this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Some of those "$50 screw" numbers come from cancelling projects with high total cost. A contract might be paid to produce a thousand of something and get cancelled after making 10 of them, inflating the per unit cost by a ton
Thanks for the clarification. I was indeed just parroting what I'd heard & read several times, without really understanding the mechanisms involved.
well, it's only some. Plus there's plenty of conspiracy theories around those types of costs being how the gov funds secret projects.
Well that still counts as stupid ways to waste money, with a side of corruption
yep. plenty of money in defense wasted due to stupidity.
The Army manual says that screw must meet X, Y, and Z specs. If you don't have the tooling for those exact specs, you're going to charge more to make up the cost of retooling.
Of course there's grift and plain foolishness. Local base Commander paid a painter I knew to stop work for two weeks and screw around waiting for his commander to visit. Wanted the boss to see the painters in action, look busy.
Speaking of specs, there are old rules that never changed. Worked at a print shop where a standard 24x36" blueprint was $.63. Nope. Navy had to have the final set of plans printed on plastic media, $3/page. Now multiply by 150 for a modest set of prints.
Meant to reply to you:
https://old.lemmy.world/comment/20048803