Pentagon Spent $5 Billion For Weapons On Day Before Shutdown

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "John Reed at Foreign Policy reports that the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts Monday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month. Some of the more interesting purchases from Monday's dollar-dump include the $2.5 billion award the Defense Logistics Agency gave to aircraft engine-maker Pratt & Whitney for 'various weapons system spare parts' used by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, $65 million for military helmets from BAE Systems, $24 million for 'traveling wave tubes' to amplify radio signals from Thales, $17 million for liquid nitrogen, $15 million for helium and $19 million on cots. The Air Force, traditionally DOD's biggest spender, was relatively restrained; it dished out only 17 contracts including $49 million to help France buy 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones, $64 million to Lockheed for help operating spy satellites that are equipped with infrared cameras, and $9 million to URS Corp. for maintenance work on the Air National Guard's fleet of RC-26B spyplanes that help domestic law enforcement agencies catch drug dealers. The air service also spent $9 million on a new gym at the Air Force Academy that includes areas for CrossFit training, space for the academy's Triathlon Club and a 'television studio.' It just goes to show, says Reed, that 'even when the federal government is shutdown and the military has temporarily lost half its civilian workforce, the Pentagon can spend money like almost no one else.'"

Comments

Re:NOT News For Nerds

[Mitchell314]

No
No
NOonoononoono NOO

I'm tired of this bullshit. Want pure politics news? Take this crap elsewhere; there's more than enough places on the internet for it. 'Some nerds like/are affected by non-nerdy topic X' is NOT a reason to put X on a site like this. X = Politics, poptarts, bronies, celebrities, whatever. They belong on other sites; where it's appropriate. That some nerds like it doesn't matter. Otherwise this might as well be yahoo news for all the hell it's worth. Now, if the point is to explain new science or technology, that's a different story. But I read the articles. And they're about politics and spending, not proper nerd-material. I hate to be the asshole purist, but sometimes you got to put a foot down.