THE PENTAGON — Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord has expressed regret with the Pentagon's decision to cover the spiraling cost-overruns of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with a payday loan, sources have learned.

"We had some trouble scraping together a few billion dollars to tide us over until the end of the Fiscal Year, and we thought we could get by with a payday loan," McCord reportedly told Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. "We thought we'd be able to repay the loan in October, when we got our new Fiscal Year paycheck. But sequestration happened, and, well, we couldn't pay back the loan right away."

Sources inside the DOD claim McCord secured a loan for approximately $3.2 billion from E-Z Cash USA on Yadkin Road, just outside Fort Bragg, N.C.