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To: grey_whiskers

[This is why the kiddie sniffer lost $84 billion in materiel in Afghanistan]


That’s a fake number, as will become evident if you looking at where it came from - the Afghan Security Funding #:

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2021-07-30qr-appendices.pdf#page=9
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-10/54219-oco_spending.pdf#page=20

Basically, most of it was spent on payroll and transportation (airlifts and payments to Pakistani truck drivers, Taliban tolls, et al), with about $7b consisting of actual hardware. Much of the hardware is light infantry vehicles of the kind we’re handing to Ukraine, but not much use near the front lines in a peer or near-peer conflict. As of 2016, it came to 208 aircraft (Russian and US utility choppers and prop CAS aircraft); more than 42,000 pickup trucks; more than 22,000 Humvees; nearly 9,000 MTV cargo and transport trucks; nearly 1,000 mine resistant ambush protected vehicles; nearly 200 M113 tin cans; and hundreds of thousands of rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, rocket propelled weapons and night vision goggles.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-667r.pdf#page=11

Note that these are consumables. Equipment wears out in rough terrain, gets totaled, blown up, shot to pieces, etc. Given Afghan maintenance capabilities, I suspect much of it was inoperable after Biden withdrew the foreign maintenance contractors months ahead of the final departure of US troops.

I don’t blame GOP pols for using the $83b number as a talking point. It’s possible they don’t actually know or haven’t personally looked into it. The Democrats lie far more egregiously, and about things closer to home. But the fact is the real number is something like $18b if we assume transportation costs are zero (unlikely in Afghanistan’s rugged terrain, complicated by the fact that it’s landlocked), and much of it is pretty mundane stuff.


42 posted on 10/17/2022 11:59:17 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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bkmk


43 posted on 10/18/2022 12:38:57 AM PDT by mad_as_he$$ (Don't rush to your death.)
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To: Zhang Fei

Nonetheless, the equipment lost will have to be replaced; and the money for that taken from funding for something else.


53 posted on 10/18/2022 5:43:52 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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