comment: >
  
  My brother, I was a “1 and done” E4 who left the Army at 22 years old and immediately took a job with a contracting company overseas for $100k salary and I don’t have a college degree lol I’m not bragging here, I’m just demonstrating the absurdity that takes place in contracting today.
  These “civilian professionals” you speak of are not so different from the AD sailors you once knew. Often, they are the same people.
context: I think the biggest issue is just getting a proper accounting of how things are spent. They’ve been working on it but it hasn’t been going great. I’m it’s current state we couldn’t do a. Real audit even if we wanted to. >
  
  Given the, uh, current geopolitical climate, I can't imagine US and Russia agreeing to anything, much less nuclear disarmament. >
  
  One easy way to help with the budget would be to get rid of a lot of the military contractors and let military members do that work. When I was in the Navy as an IT when we were out at sea I could do the work but in our home port a contractor was to come on and my job then was to babysit them. >
  
  It would take decades to rebuild that force structure. 
  Add in that recruiting is already having massive challenges in meeting numbers, then add in a need to recruit more recruits into the specialized (high ASVAB, long training time) rates and MOSes and it’s even more a problem. >
  
  Just because it would take decades doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. There are disgusting amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse in military contracting. Should we continue using this model just because any alternative would be difficult? >
  
  Having the same tasks performed solely by "1 and done" 19 & 20 year old E-4s isn't going to really provide better quality or save costs. 
  I've seen what happens when you leave everything to AD sailors, some of it works but a lot is garbage and requires massive rework. Basic PMs, sure depot level maintenance is often better done by a civilian professional that does that job day in and day out.