The United States let 16 military transport planes worth $24.3 million apiece sit idle on the tarmac at Kabul International Airport for more than a year before demolishing them and selling the scrap metal to an Afghan construction company for $32,000, or six cents a pound.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko revealed the fate of the G222 planes (also known as C-27s) in a recent report that said the Pentagon bought the aircraft to train Afghan air force pilots, barely used them, failed to secure spare parts to keep them flying, and then decided to chop them up.

"I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars," wrote Sopko in an October 3 letter to Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James.

In the letter, Sopko asked why the planes' engines, brass fittings, and other components weren't sold off to recoup their approximate value of $390 million. He also wanted to know what happened to four other G222s that were part of the same order and last seen in Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

"The Department of Defense strives to ensure every reconstruction project is executed in a manner that demonstrates responsible stewardship of taxpayers' dollars," Pentagon spokesman Maj. Bradlee Avots said in a statement to VICE News.

The waste is shocking, but it's only the most recent embarrassment for US officials who have spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan since the US invaded in 2001, including $104 billion on humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and training and equipping the Afghan military, said Neil Gordon, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight.

"I guess the Afghans don't have people who can fly them," Gordon told VICE News. "A lot of this property goes unused either because the Afghans can't use it, they don't need it, or they can't sustain it with their own effort and money."

Gordon listed other examples of what he estimated was as much as $60 billion in US money wasted in Afghanistan, such as a $34-million, 64,000-square-foot Marine headquarters at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan that was built even though the military brass said they didn't need it.

"It's pretty much par for the course, whether it's weapon systems, infrastructure, water treatment plants, hospitals, schools," Gordon told VICE News. "It's normal, but it's abnormal. It's abnormally normal. That's the thing. We should be outraged at this. But unfortunately it's commonplace."

Marvin Weinbaum, a security expert at the Middle East Institute, cautioned about feeling too much righteous indignation. Wars entail losses that wouldn't be acceptable in civilian life, Weinbaum said.

"A hell of a lot of money was wasted," he told VICE News. "But this isn't Milwaukee or Minneapolis."

Weinbaum worried that stories about turning planes into scrap metal would lend support to isolationists in Congress who say the US should quit Afghanistan and let the locals sort things out. It was under the Taliban's patronage that al Qaeda planned the 9/11 terror attacks. In order for newly-inaugurated Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to keep the same militants at bay, he's going to need more funding, not less, Weinbaum insists.

"This is a very delicate time in Afghanistan," he said. "This government is fragile. It's going to need assistance if there's any chance it's going to be able to manage these next few years when it's going to be under exceptional pressure from the Taliban."

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