[IP] Shachtman: Pentagon's Data Meltdown
This problem has been going on administration to administration. The
NRC has done endless studies. Problem still exists.
Dave
Begin forwarded message:
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 8, 2004 8:53:41 PM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Shachtman: Pentagon's Data Meltdown
From Defensetech -- http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001002.html
PENTAGON'S DATA MELTDOWN
by Noah Shachtman
There's a reason why the Pentagon bought its chem-bio suits for $200
each -- and then sold them on the Internet for $3 a pop.
There's a reason why 450 out of 481 National Guardsmen tracked by
Congress have had problems with their paychecks.
And there's a reason why defense contractors have been able to weasle
out of $100 million or more in unpaid taxes.
It's all because the Pentagon is relying on a tangle of outdated
computer systems to track its supplies, finances, and people, according
to a new Congressional report. Despite a $19 billion annual budget and
more than 2000 different databases to do the job, the Defense
Department can't figure out what it has, or how it spends its money.
These "fundamentally flawed business systems" are leaving the Pentagon
wide open to "fraud, waste and abuse," Congress' investigators say. And
they're making soldiers' lives a whole lot more difficult in the
process.
My Wired News article has details.
THERE'S MORE: The Congressional report doesn't aggressively make the
connection between the Pentagon's screwy computers and the shortages of
ammunition and supplies during the Iraq invasion. But it takes only the
smallest of speculative hops to get from one to the next.
In fact, Fred Kaplan notes in Slate, if the Army's supply problem had
gotten much worse, the whole Iraq operation would have ground to a
sputtering halt.
Relying on a recent Army report, he notes that
"Literally every" commander in the 3rd Infantry Divisionthe Army unit
that swept up the desert to Baghdadtold the study group that, without
more spare parts, "he could not have continued offensive operations for
another two weeks."
"Fortunately," the report goes on, "major combat operations ended
before the failure of the parts distribution system affected operations
in a meaningful way."
Other logistical supplies were distributed at "just barely above
subsistence levels." The supply of food "barely met demand"; some
soldiers occasionally went without MREs. Petroleum supplies often had
to be foraged and drained from Iraqi vehicles. Engineering explosives
were often captured from Iraqi troops or improvised. On a few
occasions, the 3rd Infantry had to ask the 101st Airborne Division for
extra ammunition. The medical supply system "failed." There were not
enough trucks; there was no single cargo distribution manager.
"The report's authors don't ascribe blame," Kaplan notes. But it's
pretty obvious where at least some of the fault lies: in the creaky,
isolated, duplicative computer systems in the bowels of the Pentagon.
AND MORE: "The real cost is to the people that have to work in these
situations, knowing that things could be done better but never will
be," says reader SA, a former Canadian government worker. "When a
person gets up every day, knowing that they won't be able to do the job
they were hired for because 90% of their day is taken up checking the
faulty math of the computer system, re-inputing data that disappears,
fixing problems that never should have happened and printing out
information from one system and typing it into another, well, it starts
to get to you after a while."
AND MORE: "I suspect that we're not really serious about fixing this
due to the seniority of the rice bowls that would likely wind up having
to be kicked over. And also because wartime logistics is hard due to
it's extremely low redictability and peacetime operations just do not
prepare for it adequately," says Defense Tech reader JA, who works in
the Defense Department.
Excellence in logistics in peacetime will not get you promoted,
although beefing about logistics deficiencies can be detrimental to
one's career prospects," he adds, offering one of those
it'd-be-hilarious-if-it-wasn't-so-awful stories:
My unit at the time participated in a NATO exercise in the early 80's
on the North German Plain and was the first time since the '50's that
US combat units exercised with NORTHAG. Unfortunately, no one saw fit
to explain to the Germans that they'd be supplying us with rations and
fuel and after 3 days or so the cav troop that I was part of was pretty
well scattered across significant acreage out of fuel and low on chow
(we had been told beforehand to not stock up on pogey bait as the
German army was going to hook us up for food. Needless to say we took
this as a red flag warning and not only stocked up, stripping the PX at
the kaserne, but also staged a run on the local American Express
denuding it of local currency).
The Stars & Stripes interviewed our troop commander asking him to
expound on the glories of interoperability within NATO and he told them
what he really thought. He was replaced as our commander shortly
following this, well short of what might have been considered a more
normal command tour length.
www.defensetech.org
-------------------
"When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
"Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic"
-- Arthur C. Clarke
"You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP)
John F. McMullen
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