The Department of Defense is overhauling how it keeps track of its guns and explosives, and Congress is requiring more accountability from the Pentagon.
The Pentagon will now have to give lawmakers an annual report on weapons loss and security under the National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress approved this month and President Joe Biden is expected to sign. As AP’sshowed, military officials weren’t advising Congress even as guns and explosives continued to disappear.
Pentagon officials have said that they can account for more than 99.9% of firearms, and take weapons security very seriously. Still, when AP published itson missing firearms in June, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would consider a “systematic fix.” The new law also requires the Defense Secretary to report confirmed thefts or recovery of weapons to the National Crime Information Center, which the FBI runs. Military regulations had required the services and units to self-report losses; the onus will now be on the highest level of the Pentagon.The Marine Corps said it is developing internal procedures for improved oversight through increased inspections of units.
The Pentagon reluctantly shared the statistics it collected, which Milley’s office has provided to Capitol Hill. The official numbers are lower than what AP reported -- but also incomplete, because some services failed to include stolen weapons as documented by the military’s own criminal investigators.
Relying on its official weapons registry, the Navy data represented that none of its shotguns have been stolen and its only explosives losses during the 2010s were 20 concussion grenades. AP identified several shotguns and dozens of armor-piercing grenades, based on case files from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
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