Sierra Army Depot One of the largest fleets of armored vehicles in the world, sitting out in the Cal

[chuckiechan]

Sierra Army Depot:
One of the largest fleets of armored vehicles in the world, sitting out in the California desert

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sierra-army-depot

Nearly a mile above sea level in an isolated corner of Northern California, more than 26,000 armored vehicles stand ready. They form the most noticeable part of the Sierra Army Depot, a 36,000-acre repository for the U.S. Army’s tanks, trucks, and armored personal carriers.

[SNIP]

The massive armor build up at Sierra Army Depot isn’t really the result of military necessity, it’s actually something of a Congressional boondoggle. Army leadership has been calling for a suspension of Abrams tank production for years. But alas, military spending is the domain of the Congressional Appropriations Committees, and when it comes to the Abrams, Congress says “More Tanks!” Pending an anachronistic World War II-style armor clash on the European plains, the vehicles will continue to accumulate out at the Sierra Army Depot for the foreseeable future.

So it looks like someone's congressional district has a piece of the tank building pie, and they keep making tanks we don't need just to keep the factories running. This is the swamp's bread and butter: shoveling taxpayer money into the government furnace to keep themselves warm and fed at your expense.

A billion here and a billion there, and it begins to add up to real money.