WASHINGTON — Sen. James Lankford included a handful of Defense Department programs in his list of 100 areas where he says the government bungled spending decisions.
Lankford’s “Federal Fumbles” report raps everything from the use of floppy discs in the nuclear program to a government funded exhibit on medieval smells. The report, which leans on government watchdog agency findings, continues the tradition of former Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual “Wastebook.”
“Our current spending habits are unsustainable and irresponsible,” Lankford, R-Okla., said in releasing the report.
A joint Drug Enforcement Agency-DoD effort to buy, modify and house an ATR-500 turboprop aircraft for use in counter-narcotics work in Afghanistan is floundering despite eight years and $76.5 million spent, according to the report. Meanwhile, the State Department has flown the DEA mission and the country’s drug problem is worsening.
Caught in a bureaucratic tangle with an unused plane on jacks in a Kabul hanger, “At this point the DEA and DOD should cease putting money into this lemon and move on,” Lankford’s report opines.
The Air Force Inspector General found Robins Air Force Base, Ga., did not properly negotiate $590 million in contracts to provide depot maintenance work for the Air Force’s F-15, C-5, C-130, and C-17 aircraft, and spent $9.6 to $24.9 million more than it should have. That’s because Air Force officials did not issue guidance explaining how to effectively negotiate depot labor profit.
The Pentagon’s commercial satellite procurement process is “fragmented and inefficient,” Lankford cites the Government Accountability Office as finding. DoD failed to enforce a policy requiring that the services and combatant commands buy through the central Defense Information Systems Agency, and hence a third of DoD’s commercial satellite needs were purchased outside of it. It’s unclear how much could have been saved, the report says, though Lankford called for DoD to report to Congress how it plans to implement the policy.
The Defense Logistics Agency, according to the DoD Inspector General, let contractors provide defective or incorrect aircraft parts 269 times because it didn’t follow its own procedures—for $12.3 million in losses and a “negative impact [on] warfighter readiness and safety,” the report says. Lankford said he aimed at addressing the issue with language in the proposed 2017 National Defense Authorization Act directing DoD to create a weapon system sustainment strategy.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
