RTA US watchdog is asking why 16 planes bought for the Afghan Air Force, costing almost $500 million, were turned into scrap metal valued at just $32,000. The government wants to know why hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money were wasted on the project.
The military transport planes had been sitting at Kabul International Airport for years, before they were sent for scrap. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), wants to know why the money was wasted. According to Reuters, he had asked Air Force Secretary Deborah James to keep a record of all decisions concerning the destruction of the 16 C-27J planes.
Sopko also wants to know what will happen to another four transport planes currently stored at the US Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany.
“I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars,” Sopko said.
The 20 planes were bought from Alenia, which is part of the Italian aircraft company Fimmeccanica SpA. However, according to a SIGAR letter sent to US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the program was ended in March 2013, “after sustained, serious performance, maintenance, and spare parts problems and the planes were grounded,” ABC reported.
By January 2013, according to Sopko’s office, the aircraft were not airworthy and had only flown a total of 234 of the 4,500 hours required in nine months from January through September 2012. Spoko’s office also said that a further $200 million was needed to buy spare parts.
The Defense Logistics Agency was responsible for destroying the planes and Sopko now wants to know if any of the parts of the planes were sold before they were sent for scrap metal.
Major Bradlee Avots, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the 16 aircraft at Kabul International Airport had been destroyed “to minimize impact on drawdown of US Forces in Afghanistan,” and added that more information would be released after a review. The US government is currently in the process of scaling down from its present military personnel in Afghanistan of around 26,000 to a force of just under 10,000, who will be staying in a mainly advisory role.
Avots also said that the US Department of Defense and the US Air Force were still deciding what to do with the four aircraft in Germany.
SIGAR has been investigating possible wasteful spending on warplanes since the end of 2013, following questions raised by military officials and non-profit organizations.
Sopko has said that he does not know if wasteful plane procurement was due to any criminal malice or was just mismanagement, but that the “scrap metal” incident in Afghanistan was not an isolated case.
In June, despite Afghanistan being a landlocked country, a US government watchdog found that the Pentagon spent more than $3 million obtaining eight patrol boats that were never used. Additionally, the cost of each boat turned out to be about $375,000 – far more than the $50,000 they usually sell for in the US.
During his investigation, Sopko said that records related to the purchase and cancelation of the patrol boats were severely lacking, and his questions to the military have not resulted in adequate answers.
“The military has been unable to provide records that would answer the most basic questions surrounding this $3 million purchase,” his office told the Washington Post in a statement in June.
Tghese plans were probably NOT destroyed. They are lass than 10 years old. They were slid sideways over to the Black Ops budget and are probably now delivering dope all over the world from the “stan”. Black Tar opium is a trade standard for guber-mint dope pushers. “The spice must flow” 🙂 Think about this whole story and look up the background on the C-27. State of the art aircraft and they were dumped in the “scrap”? yeah, right. Guess IS-IS has a bunch of mice C-27’s to fly supplies from Libya to Syria and US transpondered and marked. 😛 Same old game different lies. Buy more ammo. Liberty1775
There is no way those plane were destroyed and once again the people are being lied to and most will drink the kool aid and believe the lie. This country now is living proof that social engineering and fluoride works well in producing total idiots! Throw in a few SSRI and a football game or dancing with the fools and all is well in lala land.
So can we add these to the 11 “missing” planes from Libya? =27 for the devils, 0 for the almost-angels.
Are we supposed to believe that our dear leaders have spy capabilities that can read everyone’s shoe size from 65,000 miles but they can’t find these planes? Or their black boxes?
yukyukyuk This gets funnier by the day. That’s what happens when the elites suffer from classic SFB Syndrome…(Shit for Brains)