A week ago, BRT stated that the actions of the MIC is bankrupting the country with endless wars and untold waste at unimaginable scale. Factor in ineptness and the inability to manage money at any reasonable level whatsoever describes the defense department black hole where, beyond its event horizon, nobody ever sees just how much of a FUBAR the Pentagon truly is.
Meanwhile, the Air Force, which has a $156 billion annual budget, still doesn’t always use serial numbers. It has no idea how much of almost anything it has at any given time. Nuclear weapons are the exception, and it started electronically tagging those only after two extraordinary mistakes, in 2006 and 2007. In the first, the Air Force accidentally loaded six nuclear weapons in a B-52 and flew them across the country, unbeknownst to the crew. In the other, the services sent nuclear nose cones by mistake to Taiwan, which had asked for helicopter batteries.
“What kind of an organization,” Andy asks, “doesn’t keep track of $20 billion in inventory?”
It gets better.
Ahead of misappropriation, fraud, theft, overruns, contracting corruption and other abuses that are almost certainly still going on, the Pentagon’s first problem is its books. It’s the world’s largest producer of wrong numbers, an ingenious bureaucratic defense system that hides all the other rats’ nests underneath. Meet the Gordian knot of legend, brought to life in modern America.
AT THE TAIL end of last year, the Department of Defense finally completed an audit. At a cost of $400 million, some 1,200 auditors charged into the jungle of military finance, but returned in defeat. They were unable to pass the Pentagon or flunk it. They could only offer no opinion, explaining the military’s empire of hundreds of acronymic accounting silos was too illogical to penetrate.
Sounds like healthcare doesn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment