Pentagon Accounting Fiasco: Officials Predict Another Billion Dollar Fix

Tracking Where the Money Is Going Remains an Impossible Task

New reports on the ongoing disaster that is the US Defense Department’s accounting system have a number of officials saying the effort to figure out where all the money is going by 2014 is going to cost at least another $1 billion above initial estimates.

At present, even as officials continue to press for new record levels of military spending, they also concede that they really have no clue where the money is all going, and Congress’ sudden interest in finding out is proving extremely embarrassing for the Pentagon.

The most recent effort at a revamped accounting system, a $6 billion effort, is beset by delays and cost overruns. The extra billion dollars is just an estimate of what it will cost to bring the system to a usable form by 2014, which is when Congress is hoping to get those figures.

Of course if the Pentagon was reliably able to estimate costs, they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Though there seems to be broad support for spending whatever is necessary to get their financial house in order, the Pentagon’s financial system is in such disarray that there is little guarantee any of the money spent will wind up in this project.

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.