Pentagon Bought Cargo Planes for $500 Million Then Sold Them for $32,000 Combined

Want to know how much money our government wasted in Afghanistan during America’s longest war?

Actually, you probably don’t. It’s only Wednesday, and trying to wrap your head around those numbers on hump day is a little much — even for the most chipper of cubicle residents.

However, consider this tidbit, somewhat pertinent now that the Department of Government Efficiency is much in the news: The Pentagon spent $549 million on 20 Italian-made cargo planes for the Afghan government that were so bad, they were all sold less than six years later for less than the price of some new cars.

That’s all the planes together. Not one. All of ’em.

In 2008, NBC News reported, the U.S. Air Force agreed to buy 20 refurbished Aeritalia G.222s — a plane manufactured between 1970 and 1993 — from Alenia Aeronautica, a company formed out of the merger of Aeritalia and another Italian firm.

The deal, according to a 2009 article from FlightGlobal, involved planes that had previously served with the Italian Air Force and that would be transferred to the Afghan National Army Air Corps.

That article — “Alenia looks beyond Afghanistan for refurbished G222 sales” — probably should have contained some red flags for those looking for the long-term viability of the planes: “Libya and Peru are interested to add the aircraft to their military cargo fleets, while existing G222 customers Argentina and Thailand could also join the program,” FlightGlobal reported.

When the other countries kicking the tires on used G.222s included Qaddafi-era Libya, maybe that should have told you this wasn’t exactly what one might call a desirable, dependable workhorse of the skies.

And indeed, it was not: As NBC News reported in 2021, a U.S. government watchdog noted “the planes proved unreliable, with long delays to secure the delivery of spare parts, maintenance problems and numerous complaints about their safety from Afghan pilots.

“The program was suspended and the planes were destroyed and turned into scrap metal in 2014, selling for $40,257, according to the report.”

And the best part: No one was held to account!

“Unfortunately, no one involved in the program was held accountable for the failure of the G222 program,” the report said.

This is despite the fact that, according to the report, someone definitely should have been held to account: namely, a former U.S. Air Force general who had been heavily involved in the decision to acquire the faulty planes.

The report noted that the general “had a clear conflict of interest because he was significantly involved with the G222 program while on active duty, then retired and became the primary contact for Alenia on the same program.”

Oh.

According to the report, while the Department of Justice took up the case in 2016, it found that charges against either the general or others involved were too problematic to make in court.

Also, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the Air Force had been warned that Alenia had an insufficient plan to service and maintain the G.222s, but the warnings “were ignored.”

U.S. contractors, SIGAR noted, “did not check that Alenia had the required spare parts available as promised.” They also didn’t confirm the planes’ airworthiness, “especially in the high altitude and extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan.”

So, out of $549 million of Italian military cargo planes bought with U.S. taxpayer money, we got back roughly enough to buy an Italian car. Provided it’s used, and probably just an Alfa Romeo. That’s a 99.9936 percent loss in value.

Sadly, the Alfa will probably be more reliable than the G.222s were — and the people responsible for the panel gaps on those things should be brought up on charges, just like the people involved in the Alenia/Afghanistan deal were not.

And that’s not the only risible example of wasted money in Afghanistan. Consider some examples from a 2015 list assembled by ProPublica: $456,000 for a police training facility that melted in the rain (that’s what you get for hiring the Wicked Witch of the West as a building contractor, I suppose), $7 million for a border police headquarters made for 175 officers but which could only be staffed with 12 because the Afghans didn’t have a key to most of the buildings, $200 million for a literacy training program for military/police recruits that couldn’t be evaluated for efficacy (and likely wasn’t efficacious given that some of the classes were only held for two hours a month), $109 million for training Afghan pilots on helicopter missions they couldn’t actually fly, and roughly $1 billion for what even left-leaning ProPublica defined as “broad, undefined justice initiatives.” (Hey, speaking of USAID …)

In other words, if you ever needed an example of why we need DOGE, you could do a whole lot worse than this wretched affair. Any corporation responsible for this kind of malfeasance would have itself or its officers, or both, spending significant time inside numerous courtrooms. And yet, not even an Air Force general with a clear conflict of interest who cajoled the military into spending over $500 million on literally worthless planes faced no repercussions.

Fixing the upside-down world of the U.S. government won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. If you think the fight isn’t worth it, ask yourself whether you’d buy a car so badly made it depreciated by 99.9936 percent.

No, and if you ended up with such a lemon, you’d demand someone pay. You should demand the same from your government. Period.

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