The General Accounting Office has conducted a study of US Air Force depot level maintenance contracts, and has found that the government lost about $623 million over a five year period (compared to the budgeted amounts) due to lower productivity, higher costs, and overestimated savings. The report noted that the Air Force constantly announced new reforms with huge estimated savings, but that the savings reached only 39% of the estimates, and that the Air Force's accounting was so bad that it could not tell how much it was missing the target in real time.--Stephen V Cole