Well it is a problem and can be corrected... BUT ... I am struck by the "pot calling the kettle black"... We should think that Congress is the paragon of fiscal responsibility? Laughable!
18 mill in sotrage, well i could sure use some more fucin tools, send some of that cash to the fleets engineering depts. sure would make my life easier.
The Navy already has been workong on cutting costs where parts are concerned. In the Naval Aviation feild, we have what's called AirSpeed. It's a combination of different methodologies and practices to reduce repair costs. Some of the methods used are Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and Buffer Management. There's more that that involved but I can't think of them at the moment. In the commands I have been in that are actively persuing AirSpeed, we have reduced repair turn around time, supply cost, and supply inventory. If the surface and sub-surface forces take the concept of AirSpeed on-board like the aviation feild is, we will save billions.
I can see why they did what they did, they bought spares before the stuff went obsolete: example- 13,000+ spare turbine blades for the F-18, who knew that model F404 would be obsolete so soon and they can't very well take em back to the manufacturer for a refund.
Example2- 20 year old sonar sets: obsolete TOP SECRET equipment. Wadda ya gonna do, throw them on Ebay or destroy them ??
Perhaps the bean counters would be happier if parts are order when needed, like a cracked turbine blade... wait 6 months for a replacement and sit on a down A/C for the same period ??
Canada and Australia still use the FA-18 Hornet. The parts should be cross referenced to our allies and immediately either sold or given to them in lieu of monetary or other aid of the ssme value. Certainly this is a common problem. I've been assigned guard duty on some of the massive depots in Germany, and I was amazed at what appeared to be a lot of WWII era stuff in pile after pile under the sheds. Could it be used in war? Sure, but should it be turned over and replaced - Yup!
If any of you remember what they do at the end of the fical year. If there's money left over. They go out and spend it on anything so that they will not get a cut in funds the next fical year.. Go figure.
Seen the waste myself, it is appalling, but as already stated, this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
When I was serving, it made me wonder about some things. For one, we, like most commands, had trouble with the P-250 pump, we rigged ours to use a larger propane bottle etc, rather than the little cartridges. While conducting a fire drill, we had to enter the SK's storeroom and whoa and behold, a brand new P-250 just sitting there. Had we known that we could have put it in service. Not too much later the P-250 was phased out for the P-100.
Perhaps such items should be shown as stocked and onboard a ship so those who work with the equipment have a better understanding. Here we were ording new parts to fix pumps that were consistently being repaired, whereas, had we KNOWN there was a brand new pump sitting unused on the ship, we could have put that in service and pirated parts to have two pumps in use.
Another thing that has truly baffled me is stuff that gets thrown out when a ship decoms. When we were decomming, the parts and tools that were not claimed by another command ended up getting tossed in the dumpster. To the Navy it was trash, yet as a sailor you couldn't take that "trash" for personal use. Yet, no faster than we tossed something, shipyard employees were dumpster diving and yet it was OK, for them to do so.
There is (or was 16 months ago) a warehouse at the 32nd St. Naval Station here in San Diego with floor-to-ceiling racks filled with nothing but untouched, unopened high-end desktop computers - paid for, delivered, but excess to needs - thousands of them...and no one was able to dispose of them or even get Command approval to determine if someone else needed them...every officer in the chain of command was afraid of rocking the boat, all this while Sailors and Marines were having to spend $s they could ill-afford putting their household goods in storage before deployment because local bases didn't have facilities available.
Y'all should have been there when we were closing down Charleston Naval Base and the Shipyard, and seen what went into the "scrapyard" side of DRMO. That was in the mid 90s and I'm sure you all know the waste has been going on since LONG before then or now. Why are we just now becoming shocked and outraged??
The question I have is what is going to be done about it.
Unless the military controls manufactoring and transportation, the problem of excess material will continue. I fought the system while Weps in the CG, which uses the Navy for weapons systems, and I spent two years in the shipping business trying to manage just twenty-two ships.
I conducted inventories aboard merchant ships to determine what exactly was there. No one knew. Some ships had up to ten years supply of some parts, and carried many part for equipment no longer installed. Like military ships, merchant mariners are pack rats and never throw things away.
Then there are Chief Engineers and Masters that requistion to their perference which creates waste after crew changes. I had ships with closets full of different brand name items that one crew liked to use, but the other crew disliked.
In the CG, we by-passed buying "approved" tools and used creative methods to buy Sears Craftmens tools. The gov't tools were terrible. Sears offered free replacement, while we had to keep buying broken gov't tools.
Simply, there are too many hands in the pot. The DOD procurement system is too centralized and too de-centralized. One can write a book on how best to do it. The flaws with the system are politics, operations, logistics, financing, and too many chiefs with not enough indians.
The up-or-out officer promotion system makes continuity within DOD's procurement management an HR nightmare. Everyone wants someone who knows what they are doing to work on the procurement side of the business, but no one in uniform wants the job. Its more a job for retirees or reservists.
The Air Force is just as bad. Keesler AFB in Biloxi has a huge excess property warehouse.
Of course, we all know it's not just the Navy or even just DOD. The whole federal government works this way because it's simply too large to manage. Government wide, there must be billions of items lying around somewhere unaccounted for and unused and more coming in every day.
Classic examples can be found after any disaster as supplies begin to pour in. Usually, it's mounds of stuff which no one needs, nobody knew was coming and nobody knows what to do with it or where to put it. It just piles up in different places. Conversely, the things which ARE needed either don't arrive in time, or nobody knows where they are. The waste is mindboggling.
I often wonder what happens to those piles of un-issued bottles of water, but I'm betting they're warehoused somewhere, by somebody, and when the next disaster strikes, they'll sit right there while new stuff is bought.
I don't know what the solution is. I doubt anyone does. Obama is promising to get DOD's procurement fixed, and I hope he does, but he needs to expand his vision to the whole federal government.
Originally posted by stillkit: Of course, we all know it's not just the Navy or even just DOD. The whole federal government works this way because it's simply too large to manage. Government wide, there must be billions of items lying around somewhere unaccounted for and unused and more coming in every day.
Classic examples can be found after any disaster as supplies begin to pour in. Usually, it's mounds of stuff which no one needs, nobody knew was coming and nobody knows what to do with it or where to put it. It just piles up in different places. Conversely, the things which ARE needed either don't arrive in time, or nobody knows where they are. The waste is mindboggling.
I often wonder what happens to those piles of un-issued bottles of water, but I'm betting they're warehoused somewhere, by somebody, and when the next disaster strikes, they'll sit right there while new stuff is bought.
I don't know what the solution is. I doubt anyone does. Obama is promising to get DOD's procurement fixed, and I hope he does, but he needs to expand his vision to the whole federal government.
And congress (his own back yard) can begin with ending 'earmarks'!
Well, once again the Navy, along with the rest of DoD proffers example after example of its reluctance and outright refusal to encorporate sound Systems Engineering principles!
Pathetic is the word that comes to mind. And to the fella who mentioned Air Speed?!?!? Puleez, spare us the Lean Six Sigma drivel as that "effort" is, actually, a bigger waste than the costs associated with this article on obselescence and supply waste!
Until OSD gets real serious and actually holds the services accountable for getting onboard with sound Systems Engineering and Architecting methodologies and practices we will continue to open our newspapers - electronic or hard copy - and read of these abuses!
Well it is a problem and can be corrected... BUT ... I am struck by the "pot calling the kettle black"... We should think that Congress is the paragon of fiscal responsibility? Laughable!
So, proffer an example of how this all can be corrected? That is one HUGE problem and, believe me when I tell you all that the problem starts back before (I repeat BEFORE) Milestone A! There are some efforts underway to produce a Systems Engineering "super vee model" for the Pre MS A time frame...back into the S&T phase but it'll be some time before that's all put together, vetted, and added to the DoD 5000.2 Acquisiton model. AND, then to get the service PMs to buy into it...yeah, right!!!@ I'll be pushing daises long before that happens.
Prediction for 2009 thorough 2020: you'll read about these fiascos of mismanagement, nonmanagement, outright fraud, waste and abuse until way past 2020.
Way back in the '60's, I got a chance to stroll through S.P.C.C. Mechanicsburg, Pa. There were parts in there for repairing ships that were no longer in service. As a radioman I was interested in equipment related to my field. I asked if I could buy some of it (for conversion to Ham Radio) and was told no. My father-in-law, at the time owned a machine shop and produced ships parts. His brother produced miniature parts. One day the Navy put up for bid a contract on plastic covers for the barrels of 50 cal. machine guns. He built a plastic injection molding machine, eventually produced them for 1.5 cents ea. He sold them to the Navy for .55 cents ea. Needless to say he made a lot of money on this. Back then I don't remember one ship with a .50 cal. Anyway, I am reading all of this traffic and one thing stands out, "nothing has changed".
