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U.S. DoD bought phony military gear made in China
- tomcam 7y agoMeaning if that’s what the military actually admits to...
- kev009 7y agoHappens a lot. https://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-news/2017/05/31/Ibis-Tek-Butler-County-fraud-Army-Humvee-plead-federal-court-6-million/stories/201705310215 https://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-new... the stuff that wasn't covered by this conviction was largely shit designed to look cool like aluminum bumpers and tow bars that would fail catastrophically.
- ProCynic 7y agoGiven U.S. military budgets, this seems like a rounding error. Especially as the article claims that this was over a five year period. Four mil a year in procurement fraud is probably a drop in the ocean.
- dylan604 7y agoThis makes me sad. I get that rounding errors are a thing. However, a million here, a billion there, pretty soon, we're talking about real money. In the real world, most people can't really comprehend the value of $1,000,000.00. One million might as well be one billion might as well be one trillion. At the risk of being cliche, if we did not have the loss of the $4 million per year (of just this one specific thing), what else could that money have been used for instead?
- ForHackernews 7y ago"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." —Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Roritharr 7y agoI wonder if he really meant that though, he basically defined the terms of the cold war and the subsequent decades spanning arms race. Not that someone can't regret having to do something they don't see an alternative to, I just wonder how sincere he was.
- acct1771 7y agoHappy to see this discussed on HN. Please, please read this to get a better understanding for yourself: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
- supermanfan 7y agoAs a student of WW2, there's no indication that Ike was not serious about what he said in that quote. In fact, he was offered and declined a presidential ticket immed. after WW2 to command NATO in Korea. So he wasn't politically-motivated. One thing you could possibly fault Ike for is that when he criticized the military-industrial complex (MIC), he pulled his punches: he wanted to add Congress (a la MICC) but realized that doing so would make them feel defensive and reduce his support. The reason Ike talked about the wastefulness of war was that the entire industrial outputs of the USA, Europe and Japan for almost a decade were wasted.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> However, a million here, a billion there, pretty soon, we're talking about real money. While that may be true, the million won't have contributed to the problem in that case. :p > At the risk of being cliche, if we did not have the loss of the $4 million per year (of just this one specific thing), what else could that money have been used for instead? We could have raised the annual salary of active duty personnel by almost three (3) dollars a year each.
- frankbreetz 7y agoI wonder how many "3 million dollar drops in the ocean there were".I bet if we totaled them all up service men could have gotten a very nice pay raise.
- armenarmen 7y ago1.3 million active duty military members apparently. So kind of a “dollar menu + tax” kinda raise
- rectang 7y agoThe U.S. military needs to stop shopping on Amazon. /s In a way this is refreshing. When the U.S. military buys broken goods from a U.S. manufacturer, you get the sort of positive feedback loop that strengthens the military industrial complex. (I'm thinking the F-22 Raptor.) But when funds leak to China, that feedback loop is broken.
- sambal 7y agoWhat was the issue with F-22 raptor? I’m mostly aware of the F-35 ongoings but the raptor was a bit before my time
- kpremote 7y agoFor the past 30 years (a very long period of time), the U.S. has bought mountains upon moutains of crap from China, in both military and civilian sectors. But there is not even a single high-profile hardware backdoor incident publicised, except maybe the Bloomberg big hack fiasco. This tells you something.
- bArray 7y ago> (please repeat after me, 30 years) This is bad form. > But there is not even a single high-profile hardware > backdoor incident publicised. This tells you something. Not so much. If the US military found a hardware backdoor, would they want to publicly tell their enemy that their strategy is effective? Not only this, but if they tell their enemies which ones they find, by doing so they also tell them which ones they haven't found. The only reason details of these fakes were published was likely because the Chinese company couldn't reasonably be considered as acting maliciously in this regard. Rather, they were just trying to turn a quick buck.
- kpremote 7y agoSorry, I see you replied before I edited that out. Apologize. They may not want to reveal details, but even not to the various Congressional committees for more funding (among many reasons) to fight back the enermy? The U.S. Congress could publicly condemn these kind of bad doings by China without publishing details. Plus, in the U.S. information has lots of ways to leak out, from Snowden to some pesky jounalists.
- simion314 7y ago>Not so much. If the US military found a hardware backdoor, would they want to publicly tell their enemy that their strategy is effective? Not only this, but if they tell their enemies which ones they find, by doing so they also tell them which ones they haven't found. This thinking can be used to start real wars then, we know X has illegal weapons, trust us we have proof but we can't show it, sure years later after lots of deaths and bilions spent on war you find that it was all propaganda.
- Hamuko 7y agoI'm glad that I'm not the only sucker to buy complete crap from China.
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- samdung 7y agoThere's a movie 'War Dogs' which is based on a true story where a couple of jews sell $300 million worth of arms to the US army.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't do this here.
- dejaime 7y agoI'd say that the most important military gear is probably still made in China, smartphones, computers, routers. But I don't really know what I'm talking about, never been in the military.