DoD Fails Audit, Can't Account for 61% of Assets

That seems insane, but it is the government, which has been getting steadily more insane my whole life. Defense Department fails another audit, but makes progress | The Hill

I know this is late, but I want a record of this I can easily find...

The Defense Department has failed its fifth-ever audit, unable to account for more than half of its assets, but the effort is being viewed as a “teachable moment,” according to its chief financial officer. 

After 1,600 auditors combed through DOD’s $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities, officials found that the department couldn’t account for about 61 percent of its assets, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters on Tuesday. 

Even with having "misplaced" 61% of its assets, the Comptroller couldn't bring himself to admit that they failed.

“I would not say that we flunked. The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want,” [McCord] said. 

So what would a "fail" look like, Mr. McCord?

Back in the dark ages, when I was working in IT supporting "high-value-item" manufacturing, if our computerized systems were off by something less than 5 percent, we would lose our certification and have to go back to tracking things with paper and pencil. If we lost track of 61 percent of the items, I think we would all have been looking for work. And the stuff we were keeping track of couldn't kill people, unless you dropped one on somebody.

The bureaucrats are spinning. It's hard because the DoD is so big. And probably because people don't care. And since we don't teach history anymore, people don't realize that logistics (and an industrial base) is what wins wars in the moder era. You can have well trained troops, but if they don't have beans and bullets, they aren't going to fight anyone. You can have great airplanes, but they won't fly without spare parts and fuel.

Anyway go read the whole thing.

I wonder how many anti-tank weapons or anti-aircraft weapons have been sold to "questionable" people. 61 percent is an amazing number of things to go 'missing.'