[OC] Gestern sagte Hegseth vor dem Kongress zu einem Antrag auf ein Verteidigungsbudget in Höhe von 1,5 Billionen US-Dollar aus und konnte grundlegende Kostenfragen zum Iran-Krieg nicht beantworten. Das Verteidigungsministerium hat jede Prüfung durchgefallen, seit der Kongress sie 2018 gefordert hat. Ich habe es aufgezeichnet.
Von MarkusGrant
15 Kommentare
For those asking about the green bars:
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s entire operating philosophy was that you are worthless, you are stupid, and you will keep doing it wrong until you stop doing it wrong. No exceptions. No budget increases for failing. You get it right or you drop and give him twenty until you do.
The Marine Corps is the only branch that passed its audit. Three years running.
Somewhere in that methodology is a lesson the Department of Defense has declined to learn for eight consecutive years. The Marines can account for every rifle, every round, and apparently every dollar. The branch that manages the other 94% of this budget cannot tell you what a two-month war costs without hedging the number.
Someone should look into what they put in the chow hall at Parris Island. Whatever it is, it produces people who understand that „we’ll figure out the accounting later“ is not an answer Hartman accepts.
The Marine Corps has been telling recruits they’re worthless until they get it right since 1775. Turns out that’s a viable financial management methodology.
Semper Fi means Always Faithful. The other six branches should look that up.
Sources: GAO-25-107427, Military Times February 2026.
It is so obvious that they are stealing from us. Trump literally had fake charities and colleges designed to steal money from the applicants.
Asking for more funding when you can’t even account for the funding you already have and you’re constantly telling the country you have no money for anything is pretty crazy.
The complex colors of money (appropriations) plus the archaic and idiotic FAR and DFARS that guide the procurement process doesn’t help.
Audits are funny sometimes where you need to explain a replacement of a unserviceable $1M equipment with a repaired one doesn’t mean we lost $2M worth of assets, and just put the serviceable one onto the aircraft and removed the broken one to be repaired.
Given that real world and really painful example, I think we need more details as to why those audits failed and if it has to do anything with the way accounting is done within the military.
Everytime I learn about the marines I am impressed. They just adapt and adapt and adapt.
Marines lead the way.
I don’t see patriotism or warfighting on your chart so it must be part of the America-hating deep state media lies God red meat trump trump trump bzzt bllrp system failure!
It’s cause we count in crayons and pictures of birds. Marines always know where shit is, just depends where you got it … or didn’t get it.
While this may be absolutely true, and I fully believe your post is factual. It’s not stopping them (Trump, Republicans, fascists, whatever) from doing just about anything they want. The rules don’t apply to them. They just go „so what? There’s nothing you can do about it“. And they know we know there’s nothing we can do to stop them besides voting them out. And that has its own set of issues
The U.S. Coast Guard has passed EVERY annual audit since the requirement and is the smallest service by budget, not the Marine Corps.
I’m still waiting for a justification for spending more on defense than the next 9 (or is it 10? 11) countries COMBINED.
The y-axis for this graph doesn’t start at 0, and this graph also doesn’t accurately reflect how much budget the USMC is responsible for
Nice chart however, I find the y-axis deceptive starting at $600b.
I don’t see how auditing matters at all. The military industrial complex is famously corrupt. Wasting money is kinda the point.
The money shuffle is where the money is “unaccounted” for.