Military spending

SIGAR: DoD Spent $43M on 'Ill-Conceived' Afghan Gas Station

A now-defunct Defense Department office tasked to build a compressed natural gas automobile filling station in Afghanistan spent an "exorbitant" $43 million on the facility, according John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).

DoD awarded Central Asian Engineering a contract to build the station for just under $3 million, but SIGAR found that between 2011 and 2014 the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations (TFBSO) had spent nearly $40 million extra.

What's more is the DoD could offer no explanation as to why TFBSO spent exponentially more on the station than on a similar station built in Pakistan that cost no more than $500,000 to build, Sopko said in his letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter accompanying the report on the "ill-conceived" project.