Newsflash! This may come as a shock for some of you, but a new report shows that the Department of Defense (DOD) routinely wastes your money by losing or discarding surplus equipment that could be reused. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the DOD lacks significant management controls that would ensure proper reuse of items purchased by the military.

Over the last three years, the Pentagon disposed of $33 billion in excess equipment, of which $4 billion was reported to be in new, unused, or excellent condition. The problem is that DOD units reutilized only $495 million or about 12 percent of those items. The remaining $3.5 billion in items were transferred or donated outside of DOD, sold for pennies on the dollar, or even destroyed.

The DOD’s problems with excess property system are systemic and extensive. In 2002, the DOD continued to sell top-grade chemical protective suits for $3 on the Internet while military units were waiting to procure exactly the same suit for $200. In 2003, the DOD sold excess biological laboratory gear for pennies on the dollar.

The GAO slammed the point home by personally purchasing at virtually no cost a score of items from the DOD, including tents, boots and medical supplies. In all, GAO officials paid a little under $3,000 and received items that cost the DOD about $80,000.

Each year, the DOD disposes of property that costs billions to acquire. Yet, the GAO found that the DOD spent at least four hundred million dollars over the last two years on the purchase of items that they already had in reserve.

The report also identified hundreds of millions of dollars in reported lost, damaged or stolen items, including sensitive military items. Also, they found property stored inappropriately outside that was destroyed or damaged because of rain, wind or hurricanes.

This isn't just a matter of bad bookkeeping, lax management or weak inventory controls. These numbers measure major weaknesses in critical combat support machinery. Waste on this scale affects our ability to meet the immediate needs of men and women in uniform that are putting themselves in harms way.

The report underscores how the DOD’s acquisition practices result in our military buying too much and being unable to track with any accuracy where excess property is and how it can be delivered to those who need it. Once dropped into the multibillion dollar black box of the excess property system, good equipment can mix with bad, or disappear altogether.

This type of system easily hides malfeasance and invites theft. Efforts to fix the system are long overdue. Hopefully the GAO’s report will give the DOD a nudge in the right direction.