Apart from the expensive coffee, there are also the mugs that the US Air Force has apparently been buying.
As in previous years, the Pentagon’s seventh financial audit was released last year, but it was declared a failure.
The Pentagon Inspector General mentioned that there is still a lot of work to be done and that there will be issues in the process of rebuilding the financial books, but that it offered them a better notion of how to handle it, according to Bloomberg.
In a statement, Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord stated, “The path forward is clear, and momentum is on our side, and throughout the department there is strong commitment—and belief in our ability—to achieve an unmodified audit opinion.”
But as Elon Musk’s DOGE team and President Donald Trump seek to cut expenses across the defense industry, previous spending has come under investigation.
The Air Force was spending a lot of money on its KC-10 aircraft by replacing coffee cups with broken handles instead of repairing them, according to a 2018 congressional probe, Fox News reports. Moreover, the cups could be reheated.
In a 2018 letter to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that paying such exorbitant fees for “something as simple as a coffee cup that is so fragile that it needs to be constantly replaced” was “simply beyond reason.” Another letter inquired about the consideration of less costly options.
In a statement to CNN, the Air Force admitted that it was no longer buying the cups “used in large transport aircraft” as they investigated more cost-effective alternatives.
A report released last year by the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General found that Boeing overpaid the Air Force by nearly 8,000 percent on spare parts, including $150,000 for soap dispensers.
The service branch spent $149,072 more than the market price for the soap dispensers, while the Air Force overpaid by around $1 million for 12 of the dispensers and a few other 46 replacement parts on its C-17 transport aircraft, according to a two-year audit completed in October 2024.
According to a statement from Boeing, the assessment appeared to be “based on an inapt comparison of the prices paid for parts that meet aircraft and contract specifications and designs versus basic commercial items that would not be qualified or approved for use on the C-17.” Boeing denied the findings. The inspector general reportedly looked over the soap dispenser hotline tip, according to the Independent.
On social media, opinions were swiftly shared. One user wrote, “At the expense of the taxpayer.”
There must have been some good cups, someone else remarked.
Some who claim to be military personnel, however, stated that the audit did not come as a surprise.
Another responded, “I can completely affirm this is standard Air Force behavior as a Marine vet myself.”
During his cost-cutting campaign, Trump told Fox News, “We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” claiming the department has become a haven for waste, inefficiency, and financial mismanagement.
According to reports, DOGE had access to the US Treasury Department’s payment system, which deals with things like tax returns, Medicare, and social security payouts.
