The Rush To Award Defense Contracts Before The U.S. Government Shutdowns

The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, taken from an airplane in January 2008. Wikipedia

Pentagon Spent $5 Billion On Weapons On The Eve Of The Shutdown -- Killer Apps/Foreign Policy

The Pentagon pumped billions of dollars into contractors' bank accounts on the eve of the U.S. government's shutdown that saw 400,000 Defense Department employees furloughed.

All told, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts yesterday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month.

Here are some of the more interesting purchases from Monday's dollar-dump.

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My Comment: Why does this not surprise me .... rushing to award billions in contracts before the government shuts down. But this rush to award contracts reveals to me that there is a lot of confusion within the Pentagon on what to contract during this government shutdown. On the one .... there are some who are reporting that all DoD contracts will be frozen .... others are saying that defense contracts will still be awarded, but they will not be announced in order to conform to the government shutdown. But as confusing as this is .... there is one situation that is making all of America's defense contractors really upset .... and (not surprisingly) it is this one.