I’m deployed to Kuwait right now. Most of my time is spent sitting around, or doing stuff to look busy. This is because a whole battalion (about 500 soldiers) has been assigned to do work that could be done by a company (about 125).
When you consider that the vehicles we’re using cost about $1 million, not counting fuel, maintenance, etc, and that it costs an average of $390,000 to keep a soldier in theatre for a year, having unnecessary troops on the ground gets expensive fast. By the way, that $390,000 is a fairly low estimate. Some have gone as high as $775,000/soldier/year. http://www.infiniteunknown.net…
The vehicles have already been paid for, so we won’t consider those costs for now. But those extra 375 or so soldiers cost about $146,250,000 for the year, using the conservative estimate of $390,000 apiece. The battalion commander is desperately seeking some new mission for 3/4 of his unit, because the Army sent us here without considering whether we would even contribute anything of value to the war effort.
This is just a small portion of the war. Without even considering whether the war is worthwhile, sending unneeded troops so a few officers can get their combat patch, or a few contractors in a powerful Congressman’s district can make an extra buck, pours a lot of money down the drain. Increasing military expenditures when the DoD is engaging in such profligate waste is an outrage. Congress and the President need to focus on making sure what the DoD has is spent effectively and efficiently before giving out more.
chrismatth says
Thank you for putting yourself in harms way to protect us.
Thank you for putting up with government bureaucracy bullshit to protect us.
Thank you for confirming (for me, at least) that wanting to reign in military spending isn’t a slap in the face of the men and women serving overseas.
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p>Thank you for your service to our country, and thank you for the truth.
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p>Thank you.
demolisher says
I’m not sure I see where the $390K per soldier comes from – and in what way it is different from the costs of keeping the soldier here in the US (or on some other base). I’m also not sure how having no effective mission in Kuwait is too different from having no effective mission while on an army base someplace, awaiting a conflict. (Having no mission, ironically, is what we would hope for.)
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p>Also, is 390K really the cost of a soldier, or is it the cost of moving and deploying material – e.g. airplanes – which are very expensive but do not necessarily go hand in hand with all soldiers? I guess I’m just asking where the 390K comes from. I could believe it, if there is one thing our government can do it is spend, but I can’t easily add up the MREs, combat pay, and tent and come up with 390K thats all.
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kirth says
Maybe more:
howland-lew-natick says
That our political leaders so misuse our military so often reflects on them, not our service members. The snakes we elected could stop the boondoggle at any time but it would not please their corporate masters. Yet we treat these politicians as wise solons of our age. We civilians are the fools of history.
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p>Civilians have no concept of what war is. The incredible waste of people and treasure is well beyond them. The scrambling of the career O’s to improve their OERs to the detriment of anyone around them. I’ve seen it, too, in other wars. Some things don’t change.
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p>Please do be careful. Over there and here in the USA. The truths you say makes enemies of powerful people that own you. Civilians have little freedoms now, military people less.
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p>“There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.” — General Ulysses S. Grant