Pentagon pulls 25 years of weapons test reports from public site over AI security concerns

The Pentagon has moved two-decades of unclassified weapons-testing reports to a secure network, citing fears that AI could help adversaries exploit the data.

On July 30, the Pentagon’s weapons-testing office, led by Amy Henninger, restricted public access to more than two decades of unclassified annual assessments of major defence programmes, moving them to a secure, authenticated platform. The department justified the step as a proactive measure to prevent hostile nations from using artificial-intelligence techniques to combine disparate data points into precise vulnerability maps of U.S. critical infrastructure and defence assets.

Access will now require a military Common Access Card, issued only after FBI background checks. The reports, which have traditionally highlighted both performance and maintenance shortfalls—including those of the $1.6 trillion F-35 programme—are also accompanied by a GAO yearly assessment that will similarly be limited. Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the move, warning that concealing malfunction data could endanger troops and waste billions, and questioned whether Henninger had misled Congress after promising greater openness. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously cut staff and funding for the testing office, reducing its workforce to 30 and dropping oversight of 90 programmes.