t always right. But The Bunker relied on the General Accounting Office’s work for decades before it renamed itself in 2004 due to its expanding mission. “Moving beyond financial audits,
GAO began conducting performance audits — examining how government programs were performing and whether they were meeting their objectives,” the agency says.
You can bet your bottom taxpayer dollar that the Defense Department wishes the GAO had stuck to its historical bean-counting, and didn’t worry its little green-eyeshaded head about what those beans were buying. Bottom line: Its often dire Generally Accurate Observations are routinely better than the Pentagon’s.
The GAO’s latest 259-page opus says that between 2020 and 2022, the number of major weapons the Pentagon was buying dropped from 84 to 75, an 11% reduction. Nonetheless, that smaller number of programs’ total cost ticked up by 1%, and took 7% longer to deliver. Such numbers, compounded annually, mean the Pentagon is spending more to get less, later.
The study, issued June 8, says the costs of 35 major weapons programs surged by $37 billion (4%) (PDF) over the past year, after adjusting for inflation. “Rising modernization costs, production inefficiencies, and supply chain challenges drove the majority of costs,” the report said.
“Over half of the 26 major defense acquisition programs GAO assessed that had yet to deliver operational capability reported new delays,” it added. “Driving factors included supplier disruptions, software development delays, and quality control deficiencies.”
It’s worth pointing out that neither China nor Russia has its own GAO that regularly publicly publishes such warts-and-all reports on their military efforts. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” Louis Brandeis wrote in 1913, three years before joining the Supreme Court. He was speaking of the power of disclosure “in the struggle against the Money Trust,” but such klieg lights are just as critical when it comes to U.S. national security.
The Bunker has never been able to understand the national security state’s fevered belief that weapons designed without such public and independent scrutiny are going to take the U.S. military to the cleaners. For you kiddos, the dictionary definition of being “taken to the cleaners” means “to deprive (someone) of a large amount of money.” Plainly the U.S. has the world’s cleanest taxpayers.”
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