My favorite example is silver paint, silver paint is used on stealth aircraft it price was $300 a gallon commercially, the military paid $3,000 a gallon for the same paint from the same supplier.
glimse@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m assuming people are downvoting this because it’s a post on the conservative board about a Florida Republican but the dude is 100% right and all that wasted spending should be going to services for all Americans, not just inflating the bank accounts of the CEOs who run the defense industry.
Basically everything sold to the military is marked up to an insane degree and not because it’s held to some higher standard. No, the produce military grade materials…and military grade means “good enough,” not top-of-the-line. As Waltz showed, the same shit can be purchased at Lowe’s for comparatively nothing.
I’m not a conservative but I’m not gonna let that stop me from siding with one on this issue. That’s our tax dollars going straight into the pockets of the filthy rich.
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 6 months ago
glimse@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A 10x markup sounds accurate based on what I know about other costs. My friend’s dad runs a business that mostly hires veterans. That got him contract work for the government (not defense, keeping it vague on purpose) and he blew my mind when he told me the hourly rate they could get away with charging
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 6 months ago
The hourly rates include all the overhead and benefits. A 3-4x rate is common and aligns with costs in the private sector. An electronics lab employee is going to have a much higher overhead rate if they work in something like a clean room or with expensive equipment their rates can be in the 5-8x range.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Government accounting is all weird. Sometimes they’ll assign a percentage to a part. They then take then total including development cost and distribute on percentage. So a toilet may show up as 10k but really they paid 50 dollars for it. It’s just how it’s done in accounting.
glimse@lemmy.world 6 months ago
As the guy in question said, “it’s the same exact thing we do for Amazon but 6 times the price”
No clean room or special equipment as they’re buying labor, not electronics
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s because the vendor and product are “certified” by whatever bullshit process as part of the contract. It’s even worse with proprietary stuff because you can’t even say “there’s no way” to the little closed computer box that costs tens of thousands because you can’t pick that up at Lowes.
So yeah, rare conservative w and I’ll let them have it, as a treat.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 7 months ago
A long time ago I worked for a company that made computers. They explained why government contracts were so profitable. In the days they’d sell a 486/66 computer spec. The government would agree to those terms for 3 or 5 years.
The first batch you lost money on but over time you made a lot of profit. In 3 years the government was paying the same cost but your cost was 1/4.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I’m pro-military but anti-waste.
And you’re correct. Military grade just means it hit the specs in the contract. Often it’s crap nobody else needs or cares about.
If the story is true, the price difference is astounding.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Those specs are very important though. It’s not just something like “gun must fire”. It’s more like “gun must fire in humid conditions while 2% contaminated with mud, must fire 99.9% of the time, and must last 90,000 rounds before replacement is considered”. Military spec doesn’t usually have bells and whistles, but what it does have is durability and reliability.