As Egypt’s generals steer the country toward a new civilian government after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, questions about an American military aid program echo a broader uneasiness: Will a for-profit military deeply invested in a system that conferred great economic and political power be willing to let go?

Some experts say the aid program - which has given the Egyptian military roughly $40 billion since the program’s inception as part of the 1979 Camp David accord signed by Israel and Egypt - has supported a military bureaucracy prone to insider dealing and corruption.

“It will be a very sore point in the near future, I’m sure, that the generals, the Supreme Military Council, is a de facto, separate government with an economy in its own right,” said Christopher Davidson, an expert on Egypt and a professor at Durham University in England.

Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who studies Egypt’s military, said that by paying for expensive weapons systems, the aid program “has enabled the Egyptian military then to use resources it has for other purposes.”

Only a sliver of the money goes to the Egyptian military. The Pentagon directly pays American firms that it has chosen to manufacture and ship tanks, planes, guns and ammunition to Egypt.

Egyptian opposition groups have said that Mr. Mubarak and senior generals were able to divert money. But American officials insist that the program - known as Foreign Military Sales - ensures that money cannot be stolen.

Even so, several former American military officials said that keeping the aid flowing often seemed to trump questions of how effective it was. The $1.3 billion that the military receives annually, one retired colonel explained, is viewed as “an entitlement.”

A fleet of Gulfstream jets is one example. The retired colonel, who worked at the American Embassy’s Office of Military Cooperation in Cairo, said that “it was obvious to us” that the jets would be used to ferry civilian officials.

Officers tried to block the deal, he recalled, but “our contacts at the Ministry of Defense were applying pressure” to make sure the sale went through.

The Egyptian military did use the Gulfstreams for its dignitaries, and the luxury jets became a popular symbol of the Mubarak government’s excess. The Pentagon continues to pay $10 million a year to service the nine planes.

Egyptian military officials declined to comment for this article.

The fleet has cost American taxpayers $333 million, officials said. The United States State Department, which has jurisdiction of the program, said the aid was “ critical to ensuring Egypt’s continued role as a regional leader able to act as a moderating influence.”

Major General Michael A. Collings, a retired Air Force officer who was the top-ranking United States military representative in Egypt from 2006 to 2008, served as the American Embassy’s senior defense representative and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation.

He said the Americans were unable to track where the money goes in the for-profit arm of Egypt’s military - a conglomerate that runs factories, farms and high-tech corporations. While insisting that no American aid money had been stolen, he said there was endemic corruption . “My concern is for the Egyptian people who have suffered enough,” he said. “They deserve better.”

Senior Egyptian military officials told him of a corruption scheme in which Mr. Mubarak handed out cash to top generals , he said. “There was a systematic process.”

The Egyptian armed forces also collect millions more from a joint military exercise held in Egypt every two years. In what General Collings called an unusual arrangement, every item for the exercises is rented. “Fifty cents a chair” per day, he recalled. “A buck fifty for a table. It varied.”

In some cases, military products and for-profit goods are manufactured inside a single armed forces-owned complex. The Egyptian military has a joint venture with Chrysler to make Jeeps: the civilian Wrangler, for sale across the Middle East, as well as a Wrangler used by the Egyptian Army.

Mr. Springborg said he was skeptical that the Egyptians could maintain separation between production of civilian and military items.

And General Collings calls the production of the M1A1 Abrams tank, for which the Pentagon pays General Dynamics to ship tank kits to Egypt, “as much about providing jobs as it is buying military hardware.”

Outside Cairo, the International Medical Center arises from the desert. It was supposed to treat Egyptian soldiers. But it soon became clear that it was a commercial enterprise; its Web site promotes “a lavishly furnished Royal Suite” for international patients.

An American doctor who has worked there, Wayne F. Yakes, recalls what his hosts told him about the hospital: “It was built with U.S. tax dollars under President Bill Clinton.” Put simply, he said, “We bought it for them.”


By ARAM ROSTON and DAVID ROHDE