Newspapers sometimes fail their readers by using $10 words. The Air Force has a bigger problem: It is poised to fail taxpayers by using a $16 million letter. The letter, by the way, is B.

In the context of a $2 billion Pentagon contract, $16 million doesn’t seem like a lot of money. But it’s a lot to waste.

Last year the Pentagon awarded a valuable defense contract to build dozens of new medium-sized military transport aircraft called the C-27 J Spartan for the Army and Air Force.  

The Air Force wants to change the name to the C-27 B Spartan, which would cost $16 million because it would mean changing all technical and operational manuals to reflect the switch from J to B. The aircraft is already commercially available and known worldwide by the letter J.

The army and the contractor, sensibly, do not want to absorb this cost; $16 million is half the cost of one of the new planes.

But the Air Force’s previous transport plane from the same manufacturer was called the C-27 A Spartan, and the service has always referred to the new plane as the B rather than the J. Now it wants to make that designation official.

A story in The Hill by Roxana Tiron this week noted that there is a method to the madness, in that the most methodical way of naming the new plane is to do so alphabetically. But spending $16 million to adhere to the order we are all taught in kindergarten suggests a touch of madness in the Air Force method.

Washington has been consumed all year by a battle over congressional earmarks, in which members direct spending to their districts for sometimes dubious causes. The House and Senate are considering one-year moratoriums on these projects, which have been highlighted as examples of government waste.

The name change debate at the Pentagon is a reminder that wasteful spending in Washington goes way beyond earmarks, which make up a tiny fraction of federal government expenditures. If Congress really wants to get serious about cutting spending, it does not have to look; start with existing programs and proposals from both the administration and Congress.

Former Sen. William Proxmire used to offer Golden Fleece awards to the government projects that served as the worst examples of wasteful spending. If the Wisconsin Democrat were still alive, we feel certain he would consider giving the award to the Air Force for its astonishing fidelity to the alphabet.