Are funds mismanaged in the US military? As badly as I've been told? I'm not sure I trust the people who told me that it was as bad as they say it is, they didn't source anything

They said apparently they have ridiculous amounts of tanks that they're not doing anything with, and keep building more for no reason, which didn't sound right

They also explained that the way the budget works, they HAVE to spend all of their allocated budget, resulting in wastage since they have leftover money, which sounds a little crazy

Yes and no.

I'm especially sceptical since I called them out on military spending increases, they made it sound super horrible but I asked them if it was more money or a higher percentage and they stopped responding

The US military isn't nearly as corrupt as some (like South Korea) but it does have a good bit of bureaucratic largesse.

Gotcha

The "have to spend all the allocated budget" is a fact in all levels of American government.

*Technically* you don't have to, but if you do the budget gets reallocated the next year permanently, so no one ever does.

It's a big part of why government programs end up costing so much.

And it's not unique to the military. The DMV does it, NASA does it, the National Park Service does it...

Oh okay, so they're forced to upkeep their level of spending for fear that the government will cut funding

Yeah beasically.

As for making tanks and stuff. They produce them under contract years (often decades) in advance not really knowing when they'll need them.

It's not easy to just "make a tank." You have to do lots of design work, build the machining and tooling, hire all the people to build it (which for a tank means getting security clearances and checking the supply chain for infiltrators)...

So they do build stuff and then drop it in the motor pool to be used later.

Yeah, it takes a lot of time, I feel you

Anti-military types will claim that's "a ridiculous number of tanks that are sitting ariund"

That's their exact wording

Which, aside from the "ridiculous" part (which is a subjective evaluation) is mostly because they aren't shooting anybody at the moment.

Which is probably better than the alternative.

The best level of military deployment is a question without an easy answer.

The US has a massive military. It also has massive obligations.

And alot of that comes down to holding a stick big enough no one makes you use it.

Yeah, I remember people were talking about how the US have global presence

Europe was completely was almost dependent on the US for defense. Japan, Korea and Taiwan usually measure their time to fight against China alone in weeks of months.

Europe's position is a bit more questionable mostly just because there's not too many obvious threats aside from Russia.

But the South China sea has been warming up.

And China is making a massive bid for military capabilities.

Ah, I get ya

The US military was actually downsizing from Iraq for awhile now IIRC

So it's less on edge than in the past.

Actually been cancelling jet fighter orders last I heard.

It is a fact that in terms of things like Tanks and planes, the US military is orders of magnitude larger than it's opposition. It's actually very similar to the UK navy just around the 1900s.

Which is slightly worrying. When Germany caught up around 1900-1910...

We're probably several decades away from China challenging the US, but when the China/Russia/Africa Axis hits critical mass things could get much harder.

If it hits critical mass.

Oh, my favorite "spend the whole allocation" Public universities do it. And private universities on public grants.

The US need to clamp down on socialism before that happens because you guys will have so many double agents

Do the socialists recognize China as communist?

I can't tell anymore.