But Whaddya Want for a Trillion Bucks

most expensive soup sandwich in the history of the world

Via Rantingly, journalists are using a new report from the Pentagon inspector general to point out that the Gaza aid pier operation was far more painful for American military personnel than the government had previously acknowledged:

And yes, the whole thing was a bizarre Biden debacle. It’s fair to point that out. I wrote about that debacle several times while it was happening, starting here.

But the inspector general report is so much more damning than that, and not in a partisan way. The failure revealed by the insane Gaza aid pier thing is the product of a complete loss of focus, pretty clearly for decades, by military leadership that stopped focusing on fundamentals. There are more disasters behind the disaster. The trans equity, “diversity is our strength,” counterinsurgency-focused-for-twenty-years armed forces can’t make a sandwich without spraining itself.

You can read the whole report here — and if you have any reason to care about the American military, take ten minutes to at least skim the thing. It’s 94 pages long, but a bunch of that is taken up with letters of transmittal and appendices that you don’t have to read. Just start on pg. 9 of the PDF file, which is pg. 1 of the actual report, and read through pg. 35 of the PDF file, which is pg. 27 of the report. Start when you see the word “Introduction,” and read until you see “Appendix A.”

Screenshot, pg. 7 of the report, which should give you the flavor of the whole thing:

So no joint planning, no training to a shared standard across services, poor equipment in declining quantities, limited maintenance, zero interoperability, no joint communication, and they didn’t think about things like “beach conditions” when they planned a thing that connected to the beach. Pg. .9:

As the military got more expensive, it reduced and reduced and reduced a significant logistics capability. Pg. 11:

And then don’t miss pg. 13, where the operation of incompatible army and navy systems results in “punching a bunch of holes” in the equipment when they try to work together.

On pg. 15, we learn that the people planning the aid pier effort “lacked theater-specific information” about conditions. Seventeen intelligence agencies, but no information.

And so on. A lot of people with a lot of stars on their shoulders and a lot of ribbons on their chests have been doing a lot of nothing much.

Click this link to the play the video below, but this statement is correct:

The need to get back to the basics of training, planning, and building is urgent, and the need to stop wasting resources is critical. Where did all that money go?