The 1.3 million-square-foot Susquehanna Distribution Center in Pennsylvania is one of several dozen run by the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency that have undergone a series of mock financial audits in preparation for the agency’s first-ever attempt to pass an independent scrub of its books. Credit: John Shinkle
Fifty-four years ago, the brand-new Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara thought he could bring Pentagon spending on everyday items under control by applying efficiencies he had used to help turn around Ford Motor Co.
Instead, he created a monster. McNamara’s creation, known as the Defense Logistics Agency, has grown into a global, $44 billion operation that, were it a private enterprise, would rank in the Fortune 50. Its 25,000 employees process roughly 100,000 orders a day for everything from poultry to pharmaceuticals, precious metals to aircraft parts. In terms of Pentagon contracts, it is nearly as large as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest contractors, combined.
Air Force Lt. Gen. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
I highly recommend watching the interview with Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkenson in the video, The Empire is sinking. Wilkenson was a military adviser to Collen Powell in the G.W. Bush Administration. Illustrates American power used to plunder.
The audit will determine if the columns agree. Good. But there are entire trillion dollar realms that do not pass the sniff test.
‘Spend a trillion here and a trillion there and sooner or later you are talking big money.’
Senator Everett Dirksen said this in 1964 with the word Billion*. Many forget that a trillion is a thousand times a billion and we expect to spend a trillion more on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or twelve grand for every double earner family in America. It has been in development for the duration twice as long as WWII, costs $67,000 an hour to fly, and does that at a rate 300 mph slower than a Phantom F4, vintage 1960. It has an expected service life of 50 years. Hello? It cannot beat its predecessor in a dogfight. It is a single seat (no training flights kids) and a single engine combat plane. Oh, don’t get me going. $400 billion spent already and a trillion to go on this spreadsheet flying swiss army knife that cannot show up to combat. 2,500 of these things with parts coming from 45 states. There is the hint about this flying fece.
And don’t get me going on the USS Zumwalt, with its tumbehome bow; a destroyer with two guns and a copter deck that costs as much as half of Portland Maine. I just hope it does not experience seas as rough as I have, or has it bow full of helium.
Is it an surprise that the Secy of Defense has no military experience….. other than procurement?
We have leaders that are high on spreadsheet; that and blame. We need a new skillset.
*that inflation rate is equivalent to 2000% per year, for each of those 50 years.