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jim brady · 10-23-2012, 04:42 PM

Not too sure how to take 'we have an offensive military budget'. Can't remember who said it, but there's an old quote - 'Those who beat their swords into plow shears always end up plowing for those who didn't'.

In my military career, one of the many hats that I wore was forcasting budgets for a very large aviation unit. The usual - and wasteful - process was to forcast at least 10% over what you needed, and then when the cut budget came back you were about what you really wanted to honestly ask for in the first place. Be that ammunition, fuel or financial requirements.

A good example was our ammunition forcasts for training and annual weapons qualification. If for some reason we didn't expend 100% of the ammunition allocated for the current fiscal year for ANY reason, our following year's request was automatically reduced by that amount. That meant that we would not have sufficient ammuniton allocated to do our annual weapons qualification. That's just part of the red tape and politcal realities.

10-23-2012, 04:42 PM	#7
jim brady Advanced Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 1,072	Re: Military defense budget Not too sure how to take 'we have an offensive military budget'. Can't remember who said it, but there's an old quote - 'Those who beat their swords into plow shears always end up plowing for those who didn't'. In my military career, one of the many hats that I wore was forcasting budgets for a very large aviation unit. The usual - and wasteful - process was to forcast at least 10% over what you needed, and then when the cut budget came back you were about what you really wanted to honestly ask for in the first place. Be that ammunition, fuel or financial requirements. A good example was our ammunition forcasts for training and annual weapons qualification. If for some reason we didn't expend 100% of the ammunition allocated for the current fiscal year for ANY reason, our following year's request was automatically reduced by that amount. That meant that we would not have sufficient ammuniton allocated to do our annual weapons qualification. That's just part of the red tape and politcal realities.