The Pentagon is turning to AI and automation to help achieve a clean audit by fiscal year 2028 after Congress warned the Defense Department could face funding cuts for continued audit failures.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the department would deliver a clean audit after years of what he described as “disaster” financial reporting under previous administrations.
During the UiPath Fusion conference, Tom Harker, deputy chief financial officer in the defense department comptroller’s office, warned that failure to meet the deadline could result in major funding cuts, Defense Scoop reported.
“We need to get a clean opinion by our FY28 agency-wide financial statements. If not, they’re going to start taking money from us, significant amounts of money,” Harker said.
The Pentagon has struggled for years to pass clean audits due to fragmented systems and disconnected financial, logistics, HR, and procurement data spread across the department.
Central to the modernization effort is Advana, the Pentagon’s analytics platform designed to consolidate enterprise-wide data and support faster, more comprehensive audits.
“We’re focused on getting everything into Advana. That’s going to give us the ability to do a lot with AI and automation,” Harker said.
The effort will use AI-driven analytics and automation to identify discrepancies, reconcile records, and analyze large transaction datasets that previously required extensive manual review.
Harker said AI could help auditors analyze entire transaction datasets faster instead of relying on limited sample testing.
He also noted that while the Pentagon has financial managers familiar with AI and automation, it still needs more technical personnel with coding, data platforms, and Python expertise.
The initiative aligns with a broader Pentagon effort to transform Advana into a “War Data Platform” supporting AI-enabled warfighting, intelligence, and enterprise operations, according to a January 2026 memo.
