Defense Spending

  • The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit (including a personal experience)

  • $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions between 1998 and 2015 could not be traced, documented, or explained.

The long-awaited, Congressionally mandated Department of Defense audit concluded. Read the resulting synopsis from “The Nation”:
Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed (Post with downloadable PDF file, 787 Kb)  As reported at https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/   And a shorter synopsis HERE.

Quotes from “The Nation”:

“In all, at least a mind-boggling $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions between 1998 and 2015 could not be traced, documented, or explained, concluded Skidmore. To convey the vastness of that sum, $21 trillion is roughly five times more than the entire federal government spends in a year. It is greater than the US Gross National Product, the world’s largest at an estimated $18.8 trillion.”   (Underlining is mine  ~ Don)

“The Pentagon’s accounting fraud diverts many billions of dollars that could be devoted to other national needs: health care, education, job creation, climate action, infrastructure modernization, and more. Indeed, the Pentagon’s accounting fraud amounts to theft on a grand scale—theft not only from America’s taxpayers, but also from the nation’s well-being and its future.”

And such theft goes into the pockets of this country’s 1%ers!

 Check out these recently added subtopics:

DoD Cost Control

The Black Budget

Billions in Upgrade Cost Overruns Put F-35 Fighter at Risk

Billions in Upgrade Cost Overruns Put F-35 Fighter at Risk

TYPICAL! In designing new systems such as this, corrections for “unks”, or “known unknowns,” is supposedly priced into the contract. However, an escape clause is generally included for addressing “unk-unks”, or “unknown unknowns”… and THIS is where military R&D contractors REALLY make their money at the tax-payers expense, because even the unks can lead to unk-unks and more “developments.” Couple that with a contractor spreading subcontracts in as many congressional districts as possible to preclude contract cancellation, which I personally witnessed on the F-35 program, “desirable” design changes plus quite weak government control from internal advancement dependant politics and military development programs are sure-fire money makers!!! Also note my comment on the last paragraph ~Don Chapin, Capt, USAF, Ret’d… an ex-R&D government aerospace engineer

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