The Pentagon says it removed 25 years’ worth of annual weapons testing reports from public view late last month, a move that critics fear could hide potentially dangerous flaws in weapons systems.
Justifying the move, the Defense Department said adversaries could use AI and other tools to “compile disparate, unclassified data points [from the reports] into highly detailed vulnerability profiles targeting [U.S.] critical infrastructure and defense capabilities.”
In 1983, Congress created the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) to provide independent guidance and oversight to the services
“The office was created in response to stories of a whole bunch of soldiers and Marines dying with M16s in their hands,” Greg Williams, the director of the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information, tells RS. The rifles had been used in Vietnam despite known ammunition and jamming issues — left unresolved during testing, in the rush to get the guns to the troops.
The DOT&E office’s annual reports have also been a critical source of information for the public about the status of key weapons programs.
The Pentagon apparently wants to end this public access, however. A defense official told RS on condition of anonymity that the office has moved the reports “to a secure DOT&E Extranet” to “ensure they are accessed exclusively by authorized personnel supporting the defense mission.” The Pentagon says the documents can only be accessed with a military standard “Common Access Card,” which
That’s not entirely true. In fact, Williams tells RS the Pentagon only removed the annual weapons reports’ landing pages from its website, rather than deleting them entirely. Thus, __many____reports____can____still____be____accessed____with ____the____correct __ weblink.
The Pentagon official did not deny the weapons reports’ URLs still work, nor did they clarify whether future annual reports would only be available on the DOT&E Extranet.
“Pentagon careerists and corporate go-fers have been attempting to either get rid of or defang DOT&E” since its inception, says Winslow Wheeler, who was previously a budget process analyst for the Government Accountability Office and for both the Republican and Democratic parties in the Senate.
“Because of many poor designs, some [weapons] systems do poorly in operational testing and incur the wrath of bureaucratic and corporate advocates when flaws are revealed to the public, and the money flow is interrupted,” Wheeler told RS.
In particular, the office’s work has been scapegoated as costly and disruptive to fielding weapons.
Weapons industry allies in Congress launched an unsuccessful bid to eliminate the office in defense authorization legislation for FY 1996. Later, an FY 2015 NDAA draft provision would have
A lack of independence has also undermined the office’s work.
The military personnel who are doing the weapons testing “ultimately answer to the service,” Dan Grazier, the director of the Stimson Center’s National Security Reform program, pointed out. And the service leaders have incentives to ensure weapons are fielded quickly and without scrutiny, “because that's how the deputy commandant for aviation is going to get his sinecure upon retirement with Lockheed Martin.”
In part because of these pressures, the contents of the annual reports have “already been defanged for the most part,” Wheeler said.
“In past years when these reports were highly informative, such as under DOT&Es Mike Gilmore and Tom Christie during the Bush and Obama administrations, Congress and the public were allowed a sense of which were the winners, and which were the losers in our weapons,” Wheeler said. “That ability has now been mostly eliminated.”
__Christie ____and __ Gilmore are renowned for The Biden era “move to stamp DOT&E's reports CUI [Controlled Unclassified Information] was another tactic used” to weaken the office, Grazier told RS. The effort would have similarly removed the reports from public view, but was abandoned after public backlash.
The Trump administration has accelerated the office’s decline. It has made extensive cuts to the DOT&E office itself, reducing its total authorized civilian headcount from 126 to 30 last May. It has
Swiping at another watchdog, the DoD also blocked the release of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the status of the F-35 fighter jet program last month, deeming it to have “Controlled Unclassified Information.” The F-35 program is
These efforts have real impacts on oversight, which could adversely affect the weapons systems military personnel rely on.
“The decision to purge the office of DOT&E has created significant and unnecessary risk that jeopardizes readiness, service member safety, acquisition reform, and taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Aug. 12. They urged Hegseth “to reverse the cuts made to this office to restore trust that DoD weapon systems are effective for combat use and safe for our warfighters.”
Last year’s DOT&E office personnel cuts are already taking a toll.
“Remaining staff absorbed more work than they could handle and didn't have the expertise to oversee some programs,” a June GAO report found. “If these staff limitations continue, it will be challenging for this office to effectively oversee testing to determine whether weapon systems work as they should.”
The concern is particularly acute as the Pentagon pursues a number of controversial weapons programs. These include prospective Trump administration initiatives such as the Golden Dome missile defense system and
“The fact that…the national security establishment [has] to hide this information is proof positive that the weapons that we're producing are garbage,” Grazier said.