Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder holds a press conference at the Pentagon on Oct. 19, 2023. 
Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty

The U.S. Military appears unfazed in its inability to account for billions of dollars. On Thursday, the Department of Defense failed its sixth consecutive audit — but hailed its “incremental progress.”

As the Pentagon budget nears a watershed $1 trillion — the largest of any federal government agency — it has never passed a single one of the annual audits mandated by Congress. In a press briefing, the Department of Defense said it had no timeline for passing an audit.

“We’ve heard the same platitudes about audit progress for years,” said Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information. “They’re meaningless, especially since the Pentagon can’t even commit to a timeline for achieving a clean audit.”

“We’ve heard the same platitudes about audit progress for years. They’re meaningless.”

Former Pentagon comptroller Thomas Harker, now the secretary of the Navy, had publicly set a deadline of 2027 for […]

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