They did the same thing with small arms they conned American civiliians into lending "for the British home guard". After the war, instead of returning the hunting rifles to the American sportsmen, they were destroyed.
I remember watching news footage of perfectly good helicopters being shoved off of aircraft carriers at the "end" of the Vietnam war.
Not only do they soak the fools (you, me, and the rest of the taxwallets) for stuff like $600 toilet seats, but then they destroy them, so that they can turn around and replace them.
This is the stuff Eisenhower warned us against -- the "military/industrial complex." The "lesson of Vietnam" is that wars are apparently no longer "fought to win" -- they are managed as a valuable resource. It takes a war to bleed taxpayers dry, and funnel the money into the pockets of some very large contractors who tend to have a revolving door policy at the management level for former government bigwigs.
It's crap like this that gives corruption a bad name. /sarcasm
PS:
I forgot to mention that as bad as "the above" is, it can't hold a candle to the new practice of bringing the Chinese government in on the deal, to help pick over the bones of the American taxpayer.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. I mean, what IS the basic principle at work here? "Honor among thieves"?