The military is an absolute money burning machine. In my seven years of experience the following were in-the-open examples:
* End of year spending binges on equipment no one wanted or needed to max out budgets, to justify the next budget year's sum
* Pre-inspection trashing of inventory to mitigate write ups for discrepancies between on-hand and on-book items.
* I met a team of inspectors in Iraq who were tasked with finding some number of billions worth of equipment that was paid for, but no one was able to locate.
* Getting rank often involves pushing through big expensive projects, no matter the need, in exchange for bullet points on personnel review files.
* My favorite: an enormous dining facility was built on a base in Iraq, but it was too close to the exterior fence, which presented a situation where there would potentially be slow-moving line of hundreds of military, closely grouped together, within "throwing distance" of the perimeter fence. Thus, the contractors were required to complete the building, to make-good on the contract, to force the military to pay them in full, for a facility that was unusable due to above.