Adam Duvernay

The News Journal

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General released a report on a plane being stored in Middletown.

The aircraft belongs to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Defense Department.

The agencies spent $86 million retrofitting the plane.

There's an $86 million airplane sitting at an airport near Middletown that will never fly its intended mission.

An audit released Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department inspector general found an ATR 42-500 purchased to serve in drug enforcement efforts in Afghanistan not only cost four times what it was expected to, but still is unable to fly and is sitting on jacks at Summit Airport near Middletown.

A representative from Summit Airport was unavailable for comment, but the audit identifies the airport as the plane's current location. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said he could not comment on the matter beyond what's available in the audit.

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Summit Airport, owned by Summit Aviation, is a high-security Department of Defense-approved contractor facility. The audit found DOD paid Summit and other companies $1.4 million in funding intended for aviation operations in Afghanistan on maintenance for the plane.

Work on the aircraft was a joint effort between the U.S. Departments of Defense and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as part of the Global Discovery program, which intended to equip the plane with advanced surveillance capabilities for counter-narcotics missions. The DEA ended its aviation mission in Afghanistan last year.

"Moreover, despite the DEA’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, as of March 2016, the DOD continued to spend appropriated funds in an effort to make the aircraft operational and flyable," the audit said. "The DEA has purchased approximately $8.5 million in parts for the ATR 500 that it cannot utilize until the modifications are complete and the aircraft has been made flyable. The expected completion date for the Global Discovery project is now June 2016."

A majority of the $8.5 million worth of parts cannot be used for other aircraft in its fleet, and the Defense Department spent $2 million on a hangar in Afghanistan that was never used and likely never will be, according to the audit.

The expectation is the plane will be complete in June, but it has missed every earlier delivery date. The DEA plans to use the aircraft in the Caribbean, Central America and South America, according to the audit.

The review was the result of a July 2014 whistleblower's report.

The inspector general's office made 13 recommendations to improve oversight of aviation operations agreements and the problematic program, including strengthening internal controls for buying new aircraft and keeping better records.

"We believe that the more than $86 million spent on the purchase and modification of the DEA’s ATR 500 aircraft with advanced surveillance capabilities to support the DEA’s counter-narcotics mission in Afghanistan has been an ineffective and wasteful use of government resources," the audit concluded. "As one of the two key stakeholders in the Global Discovery program, the DEA failed to properly oversee and protect its interests and those of the American taxpayer, and to ensure the program met established timelines, goals and objectives and anticipated costs."

The DEA in its formal reply to the audit said that based on previous positive experiences using Defense Department contractors to modify its aircraft it "had no indication that the Global Discovery modification would encounter the significant delays and problems that ultimately occurred."

Contact Adam Duvernay at (302) 319-1855 or aduvernay@delawareonline.com