According to an "Official Use Only" report that has evaluated cases since 2013, the Army field support brigade in Afghanistan, responsible for shipping the material out of the country, did not report "in a timely manner" the disappearance of 156.000 pieces worth of $ 419,5 million.
There is talk of "lax supervision" and the elements that need to be recovered would be "thousands of highly sensitive pieces of equipment, including encryption devices, radios and weapons".
The Pentagon has estimated to spend $ 7 billion on the withdrawal and redistribution of material present in Afghanistan. The military alone has $ 27 billion worth of military hardware in the country.
At 30 last September 35 sites were active, between bases and outposts, down from the 850 of the 2012. The United States plans to reduce forces to 9.800 units by the 1 January from around 19.650.
Previous research found that between 2006 and 2010 the military had already lost track of 174.247 pieces of equipment. After the report, 23 percent of the material had been found, but 133.557 "objects" were lost for a value of 238,4 million dollars.
Blessed are they who can afford it.
Andrea Cucco
(photo: US DoD archive)
