Rust Costs Pentagon $23 Billion

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghost_of_kuji/2763674926/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Flickr/Ghost of Kuji</a>

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Yesterday, I explained how the grand debt compromise cuts only $7 billion in real money from the Pentagon’s budget in the next two years—roughly the cost of 3 submarines, or 20 fighter jets, or one-fifth of one KBR contract in Iraq.

Guess what costs more than three times that much per year? Rust! According to Phil Ewing over at DOD Buzz:

Commanders at all levels are more aware than they’ve ever been about the hazards and costs of corrosion, which cost DoD $22.5 billion just in 2009, according to one study. The brass is convening rust conferences, pursuing new materials and technology to help defeat it, and, in the case of the Navy, completely changing its thinking about what it means for ships.

What’s the big reason the brass isn’t doing anything about it? Ewing again:

Traditionally, if you wanted to impress a general, admiral or lawmaker, you didn’t show a presentation about rust. You talked about “transformation,” “disruptive” or “game-changing” technologies, and had big diagrams that showed ships, aircraft, ground vehicles, UAVs, satellites and troops connected by lightning bolts.

What goes for generals…also goes for congressmen. How about it, Buck McKeon? When’s the House Armed Services Committee going to stop caterwauling about its fancy shiny pork products and invest in money-saving Brillo pads?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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