Politics and war both make for hasty alliances and strange bedfellows, but this is grotesque:
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur…
(Problems) with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.
“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.”
You’ve got guys forward with skin in the fight hoping to win hearts and minds, and somehow a post-pubescent goombah with no experience and a shell company manages to win the contract to supply our allies with defective ammunition.
Can’t anybody play this game?
I usually only buy the NYT on Tuesdays on the way to work for the science section, but I couldn’t resist today with that article and associated picture on the front page. Wowza. What else to say, ‘cept that I’m obviously in the wrong business.
When you really, really need a competent military/industrial complex, eh?
Apparently, to answer your question, Lex, Yeah, anyone CAN play the game. The name of the game is, apparently, ‘low ball wins no matter what.’
I have never actually participated in government contracts, but I’ve read enough comments by the end users, here and elsewhere, to believe that the bean counters win even if the “guys with skin in the game” lose or don’t get to win easily. the supply system, as so much of government, really bothers me.
The company most likely got the bid because it is small woman-owned.
Govt procurement is a scam because it is hobbled by Congressional mandates (such as “small and minority or women owned business preferences”) and REMF supply pukes running the show with GAO beancounters looking over their shoulder, and shoddy contractors with their congresscritters’ phone numbers on speed dial. Almost none of whom know squat about the stuff actually being procured.
As long as the “system” follows the rules, “stuff” will get delivered and the contractors get paid, and congressmen get reelected.
As for the guys and gals out on the pointy end of the stick….. send in a quality deficiency report and maybe something will happen eventually.
Sadly, while fraud waste and abuse are rampant throughout government procurement, only DOD examples get the [bad!] publicity.