Defense Dept. doesn’t slow down spending for surveillance. The U.S. Department of Defense awarded 94 contracts worth over $5 billion, including purchases for spy satellites, body armor and drones, on Sept. 30, the day before the government shutdown and at the end of the federal fiscal year.
Text: Kit Daniels, Infowars.com, October 2, 2013 | Photo: Public domain, A MQ-9 Reaper drone
The contracts include an extreme range of weapon, infrastructure and equipment to various military branches including (with prices in front):
- $48,600,000: Operation support for spy satellites
- $49,813,377: MQ-9 Reaper drones for France
- $40,000,000: scalable hand grenades which allows users to choose the level of the blast “needed for the situation.”
- $25,693,160: Construction of a Weapons Surveillance and Test Laboratory
- $18,132,000: Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System
The Air Force contracts in particular focused on sophisticated surveillance tech, including the aforementioned drones, spy satellite support, and logistics for a fleet of spy planes. One Army contract, worth $246,699,217, procured “Interceptor Body Armor Outer Tactical Vests for various foreign military sales customers.”
Eventually this kind of body armor will be found in the inventory of small town police departments if they don’t have them already. The Defense Dept. made these enormous purchases regardless of the government shutdown.