The US failed to track more than $1 billion in military gear given Ukraine, Pentagon watchdog says

Collision Resistance@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 63 points –
The US failed to track more than $1 billion in military gear given Ukraine, Pentagon watchdog says
apnews.com
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This is dumb. Most likely they just weren’t catalogued correctly because they were rushing stuff to the front lines. Doubtful anything went missing it’s just paperwork errors.

Or - and this is heavily documented - the US Military has never passed any audit since they began being audited. This is just part of that.

Doesn't mean we don't support Ukraine. Just means we need to hold the military accountable for the funds provided.

the US Military has never passed any audit since they began being audited. This is just part of that.

That's mainly because there's a shit ton of agencies in the DOD, and they send money between themselves and non DOD agencies constantly.

If I pay you $100, but we lose the reciept, there's no missing money. Just a missing receipt.

However for those government audits, if we both were part of it then we'd each be off by $100. And rather than cancel those, they add them together and say combined we're "missing" $200

So the public hears about these huge numbers that probably don't matter, and hardly anyone hears the actual number of missing money to know if we really should be mad.

I've seen dod finance. The amount of paperwork to move money within an agency is ridiculous. Between is even more. If they don't have a receipt, it's deliberate or gross negligence.

I’ve seen dod finance

If you had "seen" it, you'd know not to say that randomly on a public social media website.

You'd also know what you're talking about...

Lol, what? Do you have any idea how many people work for the DoD in finance or adjacent to finance? The entire Program Management track is huge. It's not a crime or even recommended to pretend you don't work for or with the DoD. It's very clear what is classified information, CUI, or financially privileged. And there's TONS of contractors who interface with the DoD in financial matters.

DoD finance is all about bureaucracy: just like most of the DoD and US government itself. There's so many hoops to jump through to move money it's insane. Money expires yearly in many cases. That old adage of units spending money in September is somewhat true: sending money you didn't spend back at the end of the fiscal year is frowned upon. On and on and on I and anyone else with even a toe dipped in could go.

Shit, most DoD finance is public: the NDAA lists top-level spending allocations. Really it's just non-acknowledged programs where the funding isn't public. Which is where I imagine a lot of the shenanagins get up to. Your paranoia is silly.

Til being a low level bureaucrat or military member is unheard of and absolutely never talked about online.

This is a good take but it disregards the realities of the financial recipients being unable to account for funds spent. I agree there are special circumstances but we need to have visibility to those realities as benefactors. Otherwise how can we allocate funds democratically.

If they kept records, how would they get away with diverting so much of the money back into their pockets?

Lol literally no way to find out because they don't track it and have no reason to do it.