The Pentagon has agreed to tidy up records of its responses to three Obama-era reviews of its nuclear infrastructure, personnel and programs, according to the unclassified version of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from the fall.
The three internal reports made hundreds of recommendations, but the Defense Department has done a poor job tracking which recommendations it closed out, and when, according to the GAO. In some cases, the report says, the Pentagon did not require officials to track such progress.
“Until DOD addresses these issues, it will not have a complete and accurate picture of when tasks are expected to be finished, whether progress is being made, whether efforts have stalled, or if there are other challenges,” the GAO said in its report.
Following “incidents involving the nation’s nuclear forces and their senior leadership,” the DOD directed both an internal and independent review of its nuclear forces in 2014, followed by a review of the nuclear command and control infrastructure in 2015. All the documents are classified.
Almost 100 Air Force service personnel were suspended in 2014 for cheating on monthly proficiency tests given to crews at intercontinental ballistic missile launch facilities.
Responding to the classified version of the report, John Whitley, then acting director of the Defense Department’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, said the Pentagon would direct the agency’s Nuclear Deterrent Senior Oversight Group to “update the applicable guidance to ensure that time frames and other information associated with planned actions [to meet the recommendations of the 2014 reviews] are kept up to date.”
Whitley also said the secretary of defense would direct the DOD’s chief information officer and undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment to “update the applicable guidance to ensure that metrics, time frames and other information associated with planned actions are kept up to date and complete.”
