Giving money to defense contractors

[Junior]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/08/209878158/egypt-may-not-need-fighter-jets-but-u-s-keeps-sending-them-anyway

 

Every year, the U.S. Congress appropriates more than $1 billion in military aid to Egypt. But that money never gets to Egypt. It goes to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then to a trust fund at the Treasury and, finally, out to U.S. military contractors that make the tanks and fighter jets that ultimately get sent to Egypt.

 

The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.

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In fact, he said, at least 200 of the tanks the U.S. has sent to Egypt have never been used.

 

"They are crated up and then they sit in deep storage, and that's where they remain," he told me.

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The story with F-16 fighter jets is similar. Since 1980, we've sent Egypt 221 fighter jets, valued at $8 billion. "Our American military advisers in Cairo have for many years been advising against further acquisitions of F-16s," Springborg said. Egypt already has more F-16s than it needs, he said.

 

I asked the State Department why the U.S. is giving Egypt weapons against the advice of its own military personnel. (The State Department, along with Congress, gives final approval on the weapons we send to Egypt.) Regarding those unused tanks, an official told me via email, it's not usual for a country to "maintain a portion of its equipment in reserve in the event of security contingencies." The U.S. decides which weapons to send to countries like Egypt "in consultation with our partners' own determination of their strategic and force structure requirements," the email added.