Military Inefficiency Quotes

Congress votes for things the military doesn't want, and planes and other weaponry that cost a lot but don't work.

The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.

There is so much crap [waste] going on over there [the Pentagon], I could run the Navy Department on the cost-of-living increases alone.

Can it be that a generation of school children is growing up heedless of the simple truth that the Pentagon's centrla role for many years has been to buy weapons that don't work, against threats that don't exist?

[The army is] in a state of licentiousness which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy.

A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

But the Air Force was sort of a bastard child of the Army, much like the Marines with the Navy. Everything had to be done over by the Army after it had already been done by the Air Corps, a mess.

If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present.

We have a nation with great wealth, willing to spend its money freely for the procurement of arms and munitions of war and supplies of all kinds. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that there has been in the past, in the administration of the army, something which was out of joint. It is not necessary for me to go into the specification of details; for every one of us knows that whenever an exigency has come, confusion has come

The misappropriation of resources provided by the government for weapons means the Nigerian military is unable to beat Boko Haram.

There are hugely creative military leaders who have contemplated just the kind of changes that are needed. In Washington, however, strength lies with the opponents rather than the proponents of change. And the opponents possess the ultimate political weapon of mass destruction. They can accuse leaders who want to challenge the status quo of making America weak. So we’re left with all the systems the country has accumulated to counter every post World War II defense challenge: multiple air forces, multiple expeditionary forces; multiple cyber-commands. We can’t afford what we have. We don’t need much of what we have.

Nothing can be more entirely inefficient than the militia under the existing organization … Without arms, in nine cases out of ten badly officered, they merely comply with the letter of the law, and repair to their colors, not from the elevated feeling of duty to their country, ... but to avail themselves of an indulgence, without restraint, in all the immoralities of legalized misrule.

Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.

…the Army stood in need of talent as never before… the whole department is unscientifically managed, over officered and wastefully conducted.