The Pentagon today defended its efforts to eliminate wasteful wartime spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, as two new reports accused it of squandering tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts. The bipartisan commission on wartime contracting is scheduled to deliver its final report tomorrow, charting what it says is $30 billion in waste due to wartime contracting practices. The Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative news group, said in a separate report yesterday that non-competitive contracting at the US defense department had nearly tripled since 2001, to more than $140 billion from $50 billion. "We are well aware of some of the deficiencies over the years in how we have worked contracts," said Marine Corps Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman. "We have worked hard over those years to try to correct those deficiencies when we come across them." Col Lapan defended the use of no-bid contracts at a time of war.