Now, Pentagon officials say that some of that AI is not part of the current revamp of the polygraph interview process, after Defense News asked for a response to concerns about the earlier statements and the slides.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, or DCSA, which vets security clearance holders and applicants, said in an emailed statement that “active research and development” for the “Modernizing Polygraph” effort “does not incorporate generative super intelligence, also known as artificial intelligence,” that creates new content — such as emails, graphics or voiceovers.

Nor does the effort include “large language models,” meaning chatbots like ChatGPT and other programs trained on giant data sets to engage in human conversation, DCSA added.

And the research does not involve “facial action coding [of emotions], micro-expression analysis or vocal analyses,” the statement said. “While those technologies are not part of the effort,” DoD will “continue to monitor emerging scientific capabilities to evaluate their potential utility down the road.”

DCSA did not address other types of AI models that, according to the slides, researchers had been developing to scan spoken and written language for “deceptive speech” patterns.

Wednesday’s statement came after Defense News sought a response to criticisms from national security lawyers, scientists and AI auditors about AI’s ability to analyze deception — meaning not just to lie, but to do so knowingly and willfully.

They warned that AI-aided scanning of speech patterns, vocal stress or facial expressions to read minds lacks scientific backing, will compound errors and may violate civil liberties in a domain where few such rights exist.

Defense News chronicled their concerns and the Pentagon’s prior research and development of AI-aided lie-detection and emotion-estimation tools.

The recent DCSA statement, including the project name “Modernizing Polygraph,” contrasts with several earlier DoD statements, 2027 budget documents and DCSA slides that Defense News obtained through an open records request.

In July, a Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the technology, explained the advantages of AI-driven sentiment and deception analysis.

“AI processes data in real time and enables standardized, objective data analysis,” the official told Defense News, via email. “AI-based analysis is a force multiplier for our human investigators, not a replacement.”

The official added, “The models are primarily trained on data from laboratory-controlled studies using volunteer participants.”

The DCSA slides, which include presentations from 2021 through 2025, show that the Air Force, DCSA and academic labs had been working on “sentiment analysis” AI models and “deceptive speech” AI-aided analysis since 2019, as part of a “Credibility Assessment Modernization” project.

In July, the DoD official described the AI models as part of a larger multi-year “transformation,” which the official referred to interchangeably as “Polygraph+” and Credibility Assessment Modernization.

Current budget materials price the Polygraph+/Polygraph Next project at $31 million, including costs for AI “scoring algorithms” and “decision aids,” thermal imaging tools to spot blood flow changes that can reflect stress and other non-contact sensors.

On Friday, DCSA declined to provide additional information, including the scope of the “Modernizing Polygraph” project and the decision not to include AI-based voice screening and facial expression analysis.

Trained on Twitter and Reddit

Over the summer, Farakh Zaman, a developmental leader at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, elaborated on the appeal of AI-aided deception analysis.

“By processing subtle physiological, vocal and linguistic cues, these developmental algorithms may help establish a more objective baseline for investigators and pinpoint specific areas requiring further human-led clarification,” he said by email in July.

Wednesday’s DCSA statement said that the Air Force is not involved in the “active” research and development phase.

One undated declassified DCSA slide describes the Air Force amassing “deception-related” text to create a “deep learning model,” an algorithm that analyzes hordes of data to find patterns. The Air Force trained an early model on text from websites including Twitter, Reddit and other vocabulary data sets such as WordNet, according to the slide.

“This baseline training helps the algorithms understand natural, modern linguistic patterns, slang and everyday vocabulary,” Zaman explained in July. He acknowledged the need for “further rigorous testing, validation and a clear transition path” before fielding a prototype.

A separate DCSA slide, dated May 2025, contains a flowchart that depicts an avatar — a computer-generated image of an interviewer — in front of a security clearance applicant. Next to the applicant, a camera and microphone feed audio, video and speech-to-text data from the interview into various large language models. The recording devices and algorithms interact to gauge the applicant’s emotional state, while a human investigator observes and keys in questions for the avatar to ask.

DCSA’s Wednesday statement said the university that drafted the chart is not involved in the current research and development stage.

According to another undated DCSA slide, DoD has set a goal for natural language processing technology to interpret an interviewee’s feelings with 75% accuracy.

In July, the Pentagon official said by email that a human investigator remains essential for “the contextual reasoning and emotional intelligence required in these sensitive interviews.”

‘I’ve caught AI lying to me’

Ahead of Wednesday’s statement, Mark Zaid, a national security attorney who reviewed the slides, warned that the danger of derailing a military officer’s career is too great for AI to misinform an investigator.

The polygraph device “is just registering the physiology of the person,” such as spikes in breathing rate, perspiration or blood pressure, he said. “Then a human examiner analyzes those reactions to render an opinion.”

Here, however, “AI would be taking the polygraph readings and rendering an opinion” to the human examiner, said Zaid, who has represented individuals on all sides of the polygraph table, from workers disputing revoked clearances to former government officials and polygraphers.

“Now, we’re starting to get into the movie Minority Report,” he said, referencing a 2002 Steven Spielberg film that depicts a government reliant on psychic children for tips to predict crimes and detain people accused of future crimes.

Zaid, whose own clearance was revoked temporarily after he represented a whistleblower pivotal in President Trump’s first impeachment, said, “That concerns me more than the polygraph,” if science does not back AI’s reliability.

So far, scientific studies do not.

Rather, decades of research have discredited theories, popularized by shows such as Lie to Me, that anyone — human or artificial — can recognize deception based on speech patterns, vocal stress or facial movements.

Another concern scientists and auditors have is bias: the Justice Department has warned that using emotion-recognition algorithms to measure worker competency can discriminate against high performers with intellectual or developmental disabilities, who algorithms do not always understand.

Also, “automation bias,” the tendency to take AI’s advice without question even when conflicting information exists, may further erode the polygraph system’s reliability, technologists warned.

“[T]here is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable,” the Supreme Court declared in a 1998 decision banning polygraph results and polygraphers’ opinions from military courts.

Zaid said he appreciates the attempt to retool polygraph testing but wants proof that the planned approach is in fact an improvement.

“Anytime we might be able to scientifically advance the ability to determine truth, with accuracy, would generally be a good thing,” he said. But “the first thing that jumps out at me with AI is how often it is wrong…I’ve caught AI lying to me.”

Greg Rinckey, a former Army Judge Advocate General Corps officer who now provides security clearance representation, said that today’s “technology is so outdated, where they’re using tubes around people’s chests and blood pressure and sweat, so, any way that you can get a more reliable test for security clearances, especially counterintelligence investigations [into leaks], is a step up.”

That said, he questioned, “What is the research saying on how accurate it is?”

At present, research suggests the odds of AI-aided speech, voice or face analysis pegging a lie are about 50:50.

AI is ‘assuming dishonesty’

“There are no – reliable – diagnostic cues for deception detection, and I have yet to see any evidence, whether it is with humans or with artificial intelligence, that goes against that trend,” said David Markowitz, a Michigan State University professor who studies AI’s ability to understand human communication.

For instance, “the leakage idea — that these microfacial expressions will leak out from our awareness, signaling veracity or deceit — there’s very little evidence to support that, unfortunately,” he said.

Markowitz expressed doubts about AI-based deception analyses that claim an accuracy rate of 75% because “that is not how accurately humans do it, and often these systems are a big reflection of how humans do it.”

For example, he pointed to a recent experiment in which he prompted a Google Gemini AI model to examine audio and video of mock interrogations of accused cheaters in a trivia game, all of whom claimed innocence and some of whom were lying. Prior studies had asked humans to observe the same interrogations. DoD has entered into agreements to run a secure version of Gemini on unclassified and classified networks.

Markowitz said that his study, “The [in]efficacy of AI personas in deception detection experiments,” found Gemini was just as inaccurate as humans, both faring no better than chance, when prompted to distinguish fraudsters from truth-tellers.

What’s more, compared to humans, AI was more likely to wrongly accuse a trivia player of lying.

Markowitz gave one possible reason for AI’s systemic distrust of trivia players: The AI “is assuming that someone must have done something wrong because why else would they be questioned,” he said. “Anytime that someone is in an interview setting where they might be accused of something, a large language model is assuming dishonesty.”

Supreme Court: The jury is the lie detector

The consequences of a machine, whether a heart monitor or a voice screener, potentially bungling a credibility assessment can last a year or longer, said Zaid, the national security lawyer.

When officers who have successfully passed exams without issue suddenly fail their latest polygraph test, DoD typically puts them “in a corner with a dunce cap on for a year before officials will re-administer another exam,” he said. “You can’t get promoted. You can’t get certain assignments. And you can’t go overseas, which, to case officers, is death careerwise.”

Further, civil courts routinely dismiss complaints when employees claim that inaccurate results cost them their clearances. Nearly 40 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the courts have no power over such national security matters.

Concerns about power imbalances and due process prompted the European Union to label AI-aided polygraph tools as “high risk” and place strict limits on law enforcement’s use of them.

Stateside, the Supreme Court, in forbidding polygraph evidence in military courts, noted that allowing it would meddle with the human’s role, or, as it were, the jury’s role, in determining credibility.

“A fundamental premise of our criminal trial system is that the jury is the lie detector,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court’s 1998 United States v. Scheffer decision.

Pointing to the court’s decision, Zaid said that he wants assurances of due process when staff undergo administrative proceedings to contest a revoked clearance resulting from misaligned algorithms. Comparing the situation to successful cases disputing speeding tickets caused by a miscalibrated street camera, Zaid questioned, “Would the person be provided the evidence? An understanding of the AI’s training?”

New biases

Pentagon officials have long stressed the desire for AI-based lie detection to help curb gender and cultural biases that human investigators may carry into an interview room.

At the same time, employers’ use of similar technology for pre-employment screening has faced allegations of other biases and system errors.

“Facial expression analysis is heaviest in terms of biases against individuals with disabilities,” said Jo Ann Oravec, a University of Wisconsin professor whose research focuses on AI, public policy and disability issues.

For instance, AI-powered video screening of job applicants tends to misinterpret the involuntary twitches or vocal outbursts of skilled people with certain disabilities — and thus pass over qualified applicants, said Oravec, author of the 2024 article “From Polygraphs to Truth Machines: Artificial Intelligence in Lie Detection.”

In response to concerns about such biases in July, the Pentagon official said via email that the credibility assessment modernization plan adheres to DoD’s AI Ethical Principles of “responsible, equitable and traceable” use of algorithms.

The Air Force’s Zaman, in his July email, said that his team’s work aligns with DoD’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Guidelines.

Researchers “are actively engineering and testing these models” to account for “diverse, representative training data,” he stated. The testing covers “broad variations in speech, language and expression.”

Ryan Carrier, founder of ForHumanity, a global nonprofit that helps organizations audit AI systems, said that the Pentagon’s principles and guidelines are a skeleton of those that the European Union follows and that ForHumanity uses for inspections.

For example, the EU’s AI Act demands users of high-risk systems receive training to overcome a different kind of bias called “automation bias” — or the tendency to execute AI’s advice without questioning its accuracy. This bad habit can lead to incorrect data overriding correct decisions, Carrier said.

Also, multimodal systems, meaning AI systems that simultaneously parse audio (the subject’s voice), video (their facial movements) and text (interview transcriptions), tend to misalign data and results, yielding an irrelevant analysis, Carrier said.

The system “could be making determinations that a person is lying or trying to deceive me that are outside of the tool’s specifications,” he explained.

In response to concerns about multimodal systems in July, the Pentagon official had said, “Any automated output is treated strictly as auxiliary data for a highly trained, certified polygraph examiner.”

Similarly, Zaman, at the time, said that investigators who use AI-aided deception-detection systems are “trained to contextualize the tool’s findings, preventing automated outputs from dictating an outcome.”

To safeguard against mismatched data or results, the Air Force keeps a documented history of each piece of data’s origin and modifications and brings in independent white-hat hackers to try producing false correlations, he added.

“We recognize that multimodal AI systems present unique technical challenges, and mitigating these risks by hardening our systems is central to our engineering and testing protocols,” Zaman said.

Reason for suspicion?

In August, when the Pentagon administered a raft of polygraph exams to probe leaks alleging the Iran conflict is depleting U.S. arsenals, some observers suspected the endgame was not to find the leakers, but to crack down on disloyalty.

Critics of the planned system said that AI-based deception analysis may be best suited to achieve the same purpose.

“If it’s purely an intimidation technique, it may not be utterly useless from the point of view of large bureaucracies,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

The expectations for AI-powered trustworthiness testing resemble the hope that U.S. national security officials held out for the polygraph about 100 years ago, other lawyers said.

Polygraph devices “were seen as this magic-miracle-machine when they first came out,” and, over time, the government learned that when seemingly making deductions, the tools were “actually just flagging correlating factors, like heart rate and physiological factors that can indicate lying, but aren’t actually reflective of it,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project.

He added, “Thinking that AI sentiment analysis tools are actually making an assessment or engaged in reasoning — that’s not what those machines are actually able to do.”

The $1.1 billion figure is not a measure of taxpayer savings, according to the VA Office of Inspector General. It represents the total value of the contracts over their full performance periods and does not show how much had already been paid or how much the government ultimately spent to end the agreements.

The review examined the contract-cutting effort that was initiated when VA received requests from the General Services Administration, VA senior advisers and representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to terminate certain contracts.

The OIG’s finding contrasts with the $120.9 billion in contract value VA reported to Congress on May 16, 2025, a figure the OIG found contained significant errors.

VA’s May submission reported that the department had terminated 446 contract actions with a combined value of about $120.9 billion. The OIG found that only 357 of those actions had actually been terminated as of April 30, 2026. Eleven had been terminated and later reinstated, while 78 had never been terminated.

Errors were also found with the values of the contracts reported by VA.

VA’s May list included 16 contract actions valued at $1 billion or more. The OIG found that none actually exceeded $150 million. One contract reported at more than $21 billion had an estimated total value of just over $74 million, according to the review.

A VA contracting official told investigators that a department dashboard used to track terminated contracts had miscalculated contract values. Another VA official said some errors stemmed from employees who were unfamiliar with federal contracting and acquisition terminology.

The July 2025 submission contained another mismatch.

VA told Congress it had terminated or was in the process of terminating 1,667 contracts, while the list contained 1,664 contract actions and reported a combined value of more than $1.4 billion. The OIG found that VA had actually terminated 366 of those actions, including 17 that were later reinstated.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who requested the OIG review with Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said Wednesday that the report confirmed concerns he had raised about the cancellation campaign.

“This report confirms my repeatedly expressed concerns that VA has recklessly cancelled hundreds of contracts with no consideration of the impact on veterans or VA operations,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “Secretary Collins owes us answers on how VA will replace lost services and how much this fiasco has cost taxpayers in arbitration, settlements, and reinstatements.”

VA defended the cancellation effort and said it had saved more than $1 billion.

“The IG report simply confirms what we’ve said from the beginning: VA terminated hundreds of wasteful and duplicative contracts, saving the department more than $1 billion,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told Military Times.

Slaven also said VA’s review process prevented disruptions to veterans’ services.

“Thanks to the methodical and careful review process VA put in place, these contract cancellations had no negative impact whatsoever on VA care and benefits,” Slaven said.

He shared that the department is reinvesting what VA describes as savings into improvements to veterans’ care and benefits.

The OIG did not calculate savings from the contract terminations. Instead, it reported the $1.1 billion as the total value of the 435 terminated contract actions and said that figure does not reflect amounts already paid or settlement costs. The OIG found that VA had agreed to about $10.6 million in settlement costs for 117 completed settlements.

The VA established procedures to review contracts before terminating them, and the agency’s contracting officials generally complied with federal acquisition requirements, the OIG reported.

‘Confusion and frustration’

The OIG documented challenges created by the speed and volume of the cancellation requests.

On Feb. 21, 2025, VA officials were instructed to review 1,049 contract actions in fewer than 11 hours, obtain the necessary approvals and report their findings to department leadership. Some offices did not finish their reviews by the deadline.

According to the OIG, VA senior advisers and DOGE representatives directed officials to terminate the contracts on Feb. 25, 2025, despite some reviews remaining incomplete. As the reviews continued, the number of contracts proposed for termination fell.

The OIG found that department contracting officials received instructions from multiple individuals and offices and received various lists of contracts that were inconsistently formatted, making them difficult to track.

VA and Veterans Health Administration officials told investigators the process created “confusion and frustration” and required staff to devote significant time to monitoring the lists and related correspondence.

The department created a database in April 2025 to better track the cancellations.

What was cut

The OIG found that 375 of the 435 terminated contract actions, or 86%, involved consulting services. Those contracts primarily covered management consulting, administrative management, program management and strategic communications.

But some contracts initially marked for termination were brought back.

One contract that was terminated but later reinstated involved financial audit services for invoices from contractors performing medical disability examinations. It was terminated Feb. 25, 2025 and reinstated about six months later.

The OIG also found that VA’s July 2025 report to Congress included hundreds of contract actions that had not actually been terminated.

Among them were 974 supply-related contract actions, including contracts involving prosthetics, surgical implants and wheelchair ramps. Another 151 health care-related actions, including nursing-home services, had not been terminated.

The OIG reviewed 2,210 unique contract actions. It determined that 435 were terminated, 100 were terminated and later reinstated, and 1,675 were never terminated.

Of the 435 terminated contract actions, VA had completed settlement agreements for 267 of them, with 150 that were no-cost settlements.

In January 2026, the OIG briefed VA officials on the preliminary findings from its investigation.

Following the briefing, VA submitted an updated list of terminated contracts to Congress on April 13, 2026, after revising its information to distinguish contracts it had terminated, reduced in scope or chosen not to extend through option periods.

The OIG did not independently review the accuracy or completeness of that April 2026 submission.

Blumenthal and King requested the OIG investigation in June 2025 amid concerns about the cancellation process, including the impact on veterans, the use of algorithms in decision-making, the involvement of career VA subject-matter experts and the financial consequences of terminating contracts.

The OIG made no recommendations requiring VA action, but the review found that the department had repeatedly provided Congress with inaccurate information about the contracts it said it had terminated.

“This report shows that VA failed multiple times to submit accurate data and are still in the process of correcting mistakes their process created,” Blumenthal said.

Following recent “unauthorized disclosures,” the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday announced its intention of drafting a governmentwide NDA that agencies can implement at their discretion for workers who have access to sensitive information, such as personnel records and operational plans.

“OPM believes that a standard NDA form will promote consistency across government, better protect confidential information and better inform federal employees of their rights and obligations regarding confidential information,” the proposal reads.

OPM’s proposal was published Wednesday in the Federal Register and opened a 30-day public comment period through June 26.

The OPM said the move follows several recent leaks of internal government information.

“There have been several recent instances in which internal agency communications related to rulemaking and policy development were disclosed without authorization,” the proposal says.

“Such disclosures risk chilling candid interagency feedback, disrupting orderly decision-making and weakening trust within and among federal agencies,” the proposal continues.

The draft lists several examples, with one dating back to 2022 when a Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights was leaked to a reporter, prompting the Court to implement its own NDA in 2024.

The proposal cited a 2025 incident in which several Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security workers released immigration enforcement plans when unauthorized to do so.

More recently, in early January 2026, the proposal also claims that the New York Times and Washington Post received unauthorized disclosures from federal employees about the planned U.S. raid on Venezuela before it began, which prompted the organizations to postpone “publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops.”

The New York Times disputes that assertion.

“Contrary to some claims, however, The Times did not have verified details about the pending operation to capture Maduro or a story prepared, nor did we withhold publication at the request of the Trump administration,” the New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn wrote in January 2026 in response to questions from readers.

OPM’s announcement comes less than two months after President Donald Trump vowed to find the “leaker” behind the release of information involving a missing U.S. airman from a downed fighter jet in Iran. In an early April press conference, Trump did not specify which media company received the leak but did threaten to put the reporter in jail if they, or their organization, did not disclose their source.

OPM previously published a separate rule in June 2025 addressing federal employee “suitability and fitness” requirements with nondisclosure requirements.

The draft says that the NDA will be an “Optional Form,” allowing federal agencies to decide for themselves whether or not to use the agreement. If an agency decides to use the NDA, it would be given to new hires as well as current employees.

Even though the draft says that the proposal is not meant to implement “new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights,” union leaders have criticized the move, calling it unnecessary and warning it could silence workers.

“This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud and abuse,” Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement.

Doreen Greenwald, the president of the second largest federal employee union, National Treasury Employees Union, said there was “no basis” for this action and that the union would oppose the proposal.

“Existing law protects our nation’s secrets. Non-disclosure agreements would preemptively chill First Amendment-protected speech and dissuade protected whistleblowing activity,” Greenwald said in a release.

There are currently over two million federal employees, according to OPM, with the largest share of workers serving in the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The bill, which also provides appropriations for veterans-related agencies such as the American Battle Monuments Commission and Arlington National Cemetery, includes nearly $450 billion for the VA in fiscal 2027, a 3% increase from fiscal 2026 but lower than President Donald Trump’s request of $488 billion.

The bill was the first appropriations legislation to clear the House this year, in a 400-15 vote May 15 that Rep. John Carter, R-Tex., called a “testament to America’s commitment to taking care of the men and women who have bravely worn the uniform.”

“I want every service member and veteran to know that this bill has their back,” said Carter, chairman of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

The bill includes $324 billion in mandatory spending for the VA that covers health care and benefits and $137.8 billion for discretionary spending, roughly 2% higher than the fiscal 2026 amount but significantly lower than Trump’s request of $205.6 billion for discretionary funds.

The White House had asked to shift mandatory funds marked for injuries or illnesses related to toxic exposures — roughly $52 billion — to the discretionary budget, but the committee rejected the idea.

Lawmakers have expressed concerns that the use of those mandatory dollars, from the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, would jeopardize the fund’s intended use for veterans sickened by environmental pollutants.

The bill provides $19.7 billion for military construction projects, including $2.1 billion for the Army; $5.5 billion for the Navy and Marine Corps; $3.7 billion for the Air Force; $3.8 billion Defense Department-wide and additional funding for the National Guard and Reserve components.

The bill also includes a provision that would cement the VA’s decision to halt notifications to the Justice Department of a veteran’s inability to manage his or her finances — a situation that precluded veterans with fiduciaries from owning guns.

The Senate still must craft its own version of the bill, referred to as the MilConVA bill. The subcommittee responsible for the legislation jump-started that process in separate hearings April 30 and May 14 on the president’s budget proposals.

During those hearings, senators appeared supportive of the VA budget request and sought affirmation from VA officials that the department use the funds judiciously for health care, claims processing and other veterans services.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations MilConVA subcommittee, called the budget proposals “important investments” in the department.

But he expressed concerns about whether the VA had sufficient numbers of physicians and nurses and noted that the budget calls for significant increases for care at private facilities covered by the VA and less of an increase for health care at VA hospitals and clinics.

“The department’s own public facing data shows that outcome for veterans are either the same or better for direct VA care compared to privatized outside care,” Ossoff told VA Secretary Doug Collins in the April 30 hearing.

Collins testified Thursday before the House MilCon Appropriations Subcommittee, six days after the House passed its proposed bill.

Collins said that conflicts and the approval process prevented him from testifying until May 21, although earlier in the deliberation process, House Democrats had successfully amended the legislation to withhold 25% of the secretary’s office budget until he testified.

“Our veterans do not deserve that kind of uncertainty and lack of transparency,” said the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.

Collins praised the committee for the legislation’s passage and called changes at the VA since he has taken office a “tale of two cities.” He said in the past year the VA has announced a restructuring, instituted a manning document, reduced its disability claims backlog, restarted its VA electronic health records system program and reduced appointment wait times.

“The VA will never be perfect and neither will its budget, but we are always going to work together to make sure one thing is true: Veterans are always going to come first at the VA,” Collins said.

The Senate is expected to roll out its MilConVA appropriations bill this summer.

A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.

The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.

As SpaceX rockets toward a $2 trillion public offering this summer – expected to be the largest ever – the company has secured its position as the world’s most valuable space company in part by being indispensable to the U.S. government with an array of technologies spanning satellite communications to space launches and military AI.

Starlink, in particular, has proved key to crucial programs – from drones to missile tracking – with a low-earth orbit constellation of close to 10,000 satellites, a scale that provides the military with a network resilient against potential adversary attacks.

But the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program, which have not been previously reported, highlight the challenges of the U.S. military’s growing reliance on SpaceX and the risks it brings to the Pentagon.

“If there was no Starlink, the U.S. government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, a deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the drone test or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.”

The Navy and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite facing growing competition from Amazon.com, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement this week to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low-earth orbit communications.

Beyond drones, SpaceX has cemented a near-monopoly for space launches and provides satellite communications with Starlink and its national security-focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars for the company.

Last month, U.S. Space Force said it had reassigned its upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time, due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.

WARNINGS ABOUT RELYING ON SPACEX

Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of its reliance on a single company led by the world’s richest man to deliver crucial national security capabilities. More recently, the Defense Department’s disagreements and blacklisting of AI startup Anthropic quickly revealed how an over-reliance on one AI vendor could create problems should that vendor be dropped.

Reuters reported last year that Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies’ trust in the billionaire.

In Taiwan, SpaceX faced criticism over concerns it was withholding satellite communications to U.S. service members based there, “possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” according to a 2024 letter sent by then-U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher to Musk, reported by Forbes at the time. SpaceX disputed the claim in a post on X.

Reuters could not determine whether SpaceX has since provided Starlink service in Taiwan to U.S. service members. The Pentagon and SpaceX did not respond to questions about Taiwan.

“As a matter of operational security, we do not comment on or discuss plans, operations capabilities or effects,” an official said in a statement.

STARLINK ‘EXPOSED LIMITATIONS’

SpaceX’s Starlink broadband has been crucial to the Pentagon’s drone program, providing connection to small unmanned maritime vessels that look like speedboats without seats, and include those made by Maryland-based BlackSea and Austin, Texas-based Saronic.

In April 2025, during a series of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report of the tests reviewed by Reuters.

“Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple-vehicle load,” the report stated. The report also faulted issues linked to radios provided by Silvus and a network system provided by Viasat.

In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August, another series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection issues with the Starlink network, Navy documents reviewed by Reuters show. The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear.

Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink – a cheap and commercially available service – outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute.

“You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.

In what will be the largest reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration since the 1990s, the VA plans to restructure VHA’s administration, realign staff and resources and invest in medical facilities.

At the same time, the VA will award new contracts for community care — its program that covers medical care for eligible veterans at civilian facilities — using a new structure the VA hopes will give the department better flexibility to choose and change contracted provider networks.

According to VA Secretary Doug Collins, the restructuring will “eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead” and put more resources directly into VA facilities and community care.

Collins said in his first year of office, he has toured VA medical facilities and found significant differences in delivery of health care.

“We didn’t act like the largest healthcare provider in the world in many ways because we were trapped internally into our own policies, procedures, things that have been added on — none which added up to taking care of veterans but ended up taking care of the VA itself,” Collins told members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Under the reorganization, known as the Restructure for Impact and Sustainability Effort, or RISE initiative, the VA will decrease the number of Veterans Integrated Service Networks, or VISNs, which provide oversight, administrative, budgetary services and support to VA medical centers, from 18 to 5, with the VISNs focused namely on oversight and governance.

The reforms will create health service areas, or HSAs, within the VISNs to focus on medical centers and the communities where veterans get their health services.

And they will create a medical operations center that will ensure that policies are implemented and followed throughout the system.

Regarding the community care program, the VA issued a call for contract proposals earlier this month to provide medical services, agreements worth nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Community Care Network Next Generation contract, with its indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity structure, is meant to give the department more flexibility in overseeing the program, currently managed by two health contractors, Optum and TriWest Healthcare Alliance.

According to VA Chief Financial Officer Richard Topping, the new contracts will ensure that network providers will “compete and improve continually” to serve veterans.

“The government will have the ability to bring on multiple vendors and multiple contractors,” Topping said during a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee Jan. 22. “Those contractors can then compete across the life of the contract for different task orders. That allows VA to change program design to learn from mistakes, to increase our capabilities and capacities to innovate and evolve the program over time.”

Veterans advocates and congressional Democrats have raised concerns that any reductions in personnel related to restructuring or expanded contracts for community care will erode the VA’s medical system and lead to privatization of VA health care.

“While veterans are going to go unserved and uncared for in his actions, we see exactly who Secretary Collins really serves, driving the VA towards privatization,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., during the House hearing. “We know it only serves corporate interests, and it puts profits over veterans.”

But VA officials have said that the restructuring will streamline the administration and provide better services to veterans. Topping noted that while the community care contracts are worth up to $1 trillion over 10 years, the VA plans to spend $2 trillion for care in its own facilities during the same time frame.

“We’re opening new facilities. We’ve invested $800 million last year alone. We are investing in our direct care capabilities. And so, for veterans who either need to go to VA for direct care because it’s a unique capability that VA has, or who choose to go, they have that ability, and they have that choice,” Topping said.

The VA has lost 30,000 personnel in the past year as a result of resignations, retirements and attrition, as well as plans for an additional reduction of 24,000 jobs, which officials say were mainly positions created during the COVID-19 pandemic that are no longer required and have been vacant for at least a year.

Collins said the reorganization will allow the department to shift staff where they are needed and trim excess at underutilized locations. He added that the effort is moving forward with VA leadership taking into account input from staff, Congress and others.

“This is not an effort to diminish direct care for veterans. This is a reorganization that will eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead and push more resources directly into the field,” Collins said.

The VA announced Wednesday it will spend $4.8 billion this year to make repairs and modernize numerous health care facilities, including upgrades to elevators, electrical and climate control systems and improvements to help accommodate the rollout of the department’s electronic health record system.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike promised close scrutiny of the VA reforms over the coming months, with the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee planning another hearing on the modernization efforts and House members saying their hearing on Jan. 22 was “only the beginning” of oversight.

“It should go without saying that VA must get this right. When veterans call my committee, they want to know how they can access their earned health benefits at VA,” House Veterans Affairs Committee Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said.

Proposals for the new community care contract are due to the government in March.

Reps. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., and Sarah Elfreth, D-Md., rolled out their proposed “Beacon Act” on Friday, aiming to foster partnerships with academic institutions and providers for treatment and finance research into alternative treatments for mild to moderate traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

During a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Cole Lyle, the American Legion’s veterans affairs and rehabilitation director, said the legislation is needed because current treatments, including medication, often fall short in alleviating symptoms.

“We believe veterans deserve care that reflects the complexity of their comorbid injuries, where healing does not happen with a one-size-fits-all bottle — care that brings innovation, research, community partnerships and, above all, hope,” Lyle said.

From 2000 through June 2025, Defense Department personnel were diagnosed with nearly 497,000 mild to moderate TBIs, according to the department. The majority were treated at military hospitals or clinics, including the Defense Intrepid Network for TBI and Brain Health or the Department of Veterans Affairs, which maintains four polytrauma rehabilitation centers and 21 sites in a polytrauma network.

Under the legislation, a TBI Innovation Grant Program would award up to $30 million in grants through 2028 to nonprofits, academic institutions and non-VA health care providers for treatment and recovery, suicide prevention, training and outreach.

The bill’s Independent Research Grant Program would provide $625,000 awards for pilot studies and $1.5 million grants for research on alternative therapies for TBI.

Bergman and Elfreth say their bill would strengthen the VA’s ability to treat TBI by expanding access to new treatments.

“The men and women who served our country deserve access to the best care available, especially when it comes to invisible injuries like traumatic brain injury,” said Bergman, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.

“The Beacon Act strengthens the VA’s ability to deliver modern, effective care by bringing proven innovation, academic expertise, and community partnerships to the table, while supporting the important work the VA is already doing,” he said.

“As the granddaughter of a veteran who suffered from [post-traumatic stress disorder], I’ve seen firsthand the complex mental health challenges that our veterans and their families face. I’ve also seen how traditional VA treatments have come up short for decades to fully address the complex challenges our veterans face,” said Elfreth.

A similar bill was introduced last November in the Senate by Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick and Nevada Democrat Jacky Rosen. Their bill, the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury Adaptive Care Opportunities Nationwide Act, also would promote partnerships and develop research through similar grant programs.

“As I think about the soldiers I served alongside, I feel this issue deeply,” said McCormick, a former Army officer. “Our veterans deserve access to innovative and groundbreaking TBI treatments that will enhance their quality of life and finally address the suicide epidemic among servicemembers.”

The legislative proposals have the support of the American Legion, AMVETS, Avalon Action Alliance, With Honor, the Marcus Institute for Brain Health, University of Colorado Anschutz, Disabled American Veterans, America’s Warrior Partnership, Boulder Crest Foundation, Mission Roll Call and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“Studies and reporting show time and again a connection between service-related blast overpressure injuries and increased rates of suicide among service members and veterans,” said Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor said in a statement.

“This bipartisan legislation,” he noted, “brings together government, academia, and the private sector to align and accelerate research and treatment for traumatic brain injuries to reduce the skyrocketing suicide rates among active-duty service members and veterans.”

In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Thursday, the chambers’ top Democrats — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from New York — asked for a meeting on the looming fiscal issues early next week, to stave off a budget crisis.

“The government funding issue must be resolved in a bipartisan way,” the pair wrote. “That is the only viable path forward …

“It is past time you reveal your plans to meet the needs of the American people. Otherwise, it is clear that you have abandoned bipartisanship altogether and are preparing to shut down the government.”

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass a new budget for the next fiscal year (which starts Oct. 1) or approve a short-term extension of current agency funding levels.

Failure to do either will force a partial shutdown of most government activities until a new funding deal is reached.

For the Department of Defense, that will mean shuttering of some non-essential base offices and training. Troops will still be expected to report for duty, but their paychecks may be delayed.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, most hospital and benefits processing offices will remain open, thanks to advance funding approved for the agency in the past. But some information hotlines will be shut down, and other non-critical services will halt during the political impasse.

Neither Republican leader offered an immediate response to the Democratic leaders’ request. Both men have said that resolving the funding issue will be their top priority when Congress returns from its summer recess next week.

Although GOP lawmakers hold a majority in both chambers, several prominent Republicans have suggested they may not support a short-term budget deal, preferring to return to regular order in the appropriations process. But the majority of funding bills still have significant work to be completed before final passage.

That would mean at least some Democratic votes will likely be needed to approve any funding package and avoid a shutdown.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said he would meet with Schumer and Jeffries to discuss potential points of compromise, but added that “it’s almost a waste of time to meet because they never approve anything.”

Defense Department leaders have warned about the potential detrimental impact of a government shutdown on military operations, even if troops and essential personnel remain on the job. They said that shuttering support services for military families and disrupting long-term procurement plans undermines force readiness initiatives.

The last major government shutdown occurred in December 2018 during the first Trump administration and lasted for 35 days. That dispute, which centered on immigration policy and funding, did not include the Departments of Defense or Veterans Affairs, but did result in delayed paychecks for tens of thousands of U.S. Coast Guard personnel.

Lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

During an Oval Office event with military families on Monday, Trump praised the work of VA Secretary Doug Collins thus far, asserting that the department now has a “93% approval rating” under his leadership.

“We had a great first term and it was pretty close to that then,” he said. “And then [President Joe Biden’s administration] took over and it went down into the 30s and 20s. It went down at one point to 28% or 29%, which is terrible … But now you’ve blown everyone away, Doug.”

Trump’s boast appears to reference VA’s periodic survey of veterans who have used department health care services in the last 90 days. As of the start of August, the satisfaction rate with VA medical care sat at 92.8%, the highest mark in the 30 months that the survey has been conducted.

When that polling began in March 2023 — during the Biden administration — the figure was 90.4%. It has steadily improved nearly every month for the past two and a half years, regardless of which administration was in charge.

The broader VA Trust survey, conducted quarterly since early 2016, shows a similar story. At the start of Trump’s first term in the White House, only about 55% of veterans said they trusted the department to “fulfill our country’s commitment to veterans.” By the time Trump left office at the end of 2020, the number was up to nearly 79%.

VA data shows the trust score remained between 78% and 81% during Biden’s entire term in office, far above the under 30% that Trump claimed on Monday. The latest department update shows that 79.2% of veterans expressed confidence in the department at the start of the summer, down about 1% from a year earlier.

Department researchers also began an annual outpatient survey in fiscal 2017, during Trump’s first term in office, to gauge satisfaction rates.

That year, 85% of patients said they were happy with how agency staff handled their outpatient care appointments and procedures. At the end of Trump’s first term in office, it had risen to 89.1%. At the end of last fiscal year — the latest data available — the number was up to 92%.

Trump claimed the improvement in veterans perception of VA came because the previous administration “gave away choice and accountability … and we put them back.”

That claim has been at the root of continued political sparring between administration officials and Democratic critics of Trump’s veterans policies. Republicans in recent weeks have pushed through a series of reforms designed to make it easier for veterans to access health care options outside the VA system, but the impact of those moves still remains to be seen.

During Monday’s event, Collins noted that department officials have reduced the disability claims backlog by about 40% since January. That number has also been in steady decline for the last two years, since the backlog spiked to more than 400,000 cases after the passage of the PACT Act.

Late last week, the Office of Personnel Management announced in an email to federal workers that they had canceled plans for the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, typically conducted each spring. Officials had said for months they were revising the poll to better focus questions on key workplace issues and not extraneous topics, such as diversity programs.

The survey is mandated under federal code and provides an annual snapshot of employee satisfaction. Administration officials have not said whether they will provide other avenues for tracking those metrics.

Earlier this summer, in response to questions about workforce changes, Veterans Affairs officials said they would conduct their own all-employee survey in conjunction with the FEVS.

However, after last week’s decision, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that his department “is following OPM’s lead on this issue and will not be conducting the VA All-Employee Survey this year.”

He also dismissed concerns that the absence of the polling data would ignore concerns within the department’s workforce.

“VA employees are happy the department is fixing many of the problems left by the Biden administration and is making improvements across the agency,” he said in a statement.

The VA All-Employee Survey has been conducted every year since 2006. In 2012, the results ranked the department as the second-worst large federal agency to work for, out of 19 departments. By 2024, that ranking had risen to fifth-best.

About 72% of VA employees surveyed said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2024, up from about 55% a decade before. Officials from President Joe Biden’s administration frequently cited the survey as evidence that they were making workforce improvements throughout VA.

Whether this year’s survey would have shown continued optimism or new problems will remain unknown. Union officials and critics of President Donald Trump have strongly objected to a host of workforce reforms by his administration in recent months, including trimming nearly 30,000 jobs from the department payroll since January.

Earlier this month, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced plans sever ties with most federal employee unions, terminating their collective bargaining contracts.

About 450,000 federal employees currently work at VA hospitals, benefits centers and other offices. In the past, nearly three-fourths of the workforce participated in the employee surveys.