The US Department of Defence burned through £73.8 billion ($93.4 billion) in grants and contracts in September 2025 alone; the highest single-month military spend since at least 2008, and a figure that included millions in seafood, a concert-grade grand piano, and premium Herman Miller office chairs.

The findings come from a9 March 2026 analysisby Open the Books, a nonpartisan government watchdog that has tracked Pentagon spending for nearly a decade. The report, first obtained exclusively by theDaily Caller News Foundation, draws entirely on publicly available federal contracts data. The driver is a structural budget rule, known as 'use-it-or-lose-it,' that forces all federal agencies to exhaust their entire annual budget by 30 September or forfeit the remainder, potentially facing reduced allocations the following year.

The rule is not new, and it has produced similar end-of-year spending spikes under every administration since at least 2008. What was new in 2025 was the scale: no federal agency has ever spent that much on grants and contracts in a single calendar month in the recorded period.

On 30 September 2025, the final day of the fiscal year and the precise moment the Pentagon was closing out its record-setting spending run,Defence Secretary Pete Hegsethdelivered aspeechin which he told military personnel it was 'completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.'

The same month, his department spent £5.5 million ($6.9 million) on lobster tail, £1.6 million ($2 million) on Alaskan king crab, and £11.9 million ($15.1 million) on ribeye steak.Fortune magazinehad recently declared Alaskan king crab the most fashionable luxury food ingredient of the year, displacing caviar. Lobster tail was not a one-month anomaly under Hegseth; theOpen the Books reportfound the DoD spent more than £5.8 million ($7.4 million) on lobster tail across four separate months in 2025: March, May, June, and October, a monthly threshold that had previously only been crossed once in recorded history.

Pentagon Spent Over $93 Billion Under 'Use-It-Or-Lose-It' Rules: "$12,000 on fruit basket stands"https://t.co/fu7BccFzun

The food spending sat alongside a wider furniture and equipment binge. The Pentagon spent£178 million ($225.6 million) on furniturein September, the highest figure since 2014, including £9,900 ($12,540) on three-tiered fruit basket stands and £47,900 ($60,719) onHerman Miller Aeron chairs, priced at £1,457 ($1,844) apiece. Musical instruments accounted for £1.4 million ($1.8 million) of the month's spend.

That total included a£77,600 ($98,329) Steinway & Sons grand pianopurchased for the Air Force chief of staff's home, a £20,500 ($26,000) violin, and a £17,200 ($21,750) custom handmade flute from Japanese luxury brand Muramatsu. The Pentagon also bought £88,100 ($111,497) in footrests, £97,800 ($124,000) in ice cream machines, and £2,500 ($3,160) in children's stickers bearing characters from Dora the Explorer, Frozen, and Paw Patrol.

The use-it-or-lose-it rule is enshrined in congressional appropriations law, and the Open the Books analysis is careful to note it is not unique to the current administration. DoD furniture spending under Barack Obama routinely hit £237 to £316 million ($300–$400 million) every September, considerably higher than this year's total.

The difference in 2025 was the overall scale. In the final five working days of September alone, the DoD spent £39.6 billion ($50.1 billion) on grants and contracts — more than the entire annual defence budgets of Israel and Italy combined, and more than only nine countries spend on their militaries in an entire year, according todata from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Source: International Business Times UK