The U.S. Air Force is under fire from a government watchdog agency for deciding to turn 16 aircraft worth nearly $500 million into scrap metal worth only $32,000.
The G222 airplanes were initially bought for the Afghan Air Force at a price of $486 million, and instead of finding other ways to salvage the planes being stored at Kabul International Airport, they were destroyed by the Defense Logistics Agency.
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, believes it was a waste of taxpayer money, and wants the Air Force to explain the decision.
"I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars," Sopko said in a letter to Air Force Secretary Deborah James dated Oct. 3.
Sopko asked that the Air Force turn over all documentation, including electronic communications, "related to the decision-making process that led to the approval for scrapping the sixteen G222s."
"Explain whether alternatives to scrapping the planes were considered," wrote Sopko, "and, if alternatives were considered, why they were not pursued, such as flying the planes out of Afghanistan to the United States, Europe or other country for sale?"
The U.S. government initially decided to buy and refurbish 20 of the C-27A planes from Alenia, a unit of Italy's Finmeccanica SpA, reported Reuters, but the program was canceled due to a shortage of spare parts that would cost $200 million. The aircraft flew only 234 of the 4,500 required hours, according to the Pentagon's inspector general office.
The Pentagon then decided to buy four larger C-130 planes built by Lockheed.
Sopko told NBC News last year that he was unsure if the incident was criminal fraud or mismanagement, adding that such waste had occurred in other instances in Afghanistan.
