You make it sound like they can't find a coupla Trillon $$ of assets. Like maybe they were pilfered or never procurred but paid for. Or possibly, someone took an F-35 on a date to show off and forgot to bring it back.
The audit has only been around for 6 years. It sounds more like the "data" is not exactly the way the 1600 auditors want it, and/or there are issues in pigeonholing the data. To me, there is a big differnce between "bookeeping errors" and theft/misappropriation.
"During a Pentagon
press briefing on Tuesday, DoD Comptroller Michael McCord said one of the challenges for military records keeping is in assigning values to the equipment the military has in its vast stores. He also said another problem arises with how the military is supposed to evaluate weapons and equipment it has paid for but that could take years for civilian manufacturers to deliver."
If any of the 27 audits that comprise the overall audit lack sufficient data the overall audit fails. "The remaining 16 component audits were listed with “disclaimers of opinion,” meaning the auditors were
unable to find complete enough financial records to provide an audit opinion. The disclaimers of opinion accounted for 47 percent of the DoD’s total assets and at least 71 percent of the DoD’s total budgetary resources.
I think this article paints a more accurate picture.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/11/pentagon-fails-5th-annual-audit-in-a-row-what-you-should-know/
Should they be able to pass an audit? Absolutelty.