Let's say your unit needs a $1000 tool kit. You go to the base support store and order one. The tool kit is shipped to your unit and you place it one your records. Dollars to donuts, that $1000 tool kit isn't "properly accounted for."
When you placed the order, an electronic requisition was made, but since it was sent to your work place, there was no electronic record that it arrived. Your unit has a copy of the order, the unit has the bill of laden that it arrived and your unit records show it was placed on the property book. But the rules require that if the transaction started electronically, all accountability steps are electronically placed.
Our most responsive systems do not have a receipting process in place when the item is shipped to the unit. The obvious solution is to have the tool kit arrive at the store and a unit representative has to pick it up. But why waste our time? And most of the stores do not have the space nor the people to properly manage all of those out of store orders. Also, think of the waste in man hours and transportation needed to pick up every order that arrives at a base.
Additionally, since the software systems were designed a decade or more ago, there is no module for access outside of the close loop system (net security), that allows the units to sign for the material when it arrives. Nor will the software security guys let you create a unit level access point.
This is just a very simple example of a complex set of "accounting rules" that makes it sound like no one was watching what they were doing.
The rules are set up for a perfect world where everybody has boundless time, material is readily available, and the mission comes secondary to accountability.
I'll give you another example. In 2005, we had a unit that was heading to Iraq. They need reflective cloth tape. The supply system had that item on "backorder for 2 months. The unit did not have two months so they, took their Government credit card and bought about $200 worth of reflective cloth tape from the post exchange (PX) "Outdoors Department." At the next audit, the auditor went ballistic, because the PX "Outdoors Dept" also sold ammunition. And even though the unit had the receipt that showed reflective tape, it could not be proven that the receipt was not fake and the unit could have bought ammunition. Of all of the things that we were short of in theater, ammunition was not one of them. In a way it was a blessing that the auditor went crazy over the reflective cloth, because it showed to anyone with half a brain, that the auditor was trying to create hysteria. But sure enough, when I looked at the final report, even after the unit rebuttal, the inspector's report stated that a possible ammunition violation occurred.
Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. I am guessing that a full audit has not occurred because the Army knew they could either do audits (which require an untold amount of time at all levels) with poor results or try to fix the problem. The full audit is going to occur in FY2017 (Oct 2016-Sep 2017). The services have spent untold millions of dollars trying to get their systems in compliance and still meet mission and will probably fail the audit, but it will get better.
Oh yeah, remember that the same people that write these stories are the same people that write about assault rifles.