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Bloomberg
A new Pentagon report on the performance of billions of dollars in US 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 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.
At issue is the increasingly widespread use of a recently created designation of “Controlled Unclassified Information,†which has largely replaced a “For Official Use Only†label on Defense Department documents and internal emails. For the annual testing report, the military services designate what information about their programs gets that restrictive label, although the testing office can appeal.
This year, 22 programs “have had information redacted,†according to Warren. That includes Lockheed Martin Corp.’s CH-53K King Stallion helicopter, “one of the Marine Corps’ most troubled programs, which has been entirely eliminated from the report,†she wrote. The restricted sections also include conclusions about Lockheed’s VH-92 Presidential Helicopter.