{"slug": "dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong", "title": "DoD guts & conceals weapons testing. What could go wrong?", "summary": "The Pentagon removed 25 years' worth of annual weapons testing reports from public view late last month, citing concerns that adversaries could use AI to compile vulnerability profiles from the data. Critics, including Greg Williams of the Project On Government Oversight's Center for Defense Information, fear the move could hide dangerous flaws in weapons systems. The reports, produced by the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), have been moved to a secure extranet accessible only with a Common Access Card, though many reports remain accessible via direct links.", "body_md": "The Pentagon says it [ removed](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/pentagon-removes-decades-of-weapon-test-reports-from-public-view) 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.\n\nJustifying the move, the Defense Department [ said](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/pentagon-removes-decades-of-weapon-test-reports-from-public-view) 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.”\n\nIn 1983, Congress created the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) to [ provide](https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-news/2025/08/dods-independent-testing-office-drops-nearly-100-programs-from-oversight-list/) independent guidance and oversight to the services\n\n“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](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/) ammunition and jamming issues — left unresolved during testing, in the rush to get the guns to the troops.\n\nThe DOT&E office’s annual reports have also been a [ critical source](https://www.pogo.org/policy-letters/pogo-calls-on-senate-to-keep-pentagon-testing-office-strong-in-ndaa) of information for the public about the status of key weapons programs.\n\nThe 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](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/pentagon-removes-decades-of-weapon-test-reports-from-public-view) the documents can only be accessed with a military standard “Common Access Card,” which\n\nThat’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](https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2023/other/2023annual-report.pdf).\n\nThe 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.\n\n“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.\n\n“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.\n\nIn particular, the office’s work [ has been scapegoated](https://nationalinterest.org/feature/cutting-the-dods-testing-office-wont-reverse-us-military-decline) as costly and disruptive to fielding weapons.\n\nWeapons industry allies in Congress [ launched an unsuccessful bid ](https://www.pogo.org/investigates/independent-weapons-testing-comes-under-fire-again#:~:text=Despite%20the%20bipartisan%20support%20that%20DOT%26E%20enjoyed%2C,senior%20industry%20and%20government%20acquisition%20experts%2C%20which%2C)to eliminate the office in defense authorization legislation for FY 1996. Later, an FY 2015 NDAA draft provision would have\n\nA lack of independence has also undermined the office’s work.\n\nThe 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.”\n\nIn part because of these pressures, the contents of the annual reports have “already been defanged for the most part,” Wheeler said.\n\n“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.”\n\n__Christie ____and __[ Gilmore](https://www.pogo.org/investigates/overhaul-of-littoral-combat-ship-program-likely-to-increase-risks-and-costs) are renowned for\n\nThe 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](https://news.usni.org/2022/08/08/senate-questions-how-pentagon-uses-controlled-unclassified-information-label) the reports from public view, but was abandoned after public backlash.\n\nThe Trump administration has accelerated the office’s decline. It has [ made](https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-news/2026/07/cuts-to-dods-independent-testing-office-increase-risk-of-undetected-flaws-in-weapons/) extensive cuts to the DOT&E office itself, reducing its total authorized civilian headcount from 126 to 30 last May. It has\n\nSwiping at another watchdog, the DoD also [ blocked](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5969844-pentagon-bars-f35-watchdog-report/) 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\n\nThese efforts have real impacts on oversight, which could adversely affect the weapons systems military personnel rely on.\n\n“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](https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Final-Letter-on-GAO-review-of-DOTE.pdf) 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.”\n\nLast year’s DOT&E office personnel cuts are already taking a toll.\n\n“Remaining staff absorbed more work than they could handle and didn't have the expertise to oversee some programs,” a June GAO report [ found](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108859). “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.”\n\nThe 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](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/golden-dome/) and\n\n“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.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong", "canonical_source": "https://responsiblestatecraft.org/dod-weapons-testing/", "published_at": "2026-08-20 04:05:01+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-20 04:14:59.430626+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["Pentagon", "Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation", "Greg Williams", "Project On Government Oversight", "Winslow Wheeler", "Government Accountability Office"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/dod-guts-conceals-weapons-testing-what-could-go-wrong.jsonld"}}