Pentagon’s Craziest Flow Chart Ever

A few months ago we spilled the beans about the damage PowerPoint has caused in the Afghanistan operations abroad, but now the Pentagon has let loose the true dogs of war: The Government Acquisitions Process.

But that slide was child’s play compared to the three-foot wall chart the military uses to explain its gajillion-step process for developing, buying, and maintaining gear. The “Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management” diagram is kind of a precis to the whole interminable progression, from “decompose concept functional definition into component concepts & assessment objective” to “execute support program that meets materiel readiness and operational support performance requirements and sustains system in most cost-effective manner.” Stare long enough, and you’ll start to see why it takes a decade for the Defense Department to buy a tanker plane, or why marines are still reading web pages with Internet Explorer 6.

Even printed 3 feet wide that would be tough to read. Having dealt with this process myself, however, I can attest to it shedding absolutely no light on the mysteries within.

I think this may be a 2-kitten slide.

via Revealed! Pentagon’s Craziest PowerPoint Slide EVER | Danger Room | Wired.com.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.