The Herald U.K.
Feb 5, 02

US loses trillions to 'ghost army'

IAN BRUCE

THE US Defence Department has lost track of military equipment worth 10 times its £270bn annual budget in the past year, according to the General Accounting Office, the government's congressional watchdog.

The £27 trillion worth of misplaced kit represents £5700 a head for every man, woman and child in America, or 100 times more than the UK's total defence spending on its army, navy, air force and strategic nuclear deterrent submarine force for 2001-2002.

The revelation comes at a time when George W Bush, the US president, has just approved an additional emergency £34bn funding package to help the armed services tackle global terrorism in the midst of economic recession.

A new "war against waste" is about to be launched to run parallel with the war against terrorism, with the GAO ordered to crack down on the Pentagon's careless handling of everything from classified guided missile parts to payments for part-time national guard units which continue to claim for "ghost" soldiers who have resigned or are dead.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, was about to wield the accounting axe when September 11 intervened to change immediate priorities.

Now he has returned to bringing to book the defence establishment, which has not passed a government audit in a decade. "This is a matter of life and death. The adversary's closer to home than Afghanistan. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

The army does not know the whereabouts of £640m worth of equipment and stores which left depots in one area and have not been logged at their destinations.

A GAO source said last night: "A lot of big-ticket equipment is rusting quietly in railway sidings in Tennessee or Dakota, or has actually reached its intended recipient and been shunted into a warehouse without paperwork to track its movement. No-one knows it's there.

"The national mood is understandably patriotic right now and no-one really wants to hear the harsh truth. If the Pentagon was Microsoft, it would be bankrupt and people in charge would be fired for gross incompetence."

The latest shock has come from 40 national guard whistleblowers who told investigators that many units in the linchpin of homeland defence are up to 20% short of their declared complement of soldiers.

-Feb 4th