On July 26, 2016 a startling report was published on the Department of Defense website. Under the office of the Inspector General, an audit report was filed claiming that the Pentagon's aging systems and systemic errors within the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis branch cost the United States $6.5 trillion.
Here is the link: http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/report_summary.cfm?id=70...
The report details that the DFAS Indianapolis errors caused the inadequate documentation of a massive amount of expenditures by the US military. The report goes further to indicate the Pentagon will not be able to successfully pass the congressional audit in September 30th 2017 if these errors are not fixed and presumably retroactively corrected. The lack of oversight and inability to maintain administrative systems is critical failure in many of the US aging systems, many of which are Cold War relics. These systems put the United States at risk of cyber attack.
The United States is a massive organization and problems within it can go unnoticed for extended periods of time like the VA hospital systems. It often takes outside sources to bring to light systemic problems within the United States so they can be corrected. The VA system was greatly improved by the exposure of these issues however, in 2013 the news agency Reuters released a report detailing similar issues within the Pentagon. The report, titled Unaccountable, step by step breaks down several key aspects of the rampant problems costing American soldiers and civilians immense amount of money.
Here is the Reuters report: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/#arti...
The Pentagon had two years to fix the problems they knew existed, their failure comes at great cost to the United States. The impending audit will hopefully force Congress to tighten regulations and oversight on the Pentagon. Military spending is historically a difficult expenditure to curb in the United States. If the Pentagon cannot adequately manage their military spending, it will be up to Congress to establish new regulations. Unfortunately, Congress has had a poor track record of regulating rampant problems like the lack of regulation after the 2008 housing crash caused by irresponsible banking practices.
