Feds spend $86M on drug-surveillance plane that was never flown: audit

The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Defense has spent more than $86 million on a drug-surveillance airplane that is four times over budget and has never left the ground, according to a federal audit report.

In 2008, the DEA spent more than $8.6 million to purchase an ATR 500 surveillance plane to conduct counternarcotics surveillance flights over combat zones in Afghanistan in the so-called Global Discovery program, according to a new audit released Wednesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The Defense Department spent an additional $67.9 million to modify the aircraft and to construct a hangar for it at Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan. The DEA has also spent nearly $10.1 million to modify the plane.

The plane was meant to be ready three years ago at an estimated cost of $22 million.

“Even though collectively the DEA and DOD have spent more than $86 million on the Global Discover program, we found that, over 7 years after the aircraft was purchased for the program, the aircraft remains inoperable, resting on jacks, and has never actually flown in Afghanistan,” the inspector general said.

The DEA now plans to use the plane, when it’s ready for flight, in operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

In response to the report, the DEA said it relied on the Defense Department to oversee the project and had not anticipate the program delays and cost overruns.

“Based on that previous experience, DEA had no indication that the Global Discovery modification would encounter the significant delays and problems that ultimately occurred,” said Michael Stanfill of the agency’s office of inspections in a responding letter to the report.