“Rust costs the Pentagon more money annually than many of its most expensive weapons systems—up to $21 billion per year, according to a Defense Department-commissioned audit released in March,” Next Gov reports.
The problem is significant enough that the Pentagon established an Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight in 2002. But a new audit released last week by the Government Accountability Office says that data reporting by military branches has been inconsistent and that the Pentagon’s corrosion policy office has yet to issue guidance on how funding levels should be determined, leading to big differences in requests between the branches. “In 2017, the Army requested $2.4 million and the Air Force $3 million, while the Navy only requested $220,000,” NextGov says.
