How much do you think an ordinary metal bolt costs for the Pentagon? Well, in the category of "military procurement"? A penny deal, suppose? The answer will be lower, but for now …
In the meantime, two recent reports from the American press.
First. Corporation "Northrop Grumman Corp." will receive up to $ 13 billion by 2025 for research and development work to create a missile to replace the outdated Minuteman III ICBM. This amount will be allocated in installments until 2025. After that, an additional $ 7.3 billion will be required to complete the research phase. And from 2026 the US will spend another 61 billion dollars on the purchase of new ICBMs. The first missile can only be delivered … in 2029. This is from Bloomberg.
Total spending - $ 80 billion plus. And, "will take off" or "will not take off" will become clear only after a decade …
Second message. The US Navy has said it intends to equip Virginia-class multipurpose submarines with missiles with C-HGB hypersonic gliders. In fiscal 2021, $ 1 billion will be spent on development and research alone. Production costs have not yet been estimated …
But the real prices at which the Pentagon purchased goods for its needs were estimated and published.
Today, this story turns into a saga about the search for several trillions of dollars, which - it is proven - disappeared without a trace in the annals of the Pentagon accounting. But then, in the mid-1980s, corruption in the US defense department was just beginning to triumph, and something leaked into the open press. Now Americans recall with nostalgia how in the 1950s "in the name of strengthening the country's security and defense" they made military equipment "overfulfilling the plan" to save public funds. Not like now …
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Trillions of dollars gone
And now, according to the latest figures from the Potomac, trillions of undocumented dollars have gone missing in the Pentagon area, which patriotic congressmen and senators allocated year after goal to their defenders. And those, realizing to themselves an adequate account of the fact that "there is no one to defend Great America from", safely distributed the tsarist gifts of the Congress to unknown hitherto - everyone is looking for - addresses and … pockets.
Trump is angry. The Pentagon has an audit. And several trillions "floated away" irrevocably. Bloomberg's Anthony Carpaccio said the Department of Defense made "$ 35 trillion in accounting adjustments in 2019." Further, as Finance. Yanoo already writes, “Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says this 35 trillion figure represents“multiple, triple and quadruple counts of the same money that was transferred between accounts”at the Pentagon. This indicates a persistent lack of internal financial controls at the Pentagon, making it extremely difficult to properly account for spending in the largest government budget. And Rep. Jackie Speyer said the Pentagon "applies accounting adjustments like a contractor paint over mold." I.e,money was channeled between accounts to confuse auditors and hide the figures of the stolen funds from the Pentagon budget.
Much is now being written about this, but the price of specific goods for which the Pentagon makes purchases has not been announced in recent years. It can be assumed that it became Top Secret. It is all the more interesting to get acquainted with the open data on this topic, which suddenly surfaced on the Web.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper, for some reason - this does not happen so often, usually scans of materials from previous years are given - on its page published its article from 1986. It lists the prices that the Pentagon paid for quite ordinary purchases. And one can only wonder how in 2020 on a website that could not have existed by definition in 1986 (the Internet did not exist then), this very article from the then paper "Los Angeles Times" suddenly appears. Truly, manuscripts do not burn!
Only $ 37 for … screw
Jack Smith writes on July 30, 1986: “$ 37 screws, a $ 7,622 coffee maker, $ 640 toilet seats; suppliers to our military just won't be oversold "- $ 37 cogs, $ 7,622 coffee maker, $ 640 toilet seats - these supplies will not be resold for our military."
We read Jack Smith: “As a citizen who has always paid his taxes honestly and without complaint, I sometimes get depressed when I read in the newspaper about a corporation that has overpriced its prices for the government, and I help pay for it. Of course, most of our taxes go to weapons, and we are in some significant way contributing to the government's acquisition of any weapon.
You may have read in the newspaper that Litton Industries and two of its former executives are accused of fraudulent government procurement on military contracts worth $ 6.3 million. According to the lawyer, the company "deliberately inflated prices" by about 45 contracts from 1975 to 1984. It makes you wonder if all of our weapons are overrated?
Remember when we found out the government paid $ 640 for plastic toilets for military aircraft? This is when the Pentagon Catalog, convenient for any taxpayer, came out, which described "numerous samples of military equipment", which authors ChristopherCerf & HenryBeard describe as "ordinary products at unusual prices."
The book, for example, lists a "forked-tail hammer" sold to the US Navy for only … $ 435. But you can buy one at any hardware store for $ 10!
Against this background, the price for "McDonnell Douglas" is relatively reasonable - only $ 37 for … a screw. It seems that in all respects this is an ordinary screw, but the Pentagon assures: “The fact is that this expensive screw simply cannot get lost! How many times have you had a cog that rolled off your desktop and disappeared? " No kidding - this is a quote.
Let us add that this book is called "The Pentagon Catalog: Ordinary Products at Extraordinary Prices", and it is still possible to buy it on Amazon in spite of the old edition. Here's the cover:
Here we interrupt quoting an article from the Los Angeles Times and present the Pentagon purchasing prices as quoted in this book:
Screw - $ 37
Hammer - $ 437
Screwdriver - $ 285
Washer - $ 387
Wrench - $ 469
Flashlight - $ 214
Roulette - $ 437
Adjustable wrench - $ 2,228
Pliers - $ 748
Ashtray - $ 659
Plastic toilet seat - $ 640
Coffee maker - $ 7,622
Aluminum Ladder - $ 74,165
All prices are for ONE PIECE!
And now let's try to recalculate these data in connection with inflation - from 1986 to 2019, in order to understand how much these "bolts" and "nuts" cost for the Pentagon in current prices. There are such formulas. Here is one of them - “US Inflation Calculators. Calculation of the inflation rate for an arbitrary period ":
These tables show that inflation from August 1986 to December 2019 in the US is officially estimated at 140 percent.
There are no shopping centers on the battlefield
Now we return to citing an article in the LA Times, where we will find a justification for such high prices for what is purchased - really penny! - products. The logic is ironclad: "It will be embarrassing if some important piece of equipment breaks down because of a small spare part that costs only a few cents … We certainly don't want to risk our planes by equipping them with cheap nuts." And the motivation is even stronger: the high cost of the item is due to the guarantee that, if parts are needed, "there are no shopping centers on the battlefield."
The book's authors Christopher Surf and Henry Byrd point out that they were outraged by the cost of these "war supplies" until they understood how the "war" price worked. And they write with a mockery: you just need to understand that the 10 cents "military pushpin" is not like the usual pushpin, which costs 2 cents at a hardware store on the corner. This understanding should reassure any soldier "when he sits on a $ 640 toilet seat."
Here's a story. Almost anecdotal. But there are a couple more that are not at all funny about the American security forces and their love of money.
From the Lockerbie bombing to 9/11, corruption is everywhere
The explosion of Pan American flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, according to reports that appeared later, could be due to the fact that some Americans wanted to “cover the tracks” of their unsightly financial affairs in the Middle East. In that disaster, the members of the American commission that investigated these cases were killed. For example, such authors as Ludwig de Brackeler or Pierre Cavendish wrote about this in detail:
“Major McKee was a senior officer posted to the Defense Intelligence Agency. McKee was one of several U. S. intelligence officers killed in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103.
The theory that Flight 103 was chosen to attack the group is supported by two independent intelligence experts. Gene Wheaton, a retired military intelligence officer who served 17 years in the Middle East, says: “A couple of my old friends at the Pentagon believe Pan Am Flight 103 was carried out to kill Team McKee. They investigated the hostage-taking, but they were told to investigate a different version, because this fact revealed an unfortunate breach in the security system."
This is so politically correct - "a breach in security" - they call the corruption component of what happened. Having found its ends in Beirut, specifically - among the American security officials, McKee's group urgently flew to Washington, but … did not make it.
Another expert, Tom Dalielle, says: "A police officer, a friend of mine, came to me and said that he was very worried that there were too many Americans at the site of the terrible disaster at Lockerbie, who are searching and examining the wreckage of the plane, possibly destroying important evidence." …
In the end, the Americans blamed the Libyans for the bombing, and no one bothered about their own corruption in the United States. Hush?
The second story related to military money happened on September 11, 2001, when Boeings flew into the Twin Towers in New York. Yes, the Pentagon was also hit. As it was explained to the Americans and to everyone, everyone, everyone in the world, a Boeing plane crashed into the military department.
However, let's look at the photo taken on the same day. Neither the Boeing itself, nor debris from the collapsed hull, nor the remains of passengers, nor luggage from the word - absolutely!
And the hole in the building shows anything you like, just not the traces from the wings of the airliner, but rather the trail from … a rocket. Or even from an internal explosion.
Take a look at the ratio of the actual size of the Boeing, which, according to the US intelligence services, "blew up" the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the actual damage to the US Department of Defense building:
And now the famous American website Veteranstoday publishes such revelations: “The Pentagon part of 9-11 was a separate event … It was an incredibly cynical elimination of the Pentagon accounting staff that would have been able to investigate the fate of the missing 2.3 trillion dollars … General Myer … called the meeting of the audit staff then didn't show up."
Translation: "The Pentagon-related part of 9/11 was special … It was an incredibly cynical elimination of the Pentagon accounting department, which would have been able to figure out the fate of the missing $ 2.3 trillion … General Mayer called a meeting of the audit staff, but then did not show up." …
It was this sector of the Pentagon building, where the meeting was convened, that was hit just a few minutes later. No words …
The Pentagon "wages devastating expeditionary wars overseas with no real strategy or control"
And now the most recent evidence of Pentagon corruption can be seen in the information that the Pentagon has not been able to report on $ 8.5 trillion. And recently, there are a lot of such stories in the American media. So, we will not bore the reader with them.
Let's just add to the trail one very interesting observation about why a state organization, whose main function is to protect the country, got into a cycle of such corruption cases that the damage is already measured not in billions, and not tens, and not even hundreds of billions, but trillions of dollars.
Worried Americans are looking for reasons, and, to some extent, they have already been groped. Recently published a book by West Point professor Tim Bakken "The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the US Military" - "The cost of loyalty: dishonesty, arrogance and failure in the army USA”, where he analyzes the causes of these“diseases”. There he, in particular, makes the following diagnosis:
“The military, as an institution of the state, have become so isolated, so isolated, so authoritarian that they can no longer work effectively. The very nature of this "beast" is that it is able to grow exponentially in size and mission. But, now he is waging devastating expeditionary wars abroad with little or no real strategy or control. His huge budgets are a source of corporate self-justification and corruption."
Once again: The Pentagon is "waging devastating expeditionary wars overseas with no real strategy or control."
The American army, which carries out the orders of American politicians, and, at times, itself forms the preconditions for these orders in order to receive huge budgets "for cutting", according to a professor from the leading US military academy, does not have a "real strategy." So, for what - apart from cutting budgets - are they fighting? Correctly in Russia they say: "To whom - the war, and to whom - the mother is dear."
Tim Bakken emphasizes: “The military and the army have become almost a religion for many Americans, and their actions cannot be challenged, and if we do (dispute) we are accused of being unpatriotic … After all, here is the proof of their failure - in the wars in Korea. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The generals don't know how to win these wars, and they don't have the courage to tell the Americans that we cannot win."
And now - about the corruption in the US Army. Bakken argues that "a weak officer training program does not encourage creative thinking and does not challenge the status quo." Officers are prone to corruption - and this is widespread among the officer corps. “If civil society does not take action to reform the military institution of the state, we will all remain at the mercy of its failure,” emphasizes Tim Bakken.
… Of course, the strength of the American army cannot be underestimated. But it is also impossible not to see that she is becoming somewhat similar to the Great and Terrible Goodwin, the hero of the fairy tale "The Wizard of the Emerald City". Remember how Goodwin ordered all residents of the city to wear green glasses so that no one would notice - the emeralds are not real.
And the Pentagon - for all its historical power - in the last decades, first of all, as they said before, "has been demonstrating military muscles." Demonstrate something he demonstrates, but behind this lies a "quiet" work on the development of ever-increasing military appropriations, which America is looking at through - no, not green - rose-colored glasses. Well, directly: "And they threw their caps into the air …"
Moreover, one of the favorite sayings of American corporals sounds like this: "We never promised you a rose garden!" - "We never promised you a rose garden!"