Waste defined here by Wikipedia in classic terms of refuse waste. Garbage. Although it frames the issue well in an opening statement:
Waste(s) is a pejorative term for unwanted materials. The term can be described as subjective and inaccurate because waste to one person is not waste to another. Cost is a measurement of waste.
Despite that definition Wikipedia goes on to describe the pejorative aspects of waste. One of the costs that Wikipedia explains is Social Cost related to the physical environment. Waste in the broader definition is a Social Cost to the Social environment.
The military and its binding with all the major hardware and software complexes that support it is a social waste producing entity. The social cost, far beyond the monetary cost measurement does not justify the benefit. Wikipedia explains Cost/Benefit Analysis as a cut and dried decision making tool using a chosen valuation entity. Expressing costs in terms of dollars is only the financial aspect. The broader application of the analysis expressed in social valuation elements is not as mathematical but the methodology is the same. The method can be applied to marriage or war and the ideologies that define them.
The military is a social entity that has a cost far in excess of its total social benefit. The measurement of the degree of excess is waste in whatever terms it is defined and there are many. McNamara should have applied that business school thinking to the DOD!
Social Cost analysis is both objective and subjective. The subjective part is the hard part to quantify objectively. Hey, I like that statement. It has the makings of a profound thought. Social Cost benefit of abortion? Execution? Invading Iraq? Some say the social cost of religion is, on balance, negative over history. Perhaps its redemption orientation will yet redeem itself?
Judgement of Social Costs/Benefit all depends on who is paying the cost and who is receiving the benefit. Change the player entity groups and the results vary. Majority rules? The best minority players rule? The game is scored not on who wins the most points but on who causes the other entity to create the most waste that becomes the treasure of the other.
War of Attrition A military strategy defined by Wikipedia:
"Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent side attempts to win a war by wearing down its enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and materiel. The war will usually be won by the side with greater such resources.[1]"
General Patton: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.[22]"
Attrition is a winning strategy aimed at causing waste by the opponent to the advantage of those causing the waste.
It is our money the Pentagon and its complex is wasting. On the broad social scale of things who is the enemy of whom?
Paraphrasing Reagan: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the military and I'm here to protect you.'
Update 9 Dec. 2013
This link tells about a billion dollar military waste. It was wasted on software. ERP software.. ERP was the early 1980 catchphrase around Crystal City, (Kinda like a Pentagon Annex nearby but housing lesser regarded entities, not the juicy operational stuff). If I said ERP and then wove in the words; integrated, systems, and planning within a few seconds before or after, people thought I really knew something. There was some kind of an organization that would certify me as a card carrying credentialed member of the ERP. Like buying a diploma.
ERP is old. In the three letter world of Washington old three letter concepts are the polyester of style. In substance the suit remains the same just made of something with a different name. Any project that now calls itself an ERP project bought into a three letter contractor with old ideas that is not even smart enough to put lipstick on the pig and pass it off as a racehorse.
Wikipedia says that ERP was coined in 1990. I was using the term ERP in the early 80's but the R was requirements not resource. Same difference just had to make it something that might sound proprietary and put a company brand on it rather than generic.
Software is a new and efficient way to waste money. There is no airplane produced that will not fly nor ship that will not float or tank that will not tank. Just a bunch of software on a computer and associated with a lot of development documented by meetings, reports, studies, etc. When that all fails there is nothing physical left behind to give glaring stinking evidence as a monument to failure that cannot be easily swept under the rug.
At least when military industrial complex at least produced waste junk that was a failure there was a dead body to be disposed of or covered up. Something physical to deal with.
The military software complex is so surgical in disposing of junk waste that there is no body to dispose of.
Highly efficient.
The link cites a previous project that failed:
"Well, if the Air Force had ever bothered to learn the lessons from the debacle that preceded ECSS—namely the massively over-budget, late, and incomplete Depot Maintenance Management System (DMMS) that started in the mid-1980s and eventually ran out of steam in the late 1990s, or its predecessor fiasco the Advanced Logistics System (ALS), which was also massively over-budget, late, and ineffective—the Air Force by now might have had at least a fighting chance."
These failures keep the old style well entrenched major players selling system design and implementation milking their investment in old technology in business. They are the new battle ship builders.
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