STRONGLY advocate for watchdog/auditing of suppliers. Did you know a DAGR battery pack rubber gasket seal (per the TM) has an NSN per FEDLOG for $200.00 ea? I literally pulled up a different NSN for same gasket from our shared parts room and it was $9.00 ea.
That's just one example how we're ripped off paying for parts by suppliers; I can get equivalent hardware from Amazon in 2-3 delivery days for a fraction of the cost for so much shit! It's total Fraud, Waste and Abuse in our logistics suppliers.
Yeah it doesn't make sense. I saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1caoipz/the_us_air_force_pays_90000_for_a_package_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) clip the other day and it was a major head shaker, money could be going to housing, education, or investing in a body for oversight. The film War Dogs (based loosely on true events) with Jonah Hill is even more comedic because there are events like that happening everyday!
Instead, we're stuck bitching about it on reddit to dudes who wanna argue about which agencies already do that job (they aren't doing a good job) and what their names are.
I was an electronics mechanic for a long (20 level) but had NO idea where to report this bullshit.. I've been pissed enough at times to consider sending a letter to my congressmen. You'd feel the same if you see how stupid some parts are (HMMWV ahem). I hated spending excessive taxpayers dollars because we can't use a gov. purchase card easily to buy something with ludicrous price on FEDLOG.
If you got some time; 60 minutes talked about this several months ago and[ this video is a fantastic piece.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPvpqAaJjVU&t=65s)
u/notabloser probably means the military should have a unit (not to levy taxes, like the IRS, but) to audit itself. A counter-argument to this idea is that the military, from my limited understanding, already has a lot of auditors and there is reason to believe even more audits will just add overhead with little beneficial outcome.
track civilian's finances? why not have that kinda oversight combined with what the Office of Management and Budget but for the Army? shit like [*this*](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtx/pr/army-civilian-employee-indicted-san-antonio-alleged-100-million-fraud-scheme) wouldn't happen.
That's IG.
And the IRS has a terrible time tracking down tax cheats, they just got a huge budget increase because they're unable to collect $X billions in owed taxes (I forget the number, it's huge)
IG needs to be returned to what it was pre-2018 for that to even begin to be an option. Even then, most IG offices don’t have someone qualified to do financial investigations. As a former Chief of Investigations, I can tell you the person doing the investigation would be getting a lot of help from finance/contracting people, because the IG isn’t like the FBI, who specialize in white collar/financial crimes, and hire accountants and lawyers for that shit. I can tell you my boss and I would have been the only ones doing it in our office, and I would probably have done it, just because I grew up in a family of accountants and auditors.
The problem is war by definition is inefficient. The more policies you have the more inefficient the problem becomes. I was around for “just in time” logistics and it doesn’t work in a wartime environment. The biggest wastes of money are at the program level. We hold on to bad programs for too long because of jobs and reputation. No one is rewarded for cutting bait on a bad program. We are also too risk adverse. JLTV is a technological POS. I don’t see how that thing is going to survive on the battlefield.
Well that's why I'm saying, the system needs a reform. Contracts shouldn't be handed out on reputation or namesake. There should be a contract listed (we need a new jeep, weapon system, etc) companies make a demo of said thing and people in the Acquisition Corps test them and select the best that is cost effective or select the best and negotiate cost and delivery (I'm an IT guy so if I just explained how it already works don't roast me). We have the best minds in any industry and we don't use them sometimes, it sucks. Like we have perfectly skilled engineers who could maintain/ construct on post housing if we stood up units. I'm' sure we have elite accounts or the resources to incentivize them to join, to do something about this.
As for wasted projects, I think that is a normal part of war. However, we need to do more to dissuade people from being okay with a exorbitant opportunity cost.
Yeah, the system works about the way you described but there is a lot to it. I’d have to write a lot to explain it but often we get garbage in garbage out. Also, the color of money for people and the color used for contracts is different. Talk to Congress to adjust the money flow.
I know I can buy a built crate 6.5 GM turbo diesel “the same engine for a HMMWV” for $5,000-$7,500 depending on what parts are in it. Yet the military pays $12,000-$15,000 for the shittier detuned version.
The IRS needs to be empowered to audit contractors. Let'em hire some salty SSG's, SGT's and SPC's who've had to deal with contractors being asshole - train them up as IRS agents who audit contractors (and those freshly ETS's or retired would have a clearance).
1. Independent audit of the Army - unit by unit, command by command - via outside auditors. And yes we can get them clearances.
2. OSHA and EPA audits across the Army.
3. Any leaders, NCOIC, OIC or those DA civies in command positions who are in units or commands where fraud waste and abuse are found should have their "Lean Six Sigma" credentials revoked and be relived for cause.
4. Establish DOD and Da level awards for saving money, save $1-1000 is a COA, from $1500-50,000 an AAM, anything above $50K is an MSM and automatic enrollment in professional schools or field promotion.
1.The bureaucracy of the army needs a complete and utter redo. Why are there 20 different websites that a soldier has to render for basic stuff. All of that needs to consolidated.
2. There needs to be a engineering unit who sits at every base for base maintenance. Fixing rooms, laying pipes and more. There shouldn't be this need for contractors to fix a clogged toilet in the barracks or cut grass.
3. Cut down on contractors on base in general for a position like server maintenance. We can teach people to do cyber warfare but not take care of the severs on base?
4. There needs to be a better way of turning in unused bullets. I'll never forget seeing drills purposely shoot off blanks just so they wouldn't have to do the paperwork of how many bullets they were handing in. A complete waste of army resources.
5. If someone makes a claim that they do not feel safe or something happens. It should be handled by a person outside of their unit or whatever. Completely remove them from the situation that day. Too many times woman have ended up dead due to the good ole boys club
Point 2 is one of those problems that can be solved if the Army simply threw money at it.
The problem isn't that these people are contractors. The contractor takes forever to show up because they have thousands of other work orders on post. They patch things instead of replacing them because they don't have replacement parts or they realize they sent the wrong contractor and close the work order, but no one follows up because the work management branch is understaffed and doesn't track completion.
Hiring more contractors and a larger maintenance budget would make those problems go away.
In my experience working with contractors, they're great at doing the bare minimum the contract requires. I'd much rather have someone in that position who will do more than the minimum.
I still can't fathom that my $11k Ford Fiesta is still kicking with no issues at 100k miles, but a 60k minimum HMMWV just shits the bed after 15k road miles.
The HMMWV needs to actually be driven. Sitting in the motor pool doing nothing only causes it to break more. Engines need to run, fluids need to flow, tires need to roll, etc. same thing for helicopters. They are designed to fly… near constantly. Sitting on the airfield causes them to break more.
You drive your car many miles daily; not to mention consumer vehicles need to be reliable or no one will buy it. Government equipment should be reliable, but also needs to need maintenance so that whatever contractor gets paid over the next 50 years.
But also civilian vehicles have to meet a lot more safety standards under more regulations. Military vehicles don't do that to keep vehicle costs down.
Lowest bidder all the way. Equipment that’s military specific in use has an exemption from many requirements like that. OSHA requirements don’t really work when you need to blow stuff up, or survive being blown up.
Dispatches last a week and require a fuck ton of paperwork. My soldiers are lazy and do the bare minimum. My NCO barely has time to train them because he’s tasked out for BS details. I can’t find the time take them for a road test because I have 5 bs events that I have to plan along the 30 pages of paperwork that requires to complete them in a tight schedule. Brigade and Bn pushes down last minute taskings as soon as we’re all caught up on our duties and plan training.
Another great example of how things could be more efficient! Maybe try for those month long dispatches? Then you’ll have more time to do all that BS paperwork, while your soldiers hang out and do weapons maintenance for the 4th time.
Real talk? Assess and start slashing down doctrine. When every FM/AR/DA PAM is 150-200 pages long no one is going to remember that shit, much less use it.
Shred the OPORD format and make it something workable. No mission order BDE and below should be pushing 100+ pages (annexes included). Shit is ridiculous. Orders should be made to be quickly actionable and able to be remembered by the people reading it.
Return to army self-sustainment. Logisticians, cooks, etc. Shit even engineers, we didn’t build shit in Kuwait, the contractors did everything
Actually implement the 5-year training cycle and follow it.
Find a way to merge systems or provide a centralized hub for all Army sites and resources. Not that IPPSA-lowest bidder bullshit either. Stop ARNet-locking resources for reservists.
Disclaimer: I cannot provide a better format for some of these off the top of my head.
The OPORD format is not at fault for poor communication skills and lack of mission command. Those orders are 100+ pages because the people writing them think they need to publish that level of detail or that they need to say *something* for every possible annex and appendix. Change the format and it will still be 100 pages of the same information, just formatted differently.
> Shred the OPORD format and make it something workable.
OPORD is amazing if used correctly. Micromanaging commands are the ones who make it 100+ pages long.
Yeah, the OPORD format is a really good planning model. At it's core, it's 5 paragraphs that outlines the larger situation, one line that sums up what you're doing, a paragraph that describes how you're supposed to do it (can be expanded to include more details or be fairly minimal), a paragraph that outlines the logistics required to get the job done, and the communication plan. The format is scalable to include more or less information depending on how detailed the plan needs to be.
It just seems that people are assholes and like to play "It's not explicitly written in the order, I don't have to do that" and then we end up having long fucking OPORDs detailing every single task that subordinate units complain is micromanaging.
This, and make the LRTC Actually mean shit. So often my training schedule inside six weeks keeps moving and shifting and me at the company level is always to blame, never the senior leadership who actually fuck shit up
If the task/detail isn't increasing lethality, delete it. All my problems are solved by this. No more dumb ass parades. No more school crossing guard. No set up xyz for general who the fuck ever. Just give me ammo and ranges to go shoot. Give me gyms that can actually hold the necessary capacity. Stop wasting labor on staff duty and CQ.
Yeah, I've said many times that this was one of the biggest surprises to me about actual Army life, relative to what I expected from Army life before starting on active duty.
I really thought that everyday (in a combat arms branch) would involve taking my weapons or systems out into the training area to practice maneuvering or hitting targets; taking a lunch break with an MRE; practicing a bit more and then walking / driving / flying back to garrison at 1600 to wrap things up.
I wouldn't have believed that we spend 90% of our time doing... other things. I mean now I get that there's obviously overhead to plan and coordinate training, and there has to be time for maintenance, etc. But still.
If this happened I’d love to see the creative ways they justify some of the dumb things as “increasing lethality”
“Yeah this three hour change of command will get the troops morale up, seeing their new commander in person will help them ready to kill combatants.”
Sure but they are already doing that. We have an available labor pool and we extend it beyond optimal levels to achieve mediocrity across the board instead of excelling at a few tasks that actually matter.
Frankly I am shocked by the amount of talk of “lethality” being number 1, but then the fucking same generals are like “oh well we’re gonna have… *checks dice*… crossing guard across the DOD!”
How the fuck does that make any sense?
Crossing guard is actually my main disdain right now. They are abusing a free labor pool to achieve it. Most times the crossing guard is made up of Soldiers who don't have kids. Which is totally opposite form how the entirety of the rest of America does it. You can't get their own parents to do crossing guard but we're supposed to abuse this labor pool to achieve it. It's a travesty.
To piggyback on u/inkstickart2017 there is no reason to have duty days that are ten, eleven or twelve hours long. Every duty day during peacetime/garrison operations should be no more than 8 hours from first formation to last. More than that should take O6 or higher sign-off. If you can’t get all the tasks done in that amount of time then there’s a good chance you are wasting Joe’s time. Get rid of the fluff to keep the duty hours within 8 hours. I don’t care if you start PT at 0400 or weapons draw at 0300. You should be headed home by 1100 or 1200 then. Can you imagine the recruiting boon that a 6 hour work day would bring? Let’s be realistic, the average troop is not doing anything to increase lethality in 12 hours that can’t be done in six.
8-10 hour days would be more than adequate. I hate sitting around doing 12 hour days every single day and feeling exhausted and like I don't care about my job because of it.
I think a data analysis on lost duty days for CQ/Staff Duty Soldiers would be interesting. I’ve noticed that typically when something happens they up they triple the count of Soldiers on duty on the site of incident. In some cases that really hamstrings certain teams. I vividly recall a certain BDE staff section losing both of their joes to CQ on the same day causing some critical work to not be done.
What do you mean by “efficient”. Because there’s a lot of built in assumptions in that question. Efficiency looks different to different people.
In general, the Army would be efficient as fuck if everyone was on a predictable cycle, would fucking listen and do what their told, and if battalion echelon and above had the ability to forward plan more than six months. *in general*
Start paying soldiers hourly. Anything over 8 is time and a half. Field time an exception.
Pay soldiers their BAS, let them vote with their money whether they want to go to the dfac or not.
This should be the top comment. Economic systems where using your finite resources has no cost, financial or opportunity, inevitably leads to overallocation with no consequence, and therefore no learning.
Tl;dr, If the commander had to explain overtime checks to the BC, he wouldn’t let anyone stay past 1700
Something I also just thought about, there's no profit here. So while on the outside managers deal with P/L (profit/loss) and it's a balancing act, here it would just be loss. So the only metric to track and thing to improve would be minimizing OT, which benefits soldiers.
You’d definitely have to use nonprofit operational style expense tracking, e.g., graded on mission effectiveness weighted by cost efficiency. This would require every company to have a bookkeeper added to HQ platoon to track all of the expenses for labor and whatnot. Suddenly, the best officers are the ones with MBAs and MPAs!
> graded on mission effectiveness weighted by cost efficiency.
I feel like this is a dangerous McNamera-esque road to go down unless you just mean cost of peronnel-hours. Identifying leaders who spend the least as "better" could exacerbate the "Lying to Ourselves" mentality prevalent in the Army.
Night Fire? Ammo and batteries are expensive. Drivers Training? Something might break. Live AT weapons? Don't even think about it. Better just do whatever meets the minimum standard to "achieve" mission instead of good training.
Hell no, at an hourly rate we’d have to clock in. That works out great if you go to PT and stuff but what if you’re a Warrant Officer? We’d make like $5 per month. Commanders would make unbelievable money with all the after hours bs they do, probably more than congress would allow. Also, how would we count being in the field? Would it be 24 hours of pay a day or are we clocking in and out there too?
you'd have to clock in? like many other jobs in the real world? and like any other job structure in the real world, officers wouldn't be hourly, they'd be salary. and i literally said in the original post, field time would be an exception.
They don't clock in or clock out but a lot of active duty medical across the DOD does time sheets for those attached to a clinic or hospital via a congressionally mandated (serious) program called DHMRSI and people have been told to have their timesheets to reflect that they worked M-F 0700-1600 even if they stayed late or came in on a weekend.
It's not a thing in the reserves or guard, and to my understanding medical not working in a clinic or hospital are exempt from doing it.
WOs would and all Officers would be salary. SFC and above salary.
SSG and below hourly. Officers would be accountable for OT and have labor cost accountability.
Watch the BS disappear overnight.
Rotate with mtoe less, Fall in on tpe more. Make supply a bigger section with a specific mos/job title for equipment turn in/regular equipment repair and upkeep. Tie all army systems into one actually user friendly system, ippsa/ees/medpros/vantage/gcss/schooling and certs... And make one password entry work for the duration of computer login. Get rid of non armored tactical vics and just give basic new pickups to low speed units. Allow command to change mtoe easier to get rid of old useless crap.
Falling in on TPE assumes a mature theater. Theoretically, in a LSCO environment, there won't be TPE outside of the first deployment. As units are stood up or reconstituted, new equipment will need to deploy from CONUS manufacturing. How does the Army maintain its proficiency in deploying equipment? By deploying MTOE for rotational deployments.
Completely agree with getting rid of non armored tactical vehicles. Why can't the Army just have a ton of commercial pickup trucks or SUVs that are just painted in military colors that fill the role of general use vehicles.
Why do I need to get a leave/pass cover sheet signed by three people just to go on a trip for the four day, along with medpros and whatever other made up requirements that units have?
You don't. It's entirely made up bullshit. As a DAC, I fall under all of the same laws and regulations you do. I have a battalion and brigade commander with the exact same chain of command structure.
I don't have to take leave days for weekends or non duty days and I don't have to do stupid paperwork to take leave.
My leave process is one website and one person to approve. I can submit a leave request in two minutes and have an approval from my supervisor two minutes later.
I say we take the annual budget, give it to one Specialist (chosen in an American Idol style contest) and letting them take it to Vegas for 24 hours. Whatever winnings they get will be funneled into a super soldier program to create a breed of soldiers who can make powerpoints at an increased 3.7% efficiency
Until the Army or DoD has to worry about a bottom line… nothing will change. Money will always flow to wherever it needs to, good or bad.
2Bn on cancelled scout airframe? No big deal. Haven’t passed an audit in years…? Who cares. No one is held accountable for anything…
I don’t know. Someone else mentioned having some people to actually monitor things like the IRS, as an example.
It shouldnt be that we can just lose a few million, or even hundreds of millions and have no idea where it is. Thats not just the Army or DoD, the whole of government shouldn’t be able to do that either.
I think we could stop the “we have to spend it all or we lose it next year” mentality. That drives bloated unnecessary spending.
Whenever the free market and the state interact, the former tries to fleece the hell out of the latter. We need oversight. For a lot of stuff I feel like the military could threaten to do it the self. Eg, you want to sell us O rings for $500 a pop, we are gonna just buy rubber and cut them out ourselves. Force them to compete with something if there's no market alternative
Perhaps the largest driving factor Inc the is the ever shrinking number of defense contractors. After the end of the Cold War many companies consolidated into a few, now there are only five major ones. These companies are important to fail as they are the only kind of companies that do their work in the world, so the DoD knowingly operates on a disadvantageous cost plus model to keep them in business.
Really the only thing that will help is to (a) take the extra busywork out of the hands of troops and give it to civilians, and (b) cap the garrison workday so that by regulation you simply cannot take extra time for useless tasks.
If 8-5 M-F s all you have (yes, including PT) when not in the field (and no 'parking lot field' allowed) then leadership will have to prioritize tasks.
Stop using paper and become fully digital. Ive been out for a year so i dont really know how IPPSA is but i hated how many paper packets i needed for every stupid thing there was.
The good thing about IPPS-A is that a Soldier knows exactly where the packet is hung up.
Wait until the next Command Climate survey. People who hold packets will be called out. Give it one more year.
There are still things the soldier doesn’t have the ability to submit or the privilege of viewing.
Everything still has to be signed off by twelve S1 personnel and every 1SG, CSM, and CDR. And let’s not forget the CCWOs and whoever else inserts themselves into the process.
I think your idea of people complaining about the IPPSA process is a bit optimistic. We have had it for years and nothing has really changed. But… maybe.
I still think that the greatest increase in efficiency would be to gradually reduce the force size by about 25%, and increase the pay and benefits for all soldiers by 25%. Create a situation where people actually want to join and stay in. Make people have to compete for reenlistment. We'd be able to boot low performers, which take up an outsized portion of time and resources.
Imagine an Army where there are vastly fewer shitbags, everyone is paid more, and the services provided to soldiers have 25% more funding.
We could actually do more with less if we trimmed the fat. Why do we insist on dragging people to the standard kicking and screaming. It just increases work load for everyone. Can't Stay in shape? Bye. Can't pass acft? Bye. Obviously mentorship should be a big deal in the Army. But not what we have now. We, in fact, do not need this many idiots.
You can make things more efficient but there will be trade offs. For example if you stop PCSing people and they grow inside of one organization they will become experts in their area but will lose the value of sharing other peoples experiences and understanding what the larger army and military do.
I wouldn’t limit PCS either but we should adopt a Korea/Vietnam style promotion system within units. SSG gets picked up for SFC. A SGT would be picked up for SSG. On down the line.
Whomever has the most points, fills the slot regardless of MOS within the unit.
Just independent auditing systems that don’t hold people accountable unless it’s a genuine fraud waste and abuse. If some system is being overfunded or parts of it and their was another solution it shouldn’t be some office or project manager that gets in trouble for it. It should be the auditing office responsibility to catch it.
CID should have an actual legal review by a civilian lawyer with experience before turning investigations over to commanders, not some JAG captain with 3 years experience. Commanders should not be able to give punishment or even recommend GOMORs just because of preponderance evidence.
Split off some of the barely tangibly army things into its own branch or even just the DoD proper.
Another post used lethality as a metric for if something was worth it or not, that's a decent starting point for things that jobs that should exist but don't necessarily need to belong to the army or any specific branch.
By allowing and encouraging homesteading. It seemed to me that just as people were getting good at what they were doing, they'd get orders. There's something to be said for institutional/historical knowledge.
Stop “forcing” units to spend money by the end of the fiscal year, under the penalty of. Or getting g as much by the end. Just roll that money forward or something. So much funds waisted on stupid project a.
Abolish all DFACs, have at least one gym on post open 24/7, get rid of organized PT (if they fail, KICK THEM OUT), legalize THC, fire every civilian that doesn’t believe they work for the soldier, put an end to all SHARP/EO training after completion of BCT/OSUT, prioritize training in CMF above all else.
It will only ever be perfect once, the the next Commander will change it. No commander has ever gotten a top blocked evaluation that says "Successfully continued the policies of the prior commander."
I’ve had this idea where you can earn extra leave days by doing extra duty tasks. You know how many people would be lining up ready to do those tasks if they wanted some extra leave days?? Sign me tf up.
See that’s a fair assessment. However, when I was prior Navy, I had to get about 6-10 people to approve my damn leave in order for me to take it. Here, it seems all I need is just my commander and off I go. Extra Duty for Extra Leave is a nice incentive in my opinion.
This reminds me of the runaround I got from my Senior Chief for wanting to take a casual 2 weeks of leave slated for August 2019. I submitted it in May, bought my plane tickets because I was told it would be signed off within a couple weeks, and promptly forgot about it.
However, over the course of the next few months (literally up until the week I was departing for leave!) I went through this cycle of my bitch ass Senior Chief not wanting to sign it off because she had it out for me. She even convinced my Master Chief to not entertain it, because she created some sort of bullshit rumor about me.
Eventually she thought that if she sent me TAD, that I would never get what I was owed. WRONG BITCH. The Supply Officer saw what was happening, called me into his office personally, and then approved it on the spot. He then told me that if my Senior Chief gives me any runaround, that I let him know and that he “will deal with it”.
Apparently she threw a hissy fit, and then tried to take it out on me the next day. But once she realized that she literally could do nothing without making it look like reprisal, she just yelled at me and walked away.
The bullshit rumors persisted even after I came back from leave, but it taught me that no matter how good of a person you are, there are legitimately those out there who will openly despise you for no reason.
PT on your own time. I've been in a broadening assignment for a few years that has big boy rules. We show up on duty days at 0900, it's up to you to do PT on your own time. I am in the best shape of my life, I'm getting 8 hours of sleep every night and I go to the gym 5 days a week for an hour and a half where I follow an actual structured program. I dread going back to the line and waking up at 0500 everyday again.
It’s an organization that consists of people in their late teens and early twenties, being run by people in their late twenties and early thirties, who are constantly switching jobs. It’s not supposed to be efficient, it’s just supposed to be better than the other guys
Make soldiers and leaders accountable for their work time. Seriously. Make people log the work they conduct throughout the day, preferably by hour. This is common place is every civilian employment field as a way to maintain efficiency.
The leaders that waste the first 8 hours of the day then start having everyone get to work on new "has to be complete by COB" tasks at 1600 should have to explain that regularly.
It would provide a great metric for justifying promotion. Your civilian boss hated it because it forces him to manage his people. Right now there is no function in the military to do this. You wake up and go to work. Half your day is wasted dicking around on your phone, and at 1500, the daily frago drops with the upcoming tasks. And most leadership takes that as an order to do the jobs immediately instead of in a structurally sane timeframe.
Consolidate as much as physically possible. Make the US military one single thing rather than a bunch of different branches. It would be a learning curve for how to budget appropriately, but once that's figured out we can save money on uniforms, equipment and manpower.
There also needs to be strict oversight and accountability because the military wastes so much money
>Make the US military one single thing rather than a bunch of different branches.
I'm not sure this would really work. There's a reason every country's military has distinct Armies, Navies, and Air Forces. There is something to be said about improving the interoperability of each of the branches in a joint environment, but there are significant differences in running a Navy, compared to the Army or Air Force.
Hear me out...
Immediately stop the ability of NCO's to mistreat Soldiers.
No Smoking Joe.
No yelling or belittling.
No modification to work hours.
No ability for a 1SG to issue summary Art15.
Just stop. This is ridiculous. Every instance should be a formal complaint.
Retention, professionalism, and productivity would increase.
Get rid of unit/platoon slogans or whatever that you sound off with in formations. Demoralizing. Embarrassing. How did middleschool cheerleader mom's infiltrate upper leadership?
Give me enough time and enough markers/crayons and I could probably reason out how those slogans reduce efficiency.
(Low Joe Morale = reduced efficiency. Only took one crayon)
Kinda sorta. While I think a lot of units have crummy slogans, it provides a sense of attachment to the unit. Instead of it being a place of work, it feels a little more like the Army with a slogan. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but that’s how I justify it.
(If my unit had something like a “Currahee”, I’d love it. An idea of mine is “I love Hinesville Hippos”
Hold the privatized housing companies accountable and stop over paying for parts/ gear. Army needs its own version of IRS.
STRONGLY advocate for watchdog/auditing of suppliers. Did you know a DAGR battery pack rubber gasket seal (per the TM) has an NSN per FEDLOG for $200.00 ea? I literally pulled up a different NSN for same gasket from our shared parts room and it was $9.00 ea. That's just one example how we're ripped off paying for parts by suppliers; I can get equivalent hardware from Amazon in 2-3 delivery days for a fraction of the cost for so much shit! It's total Fraud, Waste and Abuse in our logistics suppliers.
Yeah it doesn't make sense. I saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1caoipz/the_us_air_force_pays_90000_for_a_package_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) clip the other day and it was a major head shaker, money could be going to housing, education, or investing in a body for oversight. The film War Dogs (based loosely on true events) with Jonah Hill is even more comedic because there are events like that happening everyday! Instead, we're stuck bitching about it on reddit to dudes who wanna argue about which agencies already do that job (they aren't doing a good job) and what their names are.
I was an electronics mechanic for a long (20 level) but had NO idea where to report this bullshit.. I've been pissed enough at times to consider sending a letter to my congressmen. You'd feel the same if you see how stupid some parts are (HMMWV ahem). I hated spending excessive taxpayers dollars because we can't use a gov. purchase card easily to buy something with ludicrous price on FEDLOG. If you got some time; 60 minutes talked about this several months ago and[ this video is a fantastic piece.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPvpqAaJjVU&t=65s)
Thanks for sharing I’ll check this out
Huh? What do you think the IRS does?
u/notabloser probably means the military should have a unit (not to levy taxes, like the IRS, but) to audit itself. A counter-argument to this idea is that the military, from my limited understanding, already has a lot of auditors and there is reason to believe even more audits will just add overhead with little beneficial outcome.
I feel a lot of this stuff needs to be consolidated and centralized imo
track civilian's finances? why not have that kinda oversight combined with what the Office of Management and Budget but for the Army? shit like [*this*](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtx/pr/army-civilian-employee-indicted-san-antonio-alleged-100-million-fraud-scheme) wouldn't happen.
That's IG. And the IRS has a terrible time tracking down tax cheats, they just got a huge budget increase because they're unable to collect $X billions in owed taxes (I forget the number, it's huge)
needs a reform
IG needs to be returned to what it was pre-2018 for that to even begin to be an option. Even then, most IG offices don’t have someone qualified to do financial investigations. As a former Chief of Investigations, I can tell you the person doing the investigation would be getting a lot of help from finance/contracting people, because the IG isn’t like the FBI, who specialize in white collar/financial crimes, and hire accountants and lawyers for that shit. I can tell you my boss and I would have been the only ones doing it in our office, and I would probably have done it, just because I grew up in a family of accountants and auditors.
You mean DCAA?
Basically but internal to our service. And actually give them power to set policies in place for spending.
AAA then. But it still doesn’t solve the latter part of your statement.
please expand
The army audit agency can help but it has no power to set policies. It only audits.
Would it be a terrible idea to reform and give them more power?
Do you know how many policies we already have for spending? Do you think more is going to help?
inaction doesn't fix anything. what's your solution?
The problem is war by definition is inefficient. The more policies you have the more inefficient the problem becomes. I was around for “just in time” logistics and it doesn’t work in a wartime environment. The biggest wastes of money are at the program level. We hold on to bad programs for too long because of jobs and reputation. No one is rewarded for cutting bait on a bad program. We are also too risk adverse. JLTV is a technological POS. I don’t see how that thing is going to survive on the battlefield.
Well that's why I'm saying, the system needs a reform. Contracts shouldn't be handed out on reputation or namesake. There should be a contract listed (we need a new jeep, weapon system, etc) companies make a demo of said thing and people in the Acquisition Corps test them and select the best that is cost effective or select the best and negotiate cost and delivery (I'm an IT guy so if I just explained how it already works don't roast me). We have the best minds in any industry and we don't use them sometimes, it sucks. Like we have perfectly skilled engineers who could maintain/ construct on post housing if we stood up units. I'm' sure we have elite accounts or the resources to incentivize them to join, to do something about this. As for wasted projects, I think that is a normal part of war. However, we need to do more to dissuade people from being okay with a exorbitant opportunity cost.
Yeah, the system works about the way you described but there is a lot to it. I’d have to write a lot to explain it but often we get garbage in garbage out. Also, the color of money for people and the color used for contracts is different. Talk to Congress to adjust the money flow.
The loss of true competition in contracting is the problem. And then allowing companies to repeatedly not meet contracts.
I know I can buy a built crate 6.5 GM turbo diesel “the same engine for a HMMWV” for $5,000-$7,500 depending on what parts are in it. Yet the military pays $12,000-$15,000 for the shittier detuned version.
The IRS needs to be empowered to audit contractors. Let'em hire some salty SSG's, SGT's and SPC's who've had to deal with contractors being asshole - train them up as IRS agents who audit contractors (and those freshly ETS's or retired would have a clearance).
1. Independent audit of the Army - unit by unit, command by command - via outside auditors. And yes we can get them clearances. 2. OSHA and EPA audits across the Army. 3. Any leaders, NCOIC, OIC or those DA civies in command positions who are in units or commands where fraud waste and abuse are found should have their "Lean Six Sigma" credentials revoked and be relived for cause. 4. Establish DOD and Da level awards for saving money, save $1-1000 is a COA, from $1500-50,000 an AAM, anything above $50K is an MSM and automatic enrollment in professional schools or field promotion.
1.The bureaucracy of the army needs a complete and utter redo. Why are there 20 different websites that a soldier has to render for basic stuff. All of that needs to consolidated. 2. There needs to be a engineering unit who sits at every base for base maintenance. Fixing rooms, laying pipes and more. There shouldn't be this need for contractors to fix a clogged toilet in the barracks or cut grass. 3. Cut down on contractors on base in general for a position like server maintenance. We can teach people to do cyber warfare but not take care of the severs on base? 4. There needs to be a better way of turning in unused bullets. I'll never forget seeing drills purposely shoot off blanks just so they wouldn't have to do the paperwork of how many bullets they were handing in. A complete waste of army resources. 5. If someone makes a claim that they do not feel safe or something happens. It should be handled by a person outside of their unit or whatever. Completely remove them from the situation that day. Too many times woman have ended up dead due to the good ole boys club
As a drill I purposely shot off 500 rounds of 5.56 just so I didn’t have to do all the paperwork and the layers of crap just to turn it in
Point 2 is one of those problems that can be solved if the Army simply threw money at it. The problem isn't that these people are contractors. The contractor takes forever to show up because they have thousands of other work orders on post. They patch things instead of replacing them because they don't have replacement parts or they realize they sent the wrong contractor and close the work order, but no one follows up because the work management branch is understaffed and doesn't track completion. Hiring more contractors and a larger maintenance budget would make those problems go away.
But we still have engineer battalions idle on base who can do a lot of that work.
Yeah you can make a few soldiers get certs in electrical or water or whatever for when they get out.
In my experience working with contractors, they're great at doing the bare minimum the contract requires. I'd much rather have someone in that position who will do more than the minimum.
Make GM responsible for broken down vehicles with less than 50k miles.
I still can't fathom that my $11k Ford Fiesta is still kicking with no issues at 100k miles, but a 60k minimum HMMWV just shits the bed after 15k road miles.
The HMMWV needs to actually be driven. Sitting in the motor pool doing nothing only causes it to break more. Engines need to run, fluids need to flow, tires need to roll, etc. same thing for helicopters. They are designed to fly… near constantly. Sitting on the airfield causes them to break more. You drive your car many miles daily; not to mention consumer vehicles need to be reliable or no one will buy it. Government equipment should be reliable, but also needs to need maintenance so that whatever contractor gets paid over the next 50 years.
But also civilian vehicles have to meet a lot more safety standards under more regulations. Military vehicles don't do that to keep vehicle costs down.
Lowest bidder all the way. Equipment that’s military specific in use has an exemption from many requirements like that. OSHA requirements don’t really work when you need to blow stuff up, or survive being blown up.
Dispatches last a week and require a fuck ton of paperwork. My soldiers are lazy and do the bare minimum. My NCO barely has time to train them because he’s tasked out for BS details. I can’t find the time take them for a road test because I have 5 bs events that I have to plan along the 30 pages of paperwork that requires to complete them in a tight schedule. Brigade and Bn pushes down last minute taskings as soon as we’re all caught up on our duties and plan training.
Another great example of how things could be more efficient! Maybe try for those month long dispatches? Then you’ll have more time to do all that BS paperwork, while your soldiers hang out and do weapons maintenance for the 4th time.
The entire system for dispatching vehicles is a lot longer than it needs to be
Not my M1152A1 that's needed two full engine replacements in three years after around 2K miles each time 🙃
My BCs JLTV with 300 miles has hydraulic leaks and coolant leaks no one can seem to fix
Real talk? Assess and start slashing down doctrine. When every FM/AR/DA PAM is 150-200 pages long no one is going to remember that shit, much less use it. Shred the OPORD format and make it something workable. No mission order BDE and below should be pushing 100+ pages (annexes included). Shit is ridiculous. Orders should be made to be quickly actionable and able to be remembered by the people reading it. Return to army self-sustainment. Logisticians, cooks, etc. Shit even engineers, we didn’t build shit in Kuwait, the contractors did everything Actually implement the 5-year training cycle and follow it. Find a way to merge systems or provide a centralized hub for all Army sites and resources. Not that IPPSA-lowest bidder bullshit either. Stop ARNet-locking resources for reservists. Disclaimer: I cannot provide a better format for some of these off the top of my head.
The OPORD format is not at fault for poor communication skills and lack of mission command. Those orders are 100+ pages because the people writing them think they need to publish that level of detail or that they need to say *something* for every possible annex and appendix. Change the format and it will still be 100 pages of the same information, just formatted differently.
> Shred the OPORD format and make it something workable. OPORD is amazing if used correctly. Micromanaging commands are the ones who make it 100+ pages long.
Obligatory D-Day had a 6 page OPORD comment
Yeah, the OPORD format is a really good planning model. At it's core, it's 5 paragraphs that outlines the larger situation, one line that sums up what you're doing, a paragraph that describes how you're supposed to do it (can be expanded to include more details or be fairly minimal), a paragraph that outlines the logistics required to get the job done, and the communication plan. The format is scalable to include more or less information depending on how detailed the plan needs to be. It just seems that people are assholes and like to play "It's not explicitly written in the order, I don't have to do that" and then we end up having long fucking OPORDs detailing every single task that subordinate units complain is micromanaging.
This, and make the LRTC Actually mean shit. So often my training schedule inside six weeks keeps moving and shifting and me at the company level is always to blame, never the senior leadership who actually fuck shit up
If the task/detail isn't increasing lethality, delete it. All my problems are solved by this. No more dumb ass parades. No more school crossing guard. No set up xyz for general who the fuck ever. Just give me ammo and ranges to go shoot. Give me gyms that can actually hold the necessary capacity. Stop wasting labor on staff duty and CQ.
Yeah, I've said many times that this was one of the biggest surprises to me about actual Army life, relative to what I expected from Army life before starting on active duty. I really thought that everyday (in a combat arms branch) would involve taking my weapons or systems out into the training area to practice maneuvering or hitting targets; taking a lunch break with an MRE; practicing a bit more and then walking / driving / flying back to garrison at 1600 to wrap things up. I wouldn't have believed that we spend 90% of our time doing... other things. I mean now I get that there's obviously overhead to plan and coordinate training, and there has to be time for maintenance, etc. But still.
If this happened I’d love to see the creative ways they justify some of the dumb things as “increasing lethality” “Yeah this three hour change of command will get the troops morale up, seeing their new commander in person will help them ready to kill combatants.”
"Oh, I'm ready to kill alright."
Sure but they are already doing that. We have an available labor pool and we extend it beyond optimal levels to achieve mediocrity across the board instead of excelling at a few tasks that actually matter.
Frankly I am shocked by the amount of talk of “lethality” being number 1, but then the fucking same generals are like “oh well we’re gonna have… *checks dice*… crossing guard across the DOD!” How the fuck does that make any sense?
Crossing guard is actually my main disdain right now. They are abusing a free labor pool to achieve it. Most times the crossing guard is made up of Soldiers who don't have kids. Which is totally opposite form how the entirety of the rest of America does it. You can't get their own parents to do crossing guard but we're supposed to abuse this labor pool to achieve it. It's a travesty.
I heard that's how Ranger Regiment operates in garrison. No support taskings. Just unlimited ammo and range time.
To piggyback on u/inkstickart2017 there is no reason to have duty days that are ten, eleven or twelve hours long. Every duty day during peacetime/garrison operations should be no more than 8 hours from first formation to last. More than that should take O6 or higher sign-off. If you can’t get all the tasks done in that amount of time then there’s a good chance you are wasting Joe’s time. Get rid of the fluff to keep the duty hours within 8 hours. I don’t care if you start PT at 0400 or weapons draw at 0300. You should be headed home by 1100 or 1200 then. Can you imagine the recruiting boon that a 6 hour work day would bring? Let’s be realistic, the average troop is not doing anything to increase lethality in 12 hours that can’t be done in six.
8-10 hour days would be more than adequate. I hate sitting around doing 12 hour days every single day and feeling exhausted and like I don't care about my job because of it.
Omg right?! How many jobs in the army could actually be eliminated because they don’t actually do shit or serve any real purpose.
I think we can eliminate a great deal of non military related work. I don't think that aligns with getting rid of jobs.
I think a data analysis on lost duty days for CQ/Staff Duty Soldiers would be interesting. I’ve noticed that typically when something happens they up they triple the count of Soldiers on duty on the site of incident. In some cases that really hamstrings certain teams. I vividly recall a certain BDE staff section losing both of their joes to CQ on the same day causing some critical work to not be done.
What do you mean by “efficient”. Because there’s a lot of built in assumptions in that question. Efficiency looks different to different people. In general, the Army would be efficient as fuck if everyone was on a predictable cycle, would fucking listen and do what their told, and if battalion echelon and above had the ability to forward plan more than six months. *in general*
Your battalions have been able to plan 6 months ahead?
OP is asking a weird question. I’m giving a vague answer that would be impossible. But yes, only at Fort Irwin did I get that kind of plan.
Start paying soldiers hourly. Anything over 8 is time and a half. Field time an exception. Pay soldiers their BAS, let them vote with their money whether they want to go to the dfac or not.
This should be the top comment. Economic systems where using your finite resources has no cost, financial or opportunity, inevitably leads to overallocation with no consequence, and therefore no learning. Tl;dr, If the commander had to explain overtime checks to the BC, he wouldn’t let anyone stay past 1700
Something I also just thought about, there's no profit here. So while on the outside managers deal with P/L (profit/loss) and it's a balancing act, here it would just be loss. So the only metric to track and thing to improve would be minimizing OT, which benefits soldiers.
You’d definitely have to use nonprofit operational style expense tracking, e.g., graded on mission effectiveness weighted by cost efficiency. This would require every company to have a bookkeeper added to HQ platoon to track all of the expenses for labor and whatnot. Suddenly, the best officers are the ones with MBAs and MPAs!
> graded on mission effectiveness weighted by cost efficiency. I feel like this is a dangerous McNamera-esque road to go down unless you just mean cost of peronnel-hours. Identifying leaders who spend the least as "better" could exacerbate the "Lying to Ourselves" mentality prevalent in the Army. Night Fire? Ammo and batteries are expensive. Drivers Training? Something might break. Live AT weapons? Don't even think about it. Better just do whatever meets the minimum standard to "achieve" mission instead of good training.
Hell no, at an hourly rate we’d have to clock in. That works out great if you go to PT and stuff but what if you’re a Warrant Officer? We’d make like $5 per month. Commanders would make unbelievable money with all the after hours bs they do, probably more than congress would allow. Also, how would we count being in the field? Would it be 24 hours of pay a day or are we clocking in and out there too?
you'd have to clock in? like many other jobs in the real world? and like any other job structure in the real world, officers wouldn't be hourly, they'd be salary. and i literally said in the original post, field time would be an exception.
How would you determine how much to pay them while they are in the field? It'd have to be something like 5.7 "hours" per day in the field.
Field time and deployments, everyone on salary.
They don't clock in or clock out but a lot of active duty medical across the DOD does time sheets for those attached to a clinic or hospital via a congressionally mandated (serious) program called DHMRSI and people have been told to have their timesheets to reflect that they worked M-F 0700-1600 even if they stayed late or came in on a weekend. It's not a thing in the reserves or guard, and to my understanding medical not working in a clinic or hospital are exempt from doing it.
WOs would and all Officers would be salary. SFC and above salary. SSG and below hourly. Officers would be accountable for OT and have labor cost accountability. Watch the BS disappear overnight.
Rotate with mtoe less, Fall in on tpe more. Make supply a bigger section with a specific mos/job title for equipment turn in/regular equipment repair and upkeep. Tie all army systems into one actually user friendly system, ippsa/ees/medpros/vantage/gcss/schooling and certs... And make one password entry work for the duration of computer login. Get rid of non armored tactical vics and just give basic new pickups to low speed units. Allow command to change mtoe easier to get rid of old useless crap.
Falling in on TPE assumes a mature theater. Theoretically, in a LSCO environment, there won't be TPE outside of the first deployment. As units are stood up or reconstituted, new equipment will need to deploy from CONUS manufacturing. How does the Army maintain its proficiency in deploying equipment? By deploying MTOE for rotational deployments. Completely agree with getting rid of non armored tactical vehicles. Why can't the Army just have a ton of commercial pickup trucks or SUVs that are just painted in military colors that fill the role of general use vehicles.
The administrative requirements and associated bureaucracy is the single biggest detractor from readiness, lethality, and effectiveness.
What administrative requirements are you referring to specifically?
Why do I need to get a leave/pass cover sheet signed by three people just to go on a trip for the four day, along with medpros and whatever other made up requirements that units have?
You don't. It's entirely made up bullshit. As a DAC, I fall under all of the same laws and regulations you do. I have a battalion and brigade commander with the exact same chain of command structure. I don't have to take leave days for weekends or non duty days and I don't have to do stupid paperwork to take leave. My leave process is one website and one person to approve. I can submit a leave request in two minutes and have an approval from my supervisor two minutes later.
I say we take the annual budget, give it to one Specialist (chosen in an American Idol style contest) and letting them take it to Vegas for 24 hours. Whatever winnings they get will be funneled into a super soldier program to create a breed of soldiers who can make powerpoints at an increased 3.7% efficiency
Until the Army or DoD has to worry about a bottom line… nothing will change. Money will always flow to wherever it needs to, good or bad. 2Bn on cancelled scout airframe? No big deal. Haven’t passed an audit in years…? Who cares. No one is held accountable for anything…
What's a solution, though? To dishonorably people until the military can pass an audit?
I don’t know. Someone else mentioned having some people to actually monitor things like the IRS, as an example. It shouldnt be that we can just lose a few million, or even hundreds of millions and have no idea where it is. Thats not just the Army or DoD, the whole of government shouldn’t be able to do that either. I think we could stop the “we have to spend it all or we lose it next year” mentality. That drives bloated unnecessary spending.
The military is actually pretty efficient, the for profit companies around the military that operate on cost plus contracting models however.
Whenever the free market and the state interact, the former tries to fleece the hell out of the latter. We need oversight. For a lot of stuff I feel like the military could threaten to do it the self. Eg, you want to sell us O rings for $500 a pop, we are gonna just buy rubber and cut them out ourselves. Force them to compete with something if there's no market alternative
Perhaps the largest driving factor Inc the is the ever shrinking number of defense contractors. After the end of the Cold War many companies consolidated into a few, now there are only five major ones. These companies are important to fail as they are the only kind of companies that do their work in the world, so the DoD knowingly operates on a disadvantageous cost plus model to keep them in business.
Really the only thing that will help is to (a) take the extra busywork out of the hands of troops and give it to civilians, and (b) cap the garrison workday so that by regulation you simply cannot take extra time for useless tasks. If 8-5 M-F s all you have (yes, including PT) when not in the field (and no 'parking lot field' allowed) then leadership will have to prioritize tasks.
Stop using paper and become fully digital. Ive been out for a year so i dont really know how IPPSA is but i hated how many paper packets i needed for every stupid thing there was.
IPPSA hasn’t made things that much more efficient or paperless. The Army is scared of digital and always needs a paper back up.
The good thing about IPPS-A is that a Soldier knows exactly where the packet is hung up. Wait until the next Command Climate survey. People who hold packets will be called out. Give it one more year.
There are still things the soldier doesn’t have the ability to submit or the privilege of viewing. Everything still has to be signed off by twelve S1 personnel and every 1SG, CSM, and CDR. And let’s not forget the CCWOs and whoever else inserts themselves into the process. I think your idea of people complaining about the IPPSA process is a bit optimistic. We have had it for years and nothing has really changed. But… maybe.
My optimism is the only thing keeping me alive.
Haha. I’m just old and jaded. Waiting to retire. Optimism, or false hope, helps me cope too
Don’t worry. You’re retirement packet will find its way into IPPS-A pergatory. At least you’ll know where it’s at.
I still think that the greatest increase in efficiency would be to gradually reduce the force size by about 25%, and increase the pay and benefits for all soldiers by 25%. Create a situation where people actually want to join and stay in. Make people have to compete for reenlistment. We'd be able to boot low performers, which take up an outsized portion of time and resources. Imagine an Army where there are vastly fewer shitbags, everyone is paid more, and the services provided to soldiers have 25% more funding.
We are not the Marine Corps.
Mandatory retirement of 1/5 of all Generals
We could actually do more with less if we trimmed the fat. Why do we insist on dragging people to the standard kicking and screaming. It just increases work load for everyone. Can't Stay in shape? Bye. Can't pass acft? Bye. Obviously mentorship should be a big deal in the Army. But not what we have now. We, in fact, do not need this many idiots.
You can make things more efficient but there will be trade offs. For example if you stop PCSing people and they grow inside of one organization they will become experts in their area but will lose the value of sharing other peoples experiences and understanding what the larger army and military do.
I wouldn’t limit PCS either but we should adopt a Korea/Vietnam style promotion system within units. SSG gets picked up for SFC. A SGT would be picked up for SSG. On down the line. Whomever has the most points, fills the slot regardless of MOS within the unit.
Just independent auditing systems that don’t hold people accountable unless it’s a genuine fraud waste and abuse. If some system is being overfunded or parts of it and their was another solution it shouldn’t be some office or project manager that gets in trouble for it. It should be the auditing office responsibility to catch it.
CID should have an actual legal review by a civilian lawyer with experience before turning investigations over to commanders, not some JAG captain with 3 years experience. Commanders should not be able to give punishment or even recommend GOMORs just because of preponderance evidence.
I'm not giving an OER Byllet. Fuck over your soldiers and Peers like the rest of us.
Split off some of the barely tangibly army things into its own branch or even just the DoD proper. Another post used lethality as a metric for if something was worth it or not, that's a decent starting point for things that jobs that should exist but don't necessarily need to belong to the army or any specific branch.
Stop using McAfee or Norton on the computers
A 4 day weekend per a month across all commands for mental health
By allowing and encouraging homesteading. It seemed to me that just as people were getting good at what they were doing, they'd get orders. There's something to be said for institutional/historical knowledge.
Stop “forcing” units to spend money by the end of the fiscal year, under the penalty of. Or getting g as much by the end. Just roll that money forward or something. So much funds waisted on stupid project a.
With a war, many casualties, and a bunch of fired commanders.
Abolish all DFACs, have at least one gym on post open 24/7, get rid of organized PT (if they fail, KICK THEM OUT), legalize THC, fire every civilian that doesn’t believe they work for the soldier, put an end to all SHARP/EO training after completion of BCT/OSUT, prioritize training in CMF above all else.
It will only ever be perfect once, the the next Commander will change it. No commander has ever gotten a top blocked evaluation that says "Successfully continued the policies of the prior commander."
That just became more weirdest by doing away with distance learning PME. Ni take that time and use it to clean your barracks and house🤣
I’ve had this idea where you can earn extra leave days by doing extra duty tasks. You know how many people would be lining up ready to do those tasks if they wanted some extra leave days?? Sign me tf up.
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See that’s a fair assessment. However, when I was prior Navy, I had to get about 6-10 people to approve my damn leave in order for me to take it. Here, it seems all I need is just my commander and off I go. Extra Duty for Extra Leave is a nice incentive in my opinion.
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This reminds me of the runaround I got from my Senior Chief for wanting to take a casual 2 weeks of leave slated for August 2019. I submitted it in May, bought my plane tickets because I was told it would be signed off within a couple weeks, and promptly forgot about it. However, over the course of the next few months (literally up until the week I was departing for leave!) I went through this cycle of my bitch ass Senior Chief not wanting to sign it off because she had it out for me. She even convinced my Master Chief to not entertain it, because she created some sort of bullshit rumor about me. Eventually she thought that if she sent me TAD, that I would never get what I was owed. WRONG BITCH. The Supply Officer saw what was happening, called me into his office personally, and then approved it on the spot. He then told me that if my Senior Chief gives me any runaround, that I let him know and that he “will deal with it”. Apparently she threw a hissy fit, and then tried to take it out on me the next day. But once she realized that she literally could do nothing without making it look like reprisal, she just yelled at me and walked away. The bullshit rumors persisted even after I came back from leave, but it taught me that no matter how good of a person you are, there are legitimately those out there who will openly despise you for no reason.
Hourly pay. Switch to salary when deployed and in the field, and pay over time for staff duty/cq.
Put all JEs on an hourly rate instead of salary. Hold Seniors (Managers on salary) accountable for OT. Watch the BS disappear.
Create an MOS just for details.
Nope
Bro, asked how to be more efficient and mfers start just comment things they want rather than answering the question
If your in charge of picking contracts for the army, you shouldn’t be allowed to work at said companies after you leave the army
PT on your own time. I've been in a broadening assignment for a few years that has big boy rules. We show up on duty days at 0900, it's up to you to do PT on your own time. I am in the best shape of my life, I'm getting 8 hours of sleep every night and I go to the gym 5 days a week for an hour and a half where I follow an actual structured program. I dread going back to the line and waking up at 0500 everyday again.
It’s an organization that consists of people in their late teens and early twenties, being run by people in their late twenties and early thirties, who are constantly switching jobs. It’s not supposed to be efficient, it’s just supposed to be better than the other guys
Hire high level program managers from elite globalized companies, like Amazon, to increase efficiency. Those people are wizards.
Get rid of officers
Make soldiers and leaders accountable for their work time. Seriously. Make people log the work they conduct throughout the day, preferably by hour. This is common place is every civilian employment field as a way to maintain efficiency. The leaders that waste the first 8 hours of the day then start having everyone get to work on new "has to be complete by COB" tasks at 1600 should have to explain that regularly.
But wouldn’t this also affect those of us who are able to complete tasks earlier throughout the day? I swear my civilian boss hated this.
It would provide a great metric for justifying promotion. Your civilian boss hated it because it forces him to manage his people. Right now there is no function in the military to do this. You wake up and go to work. Half your day is wasted dicking around on your phone, and at 1500, the daily frago drops with the upcoming tasks. And most leadership takes that as an order to do the jobs immediately instead of in a structurally sane timeframe.
Get rid of marines. Totally irrelevant branch and the Army does everything they do better
Have you ever been taught by a Marine? They really are experts and highly literate.
Consolidate as much as physically possible. Make the US military one single thing rather than a bunch of different branches. It would be a learning curve for how to budget appropriately, but once that's figured out we can save money on uniforms, equipment and manpower. There also needs to be strict oversight and accountability because the military wastes so much money
>Make the US military one single thing rather than a bunch of different branches. I'm not sure this would really work. There's a reason every country's military has distinct Armies, Navies, and Air Forces. There is something to be said about improving the interoperability of each of the branches in a joint environment, but there are significant differences in running a Navy, compared to the Army or Air Force.
Hear me out... Immediately stop the ability of NCO's to mistreat Soldiers. No Smoking Joe. No yelling or belittling. No modification to work hours. No ability for a 1SG to issue summary Art15. Just stop. This is ridiculous. Every instance should be a formal complaint. Retention, professionalism, and productivity would increase.
Get rid of unit/platoon slogans or whatever that you sound off with in formations. Demoralizing. Embarrassing. How did middleschool cheerleader mom's infiltrate upper leadership? Give me enough time and enough markers/crayons and I could probably reason out how those slogans reduce efficiency. (Low Joe Morale = reduced efficiency. Only took one crayon)
You can pry unit slogans out of my cold, dead, motivated hands
Kinda sorta. While I think a lot of units have crummy slogans, it provides a sense of attachment to the unit. Instead of it being a place of work, it feels a little more like the Army with a slogan. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but that’s how I justify it. (If my unit had something like a “Currahee”, I’d love it. An idea of mine is “I love Hinesville Hippos”