How the U.S. Military Is Trying to Mask Its Readiness Crisis

Maggie Ybarra

Security, Americas

Senior Pentagon officials are classifying data on important readiness issues. Is that a good idea?

The Defense Department has quietly embarked on a multilayered approach to masking the difficulties its officials have been experiencing acquiring new military equipment while ensuring that old equipment is repaired and battle ready.

In early March, two directives on information sharing began circulating in the Pentagon. The first, dated March 1 and signed by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, urged officers not to discuss publicly information that could give away the Navy’s competitive edge, but instead to scrutinize and protect it. The second, dated March 2, issued via email by Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, detailed guidance from Defense Secretary James Mattis on publicly telegraphing shortfalls in weapons systems and other military equipment.

“While it can be tempting during budget season to publicly highlight readiness problems, we have to remember that our adversaries watch the news too,” Davis said. “Communicating that we are broken or not ready to fight invites miscalculation. Know that he is well aware of our readiness shortfalls, as are our elected leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. They don’t need news stories to remind them. Help is on the way.”

Around that same time, the military began to label weapons-system information that was previously publicly available as classified, according to a government official.

“Some readiness information has always been classified and now we are classifying more of it,” the official said.

The government official said that “major weapons systems” had been shuffled under the classification umbrella, but did not provide details on specific systems. Instead, the official explained why moving them out of the public eye was necessary.

“We don’t think it should be public, for example, how many THAADs are not operational due to maintenance reasons,” the official said. “We don’t think it should be public what percent of our F-22s are not available due to maintenance. We don’t think it should be public how many of our pilots are below their required number of training hours in the cockpit.”

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