Cost to Return Afghan Gear – $5.7 billion

January 6, 2013. David Pugliese - Defence Watch

The Washington Post’s well respected security and defence columnist Walter Pincus recently published an article on what it is going to cost to for the U.S. to bring its equipment back from Afghanistan.

It will cost $5.7 billion (over a two year period). Pincus was citing a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

The U.S. Defense Department estimates the military services have more than 750,000 major items worth more than $36 billion in Afghanistan, including about 50,000 vehicles and more than 90,000 shipping containers of materiel, Pincus notes.

“The Defense Department has three ways to dispose of its Afghan materiel: transfer equipment to another federal or state agency or a foreign government, destroy the materiel in Afghanistan, or return it to another Pentagon location.”

He also makes this observation later in the article:

“Iraq and Afghanistan are the first U.S. wars in which the American public was not asked to pay a cent in additional taxes,” Pincus writes. “What were we thinking?”