Was watching Mail Call on the History Channel last night and I was shocked when the Gunny said that the latest and greatest US built Mil Spec laptop uses a Pentium M CPU and the Intel 850i chipset.

Can anyone tell me where the FRAK our tax dollars are going when it comes to stuff like this?

combat boots.... we need more combat boots!

Not in the Marine Corps. My first year in the Corps, we still uses green screen monitor. I am not kidding. But now we have upgraded to an old CRT color monitor. Most $$$ from our taxes goes to hi tech weapons mostly to Air Force as they have the biggest budget.

Oh yeah, in the Marine Corps, combat boots are not free. We have to buy it for ourselves.

Why are tax dollars used on equipment like that or older? RED TAPE! First a comity take 6-12 months to come up with the specs they want for the piece of equipment. Then the government takes contract offers (another 6-12 months). Once the contract is approved the manufactures and government agency get together and do 6-12 months if not more of testing and field testing. So by the time something gets to a foot solider its most likely 3-4 years out of date.

When I was in the Army Infantry we would take the surplus from Air Force and cobble together systems for our units instead of the PC's issued to them.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For most purposes (data, etc.), the military probably does not need that much computing power. Thus, why spend the budget on new, high-end components that might be overkill? Intel probably cuts them a deal on stuff they need to move, as well [/idealism].

But as Mold put it, there is sure to be a lot of red tape, as with any government organization. The fact that no one has thought to streamline this process boggles the mind [/cynicism].

To the CEO of the company that contracts the Armys IT. Jesse may know. In the case of the Marines Corps and Navy its EDS, the primary contractor for NMCI. Ross Perots old company, may it go bankrupt.

Not nesassarily true. The biggest consumer tends to vascilate year to year between the Navy and the Chair Force, depending on what programs they are pushing. The Marines, no small spenders either, have been gaining increasing funding due to their high visibilty in Iraq. The Marines have sunk a retarded amount of money into MV22, which has only just come on line the past few years. They also have AH1X and UH1Y, plus significant roles/costs in AAV7 and F35.

Last time I was in an Air Force fighter, it still had a green screen radar. Yes, it did have the nice garphics pop up on the windsreen, but the computer had a DX486 cpu in it. The most money seemed to go into the bombs and such, which were shared by the Navy and Marines. And I had to buy my own combat boots as well, along with my own food. Even when I was hospitalized, I had to pay for the hospital food. Can you imagine having to pay for that crap? Try giving that stuff to an animal and you'd be arrested for cruelty.

Still, Marine Corps even with it's new F35 program and the V22 Osprey and high tech pepper sprays and batons, it's still has the smallest budget from the defense. Cheer Force on the other hand have space programs and UFO crap and they get a huge chuck of the budget pie. What's it got to do with laptops and computers? We have outdated crap, probably some surplus and junk from the Air Force given to us. When I was in Oki our main computer boots up in over 5 minutes! It was freaking old and dirty. It used to be white I can tell but over the years it turned brown. That's how old it was, but still it worked as we intended it to do so we didn't replace it. I was an Aircraft Mechaninc/Tech and I tell you we have tools and equipment dating back from Vietnam and Korean War era.

Oh and Marine Corps chow is crap that's why I go to an Air Force base nearby to get some good chow.

Then again, for what it's being used for, a Pentium M is more than enough. The government and most corporations DO NOT upgrade until they need too. My old job, which was retail, all the store systems in the house ran Pentium 3's.

I'm not meaning to put down the Marine corps by any means. I just mean that everyone has problems, just in different areas. Never tried Marine chow, but I have had some Navy food down in San Diego and it seemed the same as ours. The only really bad food I ever had was in the hospital. There I prefered what came out of an IV.

Budget issues. The money for the computers has to come from somewhere.
Heres an example. In 1999/2000 the Surface Navy had an abnormally bad stretch, with a bakers dozen (if I recall correctly) groundings/collisions. The costs (including repair/lawsuits/compensation/medical) were astronomical, exceeding the Navys normal repair budget by such a staggering amount, all normal PMS's and yard periods were defered that year. That didnt even scratch the tip of the iceberg. To help cover the costs, LPD17X's budget was cut into, pushing that program back. Even that didnt cover the costs, so F18 procurement was also cut into. Later, down the road to recoup the costs to F18, T6 was pushed back and funding reappropriated back to F18. This was accomplished by allowing the Airforce to take delivery of theirs first, which in turn pushed T34 (for the pilot programs..the NFO programs received their T6s)up to and past its service life, which in turn resulted in the ongoing re-sparing (costing more money) of those aircraft until delivery of T6 is finally accepted in 2009.

House nips at NMCI Budget(2001)

Yes, the Marines have always had a small budget. But a lot of things have been changing the past 9 years IRT IT and budgets. DOD was getting a black eye (they still are) over computer security. In the cases of the Marines and Navy (and Im sure the others as well) interoperability was a huge issue. Marines go to boat, get on boat, plug systems into ships network - and suprise suprise - nothing works. As part of NMCI (Navy Marine Corps Intranet) both the Marines and Navy have been getting "new" 'standardized' hardware from .........Dell through EDS

Of course, its crap hardware...PIII systems, mix n match servers etc. And it gets worse. They (Navy/Marines) dont own it. They rent it on a yearly basis. A 'Blue" seat (typical PIII 933 system) costs $945 a year. Laptops cost more. Of course, those yearly rental fees also include upgrades (when deemed to be required by EDS) and service. As for the cost, EDS was originally contracted for $14B, with an additional $6bil being set aside for cost overruns. EDS went through the first $14 without blinking an eye, then took the $6bill pre-programed overrun fund and asked for more. The only way to get more in DOD is to defer until the next budget, put in a supplementary request, or steal it from another area. Stealing is pretty much verboten--cant steal from some one else "pot", except in exceptional circumstances, with all kinds of hurdles to jump and permissions to get.

The AirFarce has been under the buget gun the past few years. Bigtime. They didnt get as much press in the last war, and the cost overruns for F22 and C17 (among some smaller issues such as T34/vsT38+T37 and T6)drew a lot of "why are we giving you guys so much money?" questions.
Theyve actually had to cut grounds keeping costs for their golf courses 8O

http://www.eds.com/sites/nmci/

Oh, boot up times are down, but load up time is around 5-7 minutes because of all the security/network crapware (25% of which is non functional) plus another 3 minutes minumum to log in.

The Marine Corps is always looking for cheap alternatives. We have shitty PC's and laptops and still we do our best to keep up with our daily tasks. As an aircraft tech I always used our computers for initiating our daily workloads, ordering parts and all transactions. Sometimes the computers break down on us and it gets really frustrating since we have a lot of pressure from our superior. Our networks as well is not that good and it always gets choked during busy hours making all transactions really slow. Sometime the whole network shuts down and we go back to the basics and use paper works instead.

Talk about network security. The military suppose to be secure but it's not at all. Almost all our PC's are infected with virus, since the users are the weak link and the ones who exposes the network to the threats. One time when I was station in Okinawa, someone got a hold of the military e-mail addresses, which holds just about 90% of all military personnel e-mail add. So our system gets flooded with virus and spams. There are times that my e-mail address gets over 1000 junk mails over the weekend. And you can't change your address since it has to be your last name, first name initial and middle name initial and the organization you're working for. The network administrator can barely keep up with the issue. And then there's lots of porn sent from one person to the other, infecting other pcs and laptops, filling up the storage with porn, junk mail, vids and spams.

If the laptop is being used in the field, then the main thing the military will be concerned about is that the laptop can take a heck of a beating. As long as it can run their software and still work after after getting dropped in the mud, the miltary is perfectly satisfied.

As for where the money goes, check out http://www.fas.org/main/home.jsp

I take it NMCI hasnt made it to oki yet then