Greece’s Defense Ministry will distribute tablets to conscripts in the context of a program to “upgrade digital skills in the military service.” The cost for 10,000 tablets has been calculated to be over 56 million euros, that is over 5,600 euros per table excluding VAT.
The initial announcement for the purchase was made before Defense Minister Nikos Dendias was assigned to this post, that is before the July elections.
Several opposition media and military news websites have been waiting for an official statement explaining ‘this waste of public money,” – so documentonews.gr. There has not be any so far.
“The total cost is 56,763,692.00 euros! That is, 5,676 euros for each tablet. While a very good tablet costs around 500 euros at retail,” noted the Sunday newspaper.
Taking into account also the education cost for the training in these “super tablets” the newspaper added “The ELIC computer training and necessary certification costs from 100 to 300 euros depending on the days of training one needs. There one learns much more than using a tablet (word, excel, etc.).
There is also a difference for a private person to pay for this cost or for the Army to pay for thousands of trainees. So let’s say that training costs 200 euros and 100,000 soldiers will be trained.
Thus we have: 500 X 10,000 = 5,000,000 and 200 X 100,000 = 20,000,000. Total cost 25 million euros.
“In other words, more than 31 million euros are ‘missing’ on order for the purchase cost to make any sense,” the news paper stressed.
it should be noted that some Greeks on social media made a search for super tablets and noted that the most expensive one they found was at 3,500 euros incl. VAT.
PS Maybe the tablets have a software directly linking them to the Ancient Greek Laptop…as KTG reported a few years ago.
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I would assume that these are military grade tablets with military grade encryption. Honestly, they cannot just hand out iPads for military use. Standard tablets are just too flimsy and stop working when it gets too hot.
These things costs. Still…more than 5k seems a bit steep for a price.
At least I hope that someone thought of this facts….If not then some people just won the jackpot.
they will take home the tablets when released form the Army. so hardly ‘military grade tablets’.
Presumably when they start being issued then we will find out exactly which tablets are being issued and hence know their true cost? Normally when issuing something to everyone you don’t look for best in class but best value for money. About 18 months ago I bought an Android 10.3″ tablet with a good quality IPS screen, 128GB of storage and 4GB of memory for €222. Adding a rugged protective case and a Bluetooth keyboard would still leave it under €300. I would expect the best value for money devices today to be around that price.
I would be astonished if any person recruited today didn’t already have a smart phone and using a tablet is no different so I am not sure why they need any training? Obviously if they are going to use specialist military Apps they would need training on them but surely the military would use its own trainers to provide that. Do they use outside agencies to train them how to march or how to strip, clean, reassemble and fire a gun?
hah, if youve served in the greek army then you know how degraded it has become! training to actually use or maintain a weapon? hardly! weapons are issued to soldiers, but are kept under lock and key in the barracks and in any case ammunition is _never_ issued to conscripts. exactly once during the entire service do they go to the firing range and there are given one whole magazine (for the G3 that’s 20 rounds, one supposes for the newer M16 style rifles that’d be 30 rounds) to fire with zero instruction on even the basics of how to sight the weapon (they’re definitely not sighted in when they come out of the storage locker!) and the range supercvisor hardly cares if anyone actually hits his target. They are almost obsessive about making sure all the ammunition/spent casings are accounted for, and that’s the only thing they seem to care about. then ‘been to the firing range’ can be checked off of some list and that’s the last time the soldier ever gets any experience with his weapon. if there ever was a war we’d be toast in a matter of hours..
nevermind that on base even basics like toilet paper did not exist (everyone kept his own and closely guarded it) and only half the latrines or showers were even functional, for starters.