This is what happens when bloated “defense” spending as well as mismanaged defense contracts both for new construction and maintenance go south. Your assets get blown out of the hanger and into the neighborhoods.
Here we have the situation in Florida where out of 55 F-22 stealth fighters, only 33 could be flown to safety in Ohio as articulated by the New York Times article:
Tyndall is home to 55 F-22 stealth fighters, which cost a dizzying $339 million each. Before the storm, the Air Force sent at least 33 of the fighters to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Air Force officials have not disclosed the whereabouts of the remaining 22 planes, other than to say that a number of aircraft were left at the base because of maintenance or safety reasons.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Malinda Singleton, would not confirm that any of the aircraft left behind were F-22s.
Well, those in the air can account for some of those F-22s still in hangers on the base according to this Zero Hedge article:
F-22s are notoriously finicky and, as the Times puts it “not always flight-worthy.” The Air Force reported earlier this year that just 49% of F-22s were mission ready at any given time – the lowest rate of any fighter in the Air Force. The total value of the unaccounted-for fighters is around $7.5 billion.
My guess is, just like the trillions of American tax dollars “lost” on 9/11 when the accounting office was hit at the Pentagon by that “757” (i.e. cruise missile) .. this $7.5B can just be “written off”:
If the US were truly a republic, it would be much more responsible with the money that taxpayers trust Washington DC with and be purely defensive in it’s military vision and mission.
As an example, when Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers after he successfully manipulated the Confederate States of America and South Carolina into firing first at Fort Sumter, there were only just over 16,000 men in the US Army. By the war’s end over two MILLION would have served.
How different would the attempt for secession could have been if there had been no standing army but state/republic militias.
Fact is those, we are in an empire and we will continue to see the blatant disregard for all the taxpayer money and debt that has been squandered on this empire’s non-honoring policing of the globe.
-SF1