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U.S. Wastes $2.3 Billion on Messed Up Afghan Air Force
I usually don’t just re-sling press releases back at ya’ without too much comment or additional information, but the sleaze squirting out of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) office is almost impossible to otherwise keep track of in both volume and awfulness. To save you some time, I totaled up the expected costs mentioned below: $771.8 for aircraft purchase, $553 million to the Russians and, at $109 million a year for ten years for ongoing logistics support, over $1 billion. Total = over $2.3 billion dollars in blatant waste. Ka-ching!!!!!!!!
So, without further introduction, here is another snapshot of how your tax money is being spent in America’s 51st state, Afghanistan.
SIGAR’s audit of the Afghan Special Mission Air Wing (SMW) found that the Department of Defense is moving forward with a $771.8 million purchase of aircraft even though the Afghans lack the capacity to operate and maintain them. Furthermore, DOD awarded $553 million to Rosoboronexport, a Russian government agency, even after receiving SIGAR’s recommendations that moving forward was imprudent.
Among the report’s findings:
–NATO and DOD do not have a plan with milestones and dates for achieving full strength for the SMW to justify the fleet size.
–DOD performs 50% of maintenance and repair, and 70% of critical maintenance & logistics management for SMW and does not have a plan for transferring these functions to the Afghans.
–SMW had less than one-quarter of the 806 personnel needed to reach full strength and during the length of the audit made no tangible growth.
–Only seven Afghan pilots are qualified to fly with night vision goggles, which is necessary for most counter-terrorism missions.
–Difficulty finding recruits who are literate and do not have associations with criminal/insurgent activity has slowed the growth of the SMW.
–Afghan Ministries of Defense and Interior do not have an agreement on the SMW command and control structure, impacting growth and capacity.
–DOD task orders to provide maintenance, logistics, and supply services lack performance metrics and oversight has been inadequate.
–DOD intends to provide an additional $109 million per year for oversight, maintenance, training, and logistics support for the next several years.
–Training commander and U.S. contractors acknowledge the Afghan government will not be able to independently perform maintenance & logistics for the SMW for at least 10 years.
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Rich Bauer said...
1Instead of the garbage truck photo, in keeping with our failure to learn from past history, replace it with a photo of helicopters airlifting the last man out of our embassy.
06/28/13 2:25 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
2quote:”Training commander and U.S. contractors acknowledge the U.S. government will not be able to wipe it’s ass with two hands and a mirror for at least 10 years.”unquote
whudda thunk
06/28/13 3:20 PM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
3Off topic, here’s what I wrote in reply to “John Poole” on the prior post:
John Poole wrote:
“MLCLT (that’s me) As a non believer (Obama defined me) I am no physical threat to anyone”
That’s around a ten percent relief to me. Meanwhile what I still find very creepy and personally menacing is your irrelevant message to me about “Gay Jesus” combined with some words about dead children. Come on, get real and please have a bit more personal discipline, as I tell you:
Provoactive personal messages to a publicly professed Catholic (me), equating Jesus with sodomy and then also mentioning the deaths of children in the same message, are personally menacing at face value. So, John Poole, please knock it off.
And as for this extra bit you (John Poole) wrote:
“State Department employees say that most responders to WMW (that’s this blog, PVB’s blog) remind them of the Twelve Monkey types. I blame that on your rants”…
…I take that as a compliment! I shall rant more!
06/29/13 7:27 PM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
4PS, re my above message, oh GOOD GOOD! “John Poole” referred to “STATE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES” as my main critics?
HA! Oh God! HAHAHA! On THIS blog? John Poole refers to “STATE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES” as some kinds of authorities about…oh God, about WHAT? About SAYING THINGS THE STATE DEPARTMENT DOESN’T LIKE?
Oh God, that’s just too bizarre for words! HAHAHAHAH! But there have been such upside-down definitions of “sanity” before, cf fast forward to 5:40 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITuvkuYKz6I
06/29/13 7:40 PM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
5PS, as a Catholic OF partly Jewish ancestry (German Jews who survived the Holocaust), here’s something more from me to John Poole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUCNAnp2QAI
06/29/13 7:56 PM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
6And one more for John Poole, on behalf of my Jewish ancestors and cousins AND on behalf of all Catholics too!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFzNBzKTS4I
06/29/13 8:01 PM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
7MLCLT. Jesus being gay doesn’t change his message of compassion and forgiveness which is important.
There are many many decent and honorable State Department career employees. Like any huge group it has flawed members and leaders.
Guys who have a need to define themselves like you’ve done seem desperate. I don’t reference your links nor do I would send a link to you to prove a point. For the sake of the others let’s drop this dust up. But don’t think I won’t respond to your religious lunacy if you keep embedding it with regular subjects.
06/29/13 8:38 PM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
8Here’s one more for John Poole:
You’ve already gone beyond any “physical threat” to me. You’re defending an organisation which has already unlawfully kidnapped my daughter. In addition to that you’re personally smearing me.
Those actions have consequences.
06/30/13 5:58 AM | Comment Link
meloveconsullongtime said...
9And John Poole, your and the State Department’s attempt at intimidation has been noted. It doesn’t work, motherfucker. You’re not going to shut me up about what you’ve done to my daughter.
Go ahead and drone me. When you take a man’s daughter, you can expect him to react in more insane ways than you’ve yet imagined.
06/30/13 6:05 AM | Comment Link
teri said...
10Well, as Will Rogers (1879 – 1935) once said, “If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?”
06/30/13 8:34 AM | Comment Link
John Poole said...
11MLCLT- consequences indeed- you now have PVB’s site to yourself to make your paranoid charges and express your religious lunacy.
PVB- I’ve enjoyed the exchanges.
06/30/13 9:49 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
12What’s a billion dollars anyway? Nobody figures it will affect their lives. Speaking of, people only complain when the big dog shits on their yard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/30/berlin-washington-cold-war
You people obviously have not been paying attention. Rule of law? We have been an outlaw country, a rogue state since 1963. What took you a-holes so long to figure it out.
06/30/13 9:53 PM | Comment Link
Christopher Baxter said...
13What is needed for the Afghans to support will come over time and I don’t remember the American Armed forces running helicopters, cargo aircraft and other military equipment in 1776, 1812, or 1914. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was the American Air Force, Afghan Air Force or others.
Suspending the purchase is not what one does in the middle of a counter insurgency. You keep what’s running, running and work through the problems, shortages, training and fix bottle neck after bottle neck. Not cry in your soup, feel sorry for yourself, blame others and stop programs that are already late after being sometimes mismanaged by a peace time bureaucracy that lives in Washington, Virginia and gets to go home every night in peace. In the words of the Late Gen Norman Schwarzkopf: “The battle plan is good to the first five minutes of the battle” and that is why one fixes what’s broken, adjusts and improvises. The ISAF folks know what they are doing in many cases so let them do their jobs and look at the end result, not somewhere in the middle to justify a policy of disengagement and disinterest from 1989 when we all could have stabilized Afghanistan on the cheap before the whole world community turned its back with predicable results .
Oversight is important, but it should not turn into micro management from people half a world away or a pretext for another agenda (not necessarily SIGAR who are more misguided and wrapped up in procedure, not combat) . People with other agenda’s should stay out of Foreign Affairs and stick to municipal affairs, local politics, local garbage pick up, soft ball, or what their child’s Hamster by the name of Rupert is doing after school. Please for god’s sake stay out of a life and death struggle by Afghans, Americans, Canadians and others who are actually committed to seeing the mission through
Before making a procurement decision, in or out of government, please go into the hospital at K.A.F. (Kandahar air field) and see patients with a tube in their mouth because you or I screwed up a procurement or equipment was repeatedly with infighting did not arrive in time . Remember these are the lucky ones. This is where our true loyalty lies, or should for those pretending to have a conscience
07/2/13 9:10 PM | Comment Link