WASHINGTON — A new Pentagon report on the performance of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons is marred by widespread use of a new designation that appears intended to suppress bad news under the guise of national security, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The Defense Department’s testing office issued two versions of its annual report last week — one posted online for the public and a more complete accounting that was tightly restricted to Pentagon officials, the military services and staffs on congressional defense committees. It was the first such restricted version of the report since Congress created the testing office in 1983.
The public version “is already raising alarms amongst watchdog groups due to its lack of transparency,” Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in letters Tuesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Nikolas Guertin, the new director of operational test and evaluation. Guertin inherited the report in its restricted format after his Senate confirmation in December.
