Trips for Free: Pentagon Fuel "Subsidies" to Saudi Air War

A Pentagon Famous for “Losing” $Trillions Makes “Accounting Error” and Refuels Saudi Yemen-Bombing Jets for Free

by Whitney Webb -  MintPress News

December 11, 2018

The Pentagon’s “accounting error” regarding the refueling of coalition jets in Yemen is just another swindle in a long line of accounting issues from the poshest military in the world.

WASHINGTON – According to a recent report, the Pentagon failed to charge the Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates (UAE) coalition waging war in Yemen for the refueling of planes as well as for the fuel itself. As a result of the inadvertent “giveaway,” which the Pentagon has blamed on an accounting error, U.S. taxpayers are believed to have paid as much as tens of millions of dollars towards the coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen, which has routinely targeted schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals and even a school bus.

The Pentagon’s failure to properly charge the Saudi-Emirati coalition was revealed in a Department of Defense (DoD) letter dated November 27 that was obtained by the Washington-based news outlet, The Atlantic.

Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force pilot adjusts
oxygen mask in cockpit of American-made
F-5 Tiger II prior to training mission at Williams AFB

According to the letter, though the Pentagon had “believed” that the Saudi-led coalition had,

“been charged for the fuel and refueling services, they, in fact, had not been charge adequately.”

While the letter declined to state how much the “error” ultimately cost American taxpayers, it noted that it was “currently calculating the correct charges” at the time the letter was written.

The letter also notes that the mishap was uncovered only after Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) of the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with seven other Democratic senators, specifically requested the information on coalition reimbursements from Secretary of Defense James Mattis in March.

Pentagon spokeswoman Rebecca Rebarich confirmed the letter’s contents to The Atlantic, stating,

“Although DoD has received some reimbursement for inflight refueling assistance provided to the Saudi-led coalition (SLC), U.S. Central Command recently reviewed its records and found errors in accounting where DoD failed to charge the SLC adequately for fuel and refueling services.”

Rebarich also stated that the calculations meant to determine the full cost of the mistake were still being conducted.

Since the existence of the error was revealed, it has been difficult to estimate how much the mistake may have cost American taxpayers, as the U.S. military has long given inconsistent answers regarding how much fuel it has provided to the coalition. As The Atlantic noted, the Pentagon has essentially admitted that there has never been an official servicing agreement in force with Saudi Arabia regarding U.S. assistance to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

However, records from the Defense Logistics Agency suggest that from fiscal year 2015 to March of this year, more than 8.5 million gallons of aerial refueling has been provided by the U.S. military to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Notably, these 8.5 million gallons of fuel were given for “free” to two countries that are both major oil exporters, with Saudi Arabia being the world’s largest oil exporter and the UAE ranking as the fifth largest.

It should be noted that the price of the refueling is far greater than the mere cost of the fuel itself, as the hourly rate for U.S. military aircraft conducting this activity ranges from around $2,000 to over $75,000 depending on the type of plane used. Senator Reed, in speaking to The Atlantic, estimated that the error – at minimum – “likely cost tens of millions of dollars” over the past three-and-a-half years.

A little hole in the Pentagon’s pocket?

It is highly likely that the Pentagon will ultimately be unable to determine how much refueling and fuel was provided for “free” given its widespread accounting problems and tendency to “lose” or waste large sums of American taxpayer funds.

For instance, in addition to the U.S. Army having failing its first-ever audit last month, a 2016 Reuters report found that the Army had “fudged” its accounts to the tune of trillions of dollars and had “lost” $6.5 trillion in 2015 alone due to “wrongful budget adjustments.” That report raised the specter of other mysterious incidents of “lost” Pentagon funds, such as the agency’s now-infamous loss of $2.3 trillion the day before the 9/11 attacks — money that was never accounted for following the destruction of the Pentagon’s accounting office during the subsequent terror attack.

However, those figures were just the tip of the iceberg, as a report published last year by Dr. Mark Skidmore, a professor of economics at Michigan State University, and Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of housing, found that the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had “lost” over $21 trillion in taxpayer funds from 1998 to 2015. That figure roughly equates to $65,000 for every U.S. resident.

In that context, the Pentagon’s “accounting error” regarding the refueling of coalition jets in Yemen is just another swindle in a long line of accounting issues from the most well-funded military in the world.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile. 

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