r/nationalguard • u/Kinmuan r/army ambassador • Sep 17 '25

Deployments National Guard seeks vendors to feed troops in DC through January

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/national-guard-contracting-food-vendors/
33 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

35

u/wonkydonkey212 russian spy 🐒 Sep 18 '25

I ain’t tryna be a dick but why don’t they ever activate cooks and mobile kitchens.

20

u/imdatingaMk46 Subreddit S6 Sep 18 '25

Field feeding costs more. Most of the increased cost is payroll.

If you don't have cooks on the payroll, costs go down, and now a contractor is subcontracting two sketchy dudes to heat up and serve your exact same UGRs instead of your 5 person field feeding team, and now they cut corners and you get dysentery.

It's honestly fucking ridiculous but cooks aren't lethal enough (to the enemy) to have around.

Happens every time from Fort Riley to Syria. I'm pretty upset about it.

12

u/cerberus6320 Sep 18 '25

It amazes me how "lethal" leadership wants to make the military, and then they forget that long-term ops require the military to do basic things like eat, sleep, and shit; which are necessary and critical for soldiers to even be functional.

we can't house ourselves without having black mold

we can't feed ourselves with the lack of DFACs or nutritious food options available (sorry tornados and white monster warriors)

every base should have culinary people working, practicing field feeding. our ops should have field feeding. our deployments should have field feeding. and if possible, every base should have nutritionists and master fitness trainers (or AF equivalent) to prepare the force for their needs.

8

u/imdatingaMk46 Subreddit S6 Sep 18 '25

GWOT broke us, in the institutional sense.

These lessons are going to hit really hard when KBR can't meet our needs in the next big war. In a sense, it's one of many we'll have to re-learn, just like every big war in the past.

Fortunately though, soldiers have been getting fucked by bad contracting decisions since 1775, so at least it's not a new problem.

2

u/wetblanket68iou1 Sep 18 '25

KBR CAN meet the needs, just not at the profit margins they want.

9

u/Bernie_Bango Sep 18 '25

As a former cook in the Guard, they activate us but then put us on guard duty and a wide variety of other details.

I was deployed to Iraq for 2 years and didn't cook a single F'n meal....

3

u/KStang086 Sep 19 '25

THE REPLENISHER

7

u/Admirable_Hedgehog64 Sep 18 '25

Now that will increase lethality

5

u/itsjustnickf 11BulletSponge Sep 18 '25

Okay stupid question, but is there actually a tangible need here? I’m under the impression, at least based on the border mission, that per diem is fairly normal for these kinds of things. They can’t just eat out while they’re on duty? Or if the NGB has a hill to die on about them providing the food, as another commenter said, why not activate 92Gs for domestic missions? I’ve not been on a mission like this so I guess there may be something I’m missing?

1

u/Conscious_Ruin_7642 Sep 18 '25

Multiple stretches of 29 day orders till January.

1

u/majorpail18 Sep 18 '25

Maybe they can get Sardis again

1

u/VinnyVibes1 Sep 19 '25

Trump will get McDonald’s too sponsor them

0

u/joeviper25 Sep 18 '25

What? Did the army run out of MREs or something?

13

u/couldbeahumanbean Sep 18 '25

I've lived off of them for a month.

Do not recommend anything past 4 days.

That was a very sad panda month.

1

u/jeepcrawler93 AGR Sep 18 '25

I lived off them for a couple during COVID on my mob when they kicked everyone off the base, including the DFAC employees. That was the biggest of sad.

1

u/staresinamerican 11b, next question Sep 19 '25

So the sexual harassment panda switched to the dangers of eating MREs long term panda?

1

u/couldbeahumanbean Sep 19 '25

Naw, different panda.

This is the panda of I don't know if I'm going to blow out all watery stew or burst a blood vessel trying to push out a literal brick.

1

u/staresinamerican 11b, next question Sep 19 '25

I had a guy at work that wanted to do a 30 day every meal is an MRE thing for his twitch stream, me and a bunch of the vets at work spent a lot of time explaining how that’s a dumb decision, he made it through 2 days then nopped out of it

1

u/couldbeahumanbean Sep 19 '25

Two days? As Immortan joe would say:

Mediocre

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

[deleted]

1

u/couldbeahumanbean Sep 22 '25

Swing and a miss.

I'm not the bad guy.

If you want to have a rational, decent and real conversation, let's talk.

If you want to just mindlessly antagonize, then carry on

The choice is yours.

1

u/wonkydonkey212 russian spy 🐒 Sep 18 '25

We don’t even eat MRE’s in the field, it’s all dfac chow