“The Pentagon announced on June 21, 2023 that it had overestimated the value of arms sent to Ukraine over the past two years by $6.2 billion. Now, the discovery of additional errors brings the total unspent sum to $8.2 billion.”

–

"U.S. Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows the president to allocate equipment from U.S. stocks, such as ammunition, vehicles, and medical supplies, to respond to crises abroad. PDA arises from the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

The Pentagon’s “efforts to properly value defense articles for drawdown are hampered because the Foreign Assistance Act does not clearly define certain terms and DOD lacks PDA-specific valuation guidance,” according to the GAO.

Due to the errors, the Defense Department can send a further $2 billion in weapons to Ukraine to cover the amount already approved by U.S. President Joe Biden."

  • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
    51·
    4 months ago

    Bonus Reddit comment: “NOOO!! This isn’t corruption or affecting your taxes!! We just overestimated by a couple billion/accidentally cooked the books and determined we can send more!”

    • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      49·
      4 months ago

      8.9k upvotes. If there was ever a comment that convinced me Reddit is astroturfed / an op, this is it. Because they are objectively wrong. Or at least intentionally misleading.

      They’re focusing on the fact that the valuation equipment changed and ignoring what that actually means. Sure, by itself it doesn’t affect US taxpayers. But the point is, the military says they overvalued it by $2, so that allows them to send $2 billion more worth of equipment. That’s additional stocks of weapons that ostensibly have to be replaced, which is paid for by tax dollars.

      And while it’s not provably corrupt, it strains credulity to think this was not done in order to ship more weapons. Revaluations of this kind are much much more likely because someone wants it revalued, i.e. corruption.

      • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        No, no, it’s the US government. We don’t use terms like corruption here…fulfilling lobby quotas is a better term…

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        16·
        4 months ago

        yea and they froze Russian foreign reserves (which are in U.S. Treasuries or EU bonds), pretended that it was being used to ‘fund’ ‘aid’ to Ukraine by using it as collateral for a ‘loan’ from the IMF/World Bank. How did IMF/World Bank acquire the Dollars, I wonder who gave it to them.

    • hypercracker@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      4 months ago

      libs will write this then turn around and write an even longer post about how the war “costs us nothing” because the US is sending old stock that was slated to be destroyed anyway, or because all the weapon manufacturing money stays in the US, or whatever the cope of the day is

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        22·
        4 months ago

        I think all the people working at the weapons factories could be put into better use like building high speed rail.

        The liberals argue the MIC is a good way to stimulate the economy when in reality American military spending mostly ends up in financial markets not being used for anything productive. A small bit of it maybe ends up in the hands of people working in the factories (who then spend it on goods and services etc) but that is nothing.

        This is a good article on military spending

    • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      4 months ago

      “we” this “we” that…

      There is no “we” you stupid servile cuck, the american elite do whatever they want whether you like it or not. No room for your input.

      US government makes a huge “mistake” costing literally $2 billion extra dollars of their funding, which comes from taxpayer money.

      Reddit: wojak-nooo “NOOOOO THIS ISNT A MISTAKE, THIS DOESNT AFFECT YOUR TAX DOLLARS!”

    • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      4 months ago

      How can someone say that the Pentagon is doing “back of the envelope math” for billions of dollars of military ordinance and not get called out for bird-screm-2 COMPLETE GIBBERING INSANITY

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      4 months ago

      These idiots don’t remember Rumsfeld reiterating on Sept 10, 2001 (yes) that the military had approximately 2 TRILLION in ‘accounting irregularities’

      This isn’t new, and covering for the MIC in such a manner is naive at best

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    44·
    4 months ago

    Creative accounting, the kind that will get you fired and disqualified from the practice anywhere else, gets you promotions at the Pentagon.

  • companero [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    44·
    4 months ago

    I think the US is effectively spending far more on Ukrainian military aid than the official numbers say. Possibly like 2-3x.

    Take this package for example. $225 million for a patriot battery and a bunch of other stuff? Not likely, since a patriot battery alone costs $1b.

    Then there are other things like Stinger missiles which used to cost $100k each, but now cost $500k to make replacements.

    • ObamaSama [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      33·
      4 months ago

      I think the key point here is depreciation, the dollar amount of aid they’re sending is based on the current book value of equipment. I was able to find some documentation listing the depreciation method the DoD uses and the useful lives of various asset classes here: https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/fmr/archive/04arch/04_06_Jun08.pdf

      They use straight line depreciation or a special “activity based” method for some specific equipment so the useful life of say, a stinger missile, would be either 5 or 10 years based on the tables there. That $100k missile could be listed on the books as only $40k three years after purchase or even $0 if it’s older than five years. I can only assume the military uses such an aggressive depreciation method to justify constant funding to feed the MIC by replacing “outdated” tech and selling it off/giving it to allies. I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue that a rifle is suddenly obsolete and worth nothing after sitting in an armory for 5 years but that’s how they put it on the books 🤷‍♂️

      • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        14·
        4 months ago

        And on top of that, they can always write down the value further due to “impairment” like obsolescence. For example, maybe a specific missile costs $1 million and it is straight-line depreciated for 5 years. After 3 years the book value is $400k. However, they can just say “we have a new missile that’s better so this old missile is obsolete, the value should only be $100k” then they can write down the book value even further.

        Also, if they use FIFO inventory accounting, only the oldest stuff on record is used EVEN IF IT ISN’T physically the oldest stock. So if the costs of the equipment get more expensive every year then what’s counted as being given to Ukraine has the lowest value, even if in real terms they are giving them the newest stock.

    • christian [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      4 months ago

      This might be a dumb question, but what is the actual point of the government lying about something to claim reduced costs? I remember having this thought when the Biden admin held that press conference to announce that the Gaza aid pier had actually cost $200 million and not $300 million. Once numbers get unfathomly large my mind more or less equates them, and it’s not like I have any intuition that makes it so that I can read that an aid pier costs $200 million and think “wow, what a steal”. Who are the citizens that feel good when hearing this bullshit about we actually spent this inconcievably large number and not that slightly bigger inconceivably large number? Who is impressed by this press conference?