The $1 Trillion Black Box
ProPublica · LC · trust 39/100
The sums are vast, but the explanations for the spending range from vague to inscrutable. Consider these items in the law that funded the Department of Defense this year:
For “Other Procurement, Air Force”: $32.6 billion. For “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”: $35.2 billion. And for “supplies and associated support services” related to U.S. Code Title 10 Section 3601 subsection(c)(3)(B) clauses (i) through (iv): a mere $650 million.
Determining what, exactly, all this public money is paying for requires cross-referencing thousands of pages of financial tables, accounting records and congressional committee documents that will leave all but the most determined budgeting sleuth at a loss. Yet this is how the U.S. government explains its funding decisions for the most expensive military in the world. And the cost is growing.
“There’s no way that you can follow the money, because it keeps getting twisted like a Rubik’s Cube,” said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general and now a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “None of it is set up to be transparent.”
ProPublica is setting out to untwist this Rubik’s Cube in a series of investigative articles, and we’re asking for your help . In the months to come, we will grapple with how President Donald Trump is spending taxpayer money at the Department of Defense (or the Department of War, as his administration calls it). With your assistance, we hope to emerge with vital, previously untold investigative stories.
While accounting is rarely the stuff of action thrillers, the black box that is the Pentagon budget contains a world of grandiose plans and staggering consequences, from extraordinarily expensive jets, ships and missiles, to high-stakes projects gone terribly awry, to closed-door dealmaking with the world’s most powerful arms sellers. (Consider our first story in this series, about the epic dysfunction of an artillery factory bankrolled by $533 million from the U.S. Army .)
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The scale is hard to fathom. Congress appropriated $1 trillion for defense this year, more than the combined appropriations for agencies overseeing health, veterans affairs, education, housing, agriculture and justice — twice as much, in fact. If the president prevails in his priorities for next year’s budget, defense spending will soar dramatically higher still, to $1.5 trillion. That would be more , adjusted for inflation, than the country spent annually on defense during the height of World War II. The Pentagon’s balance sheets are opaque even to the Pentagon itself: The agency as a whole has never received a passing grade on a comprehensive financial audit. (The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.)
One thing is clear: Vast sums are funneled into developing costly weapons systems that often come in over budget, get delivered behind schedule or are rendered obsolete by the time they’re finished — if they’re finished at all.
These poor outcomes follow grand promises. The Zumwalt class of naval destroyers was lauded for its “affordable and flexible design.” A ground-control system for GPS satellites called Next Generation Operational Control System was billed the “best-value GPS control system for the future.” And the F-35 jet was promised as “a truly remarkable, capable and affordable multirole fighter” that would be built “on schedule and on cost.”
Each of these programs went years past their original delivery deadlines and cost far more than originally budgeted. In 1998, the price tag for Zumwalts was estimated at $1.5 billion per ship, according to the Government Accountability Office . Now the expected price exceeds $10 billion per ship (in part because the Navy reduced the quantity it ordered). Expected costs for the GPS control system increased from $4.5 billion to over $7.5 billion. And developing, producing and maintaining the F-35 is anticipated to require $2 trillion , making it the DOD’s most expensive weapon system in history, according to the GAO . (A Lockheed Martin spokesperson called the jet “a critical capability for the United States and our allies” and said the company “is proud to serve as its prime contractor.”)
After the delays and cost increases, these projects have not exactly delivered reliable marvels. Only three of the originally expected 32 Zumwalts have been built. The GPS system was canceled — after 16 years and $6.27 billion in program costs, including payments to defense contractor RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies). And F-35s are able to perform all of their missions only a quarter of the time.
Experts in defense spending cite many systemic causes for such outcomes, including the Pentagon’s frequent preference for complex designs , its habit of starting production before the design has been finalized and, not least, its dependency on companies operating virtual monopolies over niche defense products. There are few lasting consequences for contractors who fail to deliver, the experts said. “Industry just says, ‘Shucks, write us another check,’” said one defense congressional staffer, who requested anonymity to speak about internal defense spending deliberations. “Congress just throws cash at the problem.”
Other types of notable figures abound, like the $7 million…
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