A recent video of a U.S. lawmaker holding up a bag of small parts that allegedly cost up to $90,000 in Congress, leaving the U.S. Air Force secretary speechless went viral on social media. But for many "well-informed" Americans, this is not news — have you ever seen nine goats worth $6 million, what about a $10,000 toilet seat, and a $1,200 coffee cup?
Haven't you heard of it? The old driver will come to help "popularize science" today.
Let's start with the news. On April 17, the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress held a hearing on the U.S. military budget for fiscal year 2025, which is as high as nearly $850 billion. Republican Rep. Waltz pulled out a small bag of bushings and asked Kendall, Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, who was present at the hearing, "what is the purchase price of the U.S. Air Force." After Kendall said he "didn't know", Waltz gave the answer: $90,000!
Simply put, they are metal rings that protect mechanical components from wear and, in Waltz's words, are "non-high-tech, small parts that can be produced by ordinary workers and meet the specifications of American regulators." So how much should these small parts be worth under normal circumstances?
Some American netizens said on social media that the small bag in Waltz's hand should not be worth more than $100.
In doing so, Waltz sharply criticized the Pentagon's waste of money. He said the Pentagon is sourcing these parts directly from OEMs, with no middlemen, meaning they should be cheaper than the price of the goods on the shelf, not more expensive — when in reality the Pentagon is hundreds of times more expensive.
Waltz criticized that these practices are bankrupting us (the U.S. government), and that for the first time in history, interest on U.S. national debt exceeds military spending, and "we can't afford it."
But if you look at history, you can see that the tradition of wasting money by the US military has continued for decades, and although American public opinion has been criticizing, it has hardly had any effect.
Just to name a few. In 2018, the U.S. Air Force specifically advertised that the coffee cup handles made using 3D printing technology saved the United States a lot of money - otherwise the U.S. Air Force would have to spend $1,210 per coffee cup!
Although this news was criticized from all walks of life as soon as it came out, the US Air Force was also very aggrieved. Their logic goes like this - those US pilots who fly long distances on large aircraft (KC-10 tankers or E-3 AWACS) need to take a big sip of coffee to fight off exhaustion, and the US Air Force equips them with stainless steel cups with hinged lids, plastic handles, and heating, but the fragile plastic handles often break, and according to Pentagon bureaucratic procedures, the US Air Force cannot order spare handles, so it has to buy a new cup, which costs up to $1210 each. In 2018, the U.S. Air Force spent $32,000 on just 25 new coffee cups.
While much cheaper cups are available elsewhere, the problem is that they are not certified by the US Air Force and therefore cannot be used on Air Force aircraft.
Look, this set of logic is perfect - as long as the US Air Force does not open certification, it can only purchase these sky-high coffee cups "legally and compliantly".
A similar situation is the sky-high price of toilet seats in the US Air Force.
U.S. officials admit that the U.S. Air Force has replaced the toilet seats of the C-5 Galaxy military transport aircraft for $10,000 per toilet seat at least three occasions. The U.S. Air Force explained that this was because the original C-5 production line had been discontinued, and the Air Force had to hire a specialized manufacturer to produce the toilet seats, which were already off the production line—redesigning accurate 2D drawings, making molds for the parts, and then producing them. Coupled with the small quantity, the price is naturally expensive.
In fact, these "sky-high goods" are quite good in the waste of US military spending - due to the lack of supervision by the US military, a large amount of money is simply unknown.
The classic case is that during the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military spent $6 million to purchase 9 goats "unaccounted for". At the time, the U.S. military specifically earmarked about $800 million to help revive the Afghan economy, and the so-called "Cashmere Support" program was one of them, and according to public accounts, the goats were flown into Afghanistan from Italy to improve the local goat breed to help the Afghan people produce better quality wool. But the special inspector general for Afghanistan's reconstruction, John Sopko, later admitted that the Pentagon had never overseen the project to find out how many jobs it created and how much wool it produced — in fact, the findings showed that the goats may have been eaten...... He also acknowledged that many similar projects have been mismanaged or not managed at all, and that they have been "wasted, fraudulent, and abused."
The reason for this is that the Pentagon's money has not been monitored. Although the U.S. Congress required the U.S. military to be audited as early as the 90s of the last century, the Pentagon's audit work was delayed until 2018 due to problems such as the large organizational structure. As a result, from 2018 to 2023, the US Department of Defense failed to pass the annual audit for six consecutive years. According to the American newspaper Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon has $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities, and auditors found that half of its assets could not be accounted for. In fact, the Pentagon has long had problems such as reimbursement irregularities and excessive reimbursement amounts, and the US Congress has repeatedly expressed concern about fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon.
To make matters worse, the Pentagon is becoming more and more difficult to regulate what is commonly referred to as a "waste of money." The "revolving door" between the political, military, and economic circles of the United States has enabled the huge military-industrial interest complex of the United States to reap a large amount of excess profits "legally and compliantly."
For example, the latest findings from the U.S. Government Accountability Office show that the U.S. Air Force's fleet of F-35A stealth fighter jets has reached $1.58 trillion in life-cycle operating and maintenance costs, up 50% from expectations. The fundamental reason for this is that the Pentagon has packaged all the maintenance work of the F-35 series fighter to its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, and as a result, Lockheed Martin claims that it is "too busy", resulting in a large number of F-35s waiting for repair lying on the ground and unable to be dispatched, and the sortie rate of this new fighter is even worse than that of the old model...... If you want to solve the problem? You have to add money. As for why the US Air Force tolerated such a clearly unjustified practice, anyone who understands the powerful influence of the military-industrial complex can guess why......
Therefore, the bag of parts with a "$90,000 purchase price" in Waltz's hand is nothing at all, and the crazy blood-sucking of the US military-industrial interests complex lying on the US military is the big problem. But who can change that?
Source | Privy Council No. 10