Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly.
К вопросу о "попилах по-американски" - в дискуссии по статье попался такой комментарий:
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Коротко: если сержанту потребовался 1 молоток , он не может сходить в магазин и купить за 3 долл, он пишет "заказ". Который по дороге обрастает массой требований и параметров и на выходе получатеся заказ на 10 тыс (1 штуку низя из типа экономии) "железных молотков строго заданного веса с бальсовой ручкой строго определённого размера" - примерно такие продавали 30 лет назад. Чтоб сделать такой молоток, надо специальный заводик строить. Который потом разорится - т.к. ассигнования на 10 тыс. молотков урежут обратно до одного, а никому другому такие молотки за такие деньги не нужны.
Короче, получатеся молоток за $40 - специально для военных.
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I used to work for a defense contractor, and it's no secret where that money is going. Let's take the famous $40 hammer, for instance.
Some guy in the navy wants a hammer. So he puts in a request for a hammer. He'd buy the Chinese-made $3.49 model at the local hardware store, but he can't because that's against the rules.
The navy has a purchasing system and tries to take advantage of the fact it's buying thousands of hammers every year (which is why he couldn't go to the local hardware store), so it puts out an RFQ for 10,000 hammers. But since the last time it bought hammers the lowest cost vendor provided cardboard handles and balsa wood heads, *this* time the contract specifies the exact shape, size, weight, and composition of the hammer. And the vendor needs to prove the hammer can pound in 100,000 six-penny nails into old-growth hickory with less than one failure in 1000.
So the vendor who would have sold the navy the perfectly good commercial hammers he has in stock can't sell them. They aren't the right shape and weigh an ounce too much. Also, as the paperwork wended it's way through the purchasing system all sorts of bureaucrats tacked on additional requirements. So the Navy hammers need to be colored steel grey #43. He's not sure what color that is.
The hammer manufacturer can certainly make 10,000 hammers that fit the contract, but now it's a special production run for something that'll be too expensive to sell to consumers. So once he adds his legally-specified 14% markup and divides the cost of tooling for that run, special materials purchases, certified independent testing (with 20-year document retention), when the cost gets divided out it comes to $40.
To top it all off, the government ordered one hammer with the option to buy 39,999 more. When budget cuts come down later in the year they decide this year they can only buy the one hammer. The manufacturer loses his ass and goes out of business because $40 doesn't begin to cover the cost of producing a single, special-made hammer.
