Pentagon can't account for 8.5trillion in the last decade and a half....

[Major Nikon]

33. Which means they can't say where it went

It's not as if the standards for audits are hidden in some secret tome and locked away for only independent auditors. DoD should have been doing their own internal audits to the same standards. If they couldn't manage that task they should have been contracting with one of any number of professional auditing firms that could have shown them how to do it or done it for them. If they weren't the only logical explanation is incompetence.

I don't care how much work or discipline it takes. You're talking about an organization that is founded on the principles of work and disciple with a tradition of exactly that which stretches all the way back to the Romans and Greeks. They teach it to every member of the military enlisted or officer during introductory training. They teach it in every single one of their leadership development courses. They teach it in staff college to military and civilian leaders. Furthermore it's not as if we aren't giving them 4.7% of our entire GDP. Any work required would have cost an infinitesimally small amount relative to everything else.

I don't buy the excuses and I have no tolerance for them. Even if they don't do anything else right, they should get their budget and accounting right. It should be their first priority. Anything else is counterproductive to whatever other mission they may have.