New Delhi, Aug. 28 -- A sailor's pay is the last thing a navy touches. It is the account nobody raids, because the consequences of getting it wrong are immediate and personal and impossible to explain away. The US Navy has been raiding it.

the money for payroll was taken to cover overseas contingencies and is being backfilled with funds that have not yet been spent elsewhere, so that paycheques still clear.

That sentence describes a service running on cashflow rather than budget. Nothing has been stolen and no sailor has gone unpaid. What has happened is that the Navy is moving money between accounts fast enough to stay ahead of its own obligations, which works until the balances it is borrowing against run out.

The arithmetic behind i...