Audit: Army Spent Millions on Repair Contracts for Already Destroyed Vehicles

US Wasting Millions Annually on Vehicle Service

A new report (pdf) from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is revealing that the US Army Contracting Command wasted at least $6.3 million over the past 18 months as part of a vehicle service contract for the Afghan National Police (ANP).

The US is providing some 30,000 vehicles to the ANP, and bought the services contracts for them as well, a contract costing about $350 million. But the Army didn’t keep up with the number of ANP vehicles destroyed in the ongoing war, and kept paying service fees for vehicles that had long-since been blown up by the Taliban.

The audit also found that inventory systems for the contract were not always accurate, and that many of the spare parts the electronic inventory system claimed were shipped and never used were no longer on site.

SIGAR reports have shown massive waste in the 11+ year occupation, including contractor fraud and huge US-built facilities for the Afghan military that they will never be able to keep running after the end of the war.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.