The Pentagon is in the news again, this time thanks to a report that reveals it has lost large amounts of F-35 fighter jet parts housed around the world. The F-35 is not only used by the United States, but by our allies around the world, requiring spare parts to be positioned in critical locations when they are inevitably needed.
It turns out that the five-sided building doesn’t know where these rooms are or even who owns them. And yet, they continue to be the best-funded federal agency in the country.
Your tax dollars are working hard to purchase massive amounts of military equipment from the military-industrial complex just to be lost in the void, possibly falling into the hands of nefarious actors or illicit arms dealers. So let’s dive in and find out just how alarming this inventory gap is.
BREAKING: The Pentagon cannot account for the hundreds of thousands of spare parts worth millions of dollars that are stockpiled around the world for the United States and its allies who use its most expensive weapon, the F-35 jet , according to congressional auditors.
– unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 24, 2023
Who is in charge?
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report discovered that the Pentagon failed to track tens of thousands of F-35 fighter jet parts worth millions of dollars.
The report said:
“The Department of Defense did not originally intend to own the F-35 assets, which include the worldwide pool of spare parts and support equipment, special tooling and special test equipment. .”
The global pool the GAO refers to is inventory strategically placed around the world for our allies to use for their F-35 jets. So why didn’t the Department of Defense think it would need to own the F-35 assets?
RELATED: Anti-Gun Biden Leads the Way in Arms Deals, Selling 57% of Autocratic Governments
Your guess is as good as mine. The report goes on to explain what happened in its place:
“Because the DOD did not develop a plan to address this issue…the prime contractors continued to maintain accountability.”
Prime contractors who did the DOD work would be Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney. But since this is not their responsibility, the accuracy of this inventory is questionable at best.
The idea that Biden’s administrator is operating with guidelines to provide oversight and accountability for botched drone strikes is laughable given that Biden’s ‘just strike’ killing an aid worker and children in Kabul only resulted in , according to the Pentagon, no responsibility. https://t.co/Oscn2ibxeK
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) May 21, 2023
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Not a clue
The GAO report nails the Pentagon program office in charge of the F-35, stating:
“The F-35 Joint Program Office was unable to provide the cost, total quantity, and location of the spares in the global spares pool, and continues to rely on contractor’s records to obtain this information.”
Consider it for a spell. The office that is staffed and equipped by you, the taxpayer, and that is supposed to know all about the F-35 has no idea how many spare parts we have, how many lost parts, how many amount paid by our allies, or even how much they are worth.
The GAO noted that the program office had spent about $12 million over the past three years to control spare parts inventory. Whose money? Your money.
I argue that is not money well spent. Add to that that these spare parts are for global pool inventory; you should be even more enraged.
Our F-35 spare parts are just available for our allies to take at will, as if we were mining these inventories like food pantries or community libraries. However, instead of “take a can, leave a can” or “take a pound, leave a pound”, it would appear that we are operating in a “take an electro-optical targeting system, leave whatever” system.
Waste, fraud and abuse are nothing new. The Pentagon’s growing reliance on private contractors in the post-9/11 era raises multiple questions of accountability, transparency, and efficiency. [4/5] https://t.co/PcfqZ3arp0 pic.twitter.com/2t4Lm4mMxb
— The Costs of War Project (@CostsOfWar) May 22, 2023
Nobody cares
If you have been paying attention, it is clear that the Pentagon has not yet developed a basic accounting concept or inventory practices. In February, they were forced to admit that they had lost nearly $220 billion worth of equipment given to military contractors over the years.
To explain to you what this means, in various places around the world there are civilian contractors working for the military. These contractors are often given cool military gear and equipment for a short period of time to use in the performance of their duties in support of the DOD.
Ideally, these contractors send back these cool gadgets, but most don’t, it seems. If that’s not enough, last year the Pentagon failed its fifth consecutive audit, accounting for only about 39% of its $3.5 trillion in assets.
RELATED: War in Ukraine could quickly escalate as pressure to send in F-16s mounts
This means that 60% of all assets held by the Pentagon are missing or, to put it plainly, lost. And this week, the Pentagon let us know that due to an accounting errorthey were able to “free up” $3 billion for aid to Ukraine.
Their wording is hilarious, as if we should be grateful that they were able to “free up” funds for Ukraine, instead of worrying that they overpriced the weapons already sent. Undoubtedly, an officer received a medal for discovering these “additional funds”.
The Pentagon failed the audit every time. They can’t be $3 trillion for decades. Now this new audit has failed. Yet they want to verify each of your $600 txn.
RULES FOR YOU, NONE FOR ME pic.twitter.com/qKnUmZj5oA
— 🌋🌋 Deep₿lueCrypto 🌋🌋 (@DeepBlueCrypto) May 24, 2023
No need to balance
Every day, I balance my checkbook. I don’t do it the way my mom balances hers; As a millennial, I’ve embraced technology and do all my balancing between my personal books and my small business through my computer.
I also maintain a reasonably tight monthly budget which is reviewed regularly. I do this because as a relatively responsible ordinary American citizen, I know it is my responsibility to manage my money and my affairs effectively.
But this same principle does not apply to men and women in the five-sided building. Think about it, at this point, when they get caught, they openly admit they don’t know where their stuff is, and our elected politicians keep giving them more stuff!
At Congress 2021 asked $30 billion more than President Biden requested for the defense budget. In 2022, President Biden increased his initial request from $780 billion to $813 billion. Then Congress asked for another $45 billion, bringing the all-time high to $858 billion.
This year, Biden is expected to ask for $886 billion, a 3% increase from last year, making it the biggest peacetime military budget in history — more money to waste on the Pentagon. For some perspective, according to World Population Review, Uncle Sam spends $150 billion more every year than the following 10 countries together.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said yesterday that defense spending cuts are “out of order”.
Why is that? Because according to him, the defense of our country is imperative, and spending (or losing) large sums of taxpayers’ money in his name is the only way to protect us.
You’re not fooling anyone, Kevin. Don’t believe the hype; America, Congress doesn’t care about the defense of this nation because if they did, they would hold the Pentagon responsible for doing such a terrible job.
Instead, they are preoccupied with the beast of defense lobbying that whispers sweet nothings in their ears year after year.
What is the… https://t.co/4itU7HBsTv
— The Political Insider (@TPInsidr) May 23, 2023
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