I saw this document once, believe it was cancelled because of public ridicule. at any rate, does anybody know where I can find it?
Of course that document was subject to ridicule. Who the hell puts chocolate on oatmeal cookies? :mad:
I wonder if the public ridicule met the MIL_STD spec for public ridicule?
I dunno… I don’t want an STD anywhere near my cookies…
I’m not really seeing any reason for ridicule. Given what unscrupulous contractors have foisted off on the government in the past (and on-going) strict standards are a good idea.
Yeah, this isn’t what an army chef out in the field is expected to follow. This is for the companies that mass-produce military rations. They’re going to do the absolute cheapest (and probably lowest-quality) product that won’t fall afoul of the official regulations, so you’d better make sure that the official regulations don’t leave any wiggle room.
Exactly. And I’d be willing to bet that just about any commercial enterprise contracting with a bakery to supply baked goods to be used as part of their products or to be sold in their stores has very similar specifications, for the exact same reasons.
As part of my job (logistics for the Navy), I have access to the ASSIST database (entirely unclassified), which also includes such gems of military standards as (titles cut and pasted without editing):
File, Dog, Toenail
Poultry, Live
POUND CAKE, CANNED (why are you shouting, ASSIST database?)
WHEAT BRAN, EDIBLE
ORANGE NUT ROLL, CANNED
TORTILLAS, TACO SHELLS AND CHALUPAS
Cookie, Sandwich
Candy, Bar, Chocolate-Fudge, Survival Type
Chocolate Flavored Sirup; Beverage, And Topping
PORK AND EGGS, CHOPPED, CANNED
PUDDING, PINAPPLE AND RICE, CANNED
Meat and Corn, Canned
HEADCHEESE (yes, it has its own military manual)
Flavoring, Imitation Maple, Tablets
Hide, Cattle, Wet-Salted
This was mostly from browsing the food and animal-related categories. There are thousands upon thousands of more, in pretty much every category of object you can imagine. I’d be happy to take requests.
I believe during the Clinton administration the DoD started to de-emphasize the use of Mil-Specs for everything in favor of buying commercial stuff where possible. So rather than buying mil spec cookies (and having to pay extra so that the vendor can meet that requirement), they might buy the same Otis Spunkmeyer cookies that the airlines given out.
And, by the way, the database is publicly available here.
Is there a WHEAT BRAN, STRUCTURAL or WHEAT BRAN, SPILL ABSORBENT, or WHEAT BRAN, DECORATIVE, or really any other kind of WHEAT BRAN other than EDIBLE?
I remember searching a military supply catalog some years ago. The listing for patient aids was, of course,
aids, patient
This was when AIDS was big in the news.
That is the only entry that comes up from the search term “BRAN”.
Once again ralph124c asks an inexplicably strange question that turns out to have an interesting answer.
This not only makes procurement a whole lot easier, but military types out on the sharp end get to see rations that remind them of Back Home, as opposed to always looking like the Big Green Machine.
The memo in the link mentions something called a “performance specification” which is apparently not a mil-spec. I assume that rather than specifying that a bar of mil-spec soap is no less than 2" x 4" and is made of no less than 30% sodium stearate, and so on, that it’s a spec that says it must be a commercially available bar bath soap, etc… It always did seem a bit idiotic that my father had leftover USAF chap-sticks for years that were in little olive-drab tubes, that said “Lip Balm, anti-chap” (or something similar) and said “Made by Chap-Stick corp”, and had the same exact Chap-Stick balm inside that you could get in a Chap-Stick branded version at any gas station or grocery store. I’m sure the USAF paid a premium for the things versus just buying however many pallets of the things commercially.
The only thing I don’t quite comprehend is what the preventions against say… Dial getting an order for 25 million bars of soap, and then making some special corner-cutting less-than-retail version of Dial for the order, rather than just diverting some of their usual retail-oriented production for the order? Do they specifically buy from distributors instead of manufacturers? Does the performance spec somehow dictate that they can’t do that?
When I was in the aerospace industry in the pre-internet days, a favorite time killer for slow times was browsing the microfiche for funny MIL specs.
My best finds, that I recall, were the ones for condoms and divining rods.
Couldn’t find any divining rods (searching for “divine” and “divining”, anyway). Lots of condoms, though.
The military has this strange habit of writing everything in Notation, Polish, Reverse.
I’m so glad this is not about Mother-in-Law Sexually Transmitted Diseases.