Depleted. Yes, on paper.

If the Pentagon can misplace 2 trillion you can bet your ass they have off-books storage or even better black storage sites.

See paper is very patient but also very manipulable.

A book entry:

Order entry:
to be delivered a,b,c, on location x,y,z 100
a/to be invoiced/Open orders 100

Invoice received:
To be invoiced 100
a/ Creditor G.H. 100

Payment:
Creditor G.H. 100
a/ bank-account 100

Goods Received in location whatever:
Stock in location: 100
a/to be invoiced/open orders 100

This is the basic schematic and mechanics of book keeping/book entries. Of course, in reality, it is way more complex, with more steps in between. Authorization to enter orders, signing off on deliveries, checks on what is in store, locations, people, subdivisions, etc, can all have their own entries.

What you can see, is that every event is logged in terms of what the event is, the amount connected to it, the number per line item, etc.

Human errors are manifold. A 1% error-rate, will in the course of the year, result in millions of line items misplaced if the number of entries is in the billions. And with a massive organization as the Pentagon, that is the case.

Digitization:
Every single business has these errors. Of course, by using digitization, these human errors can be decreased. For instance, many companies delivering goods are obliged to use the order-number provided by the organization ordering these deliveries. Failure to provide it on your papers, will render these papers void. For instance, an incoming invoice celebrating an order-number, will be scanned and OCR-ed. there is a vast group of people busy with providing these scans and correcting them. AS you guessed: this is also were human errors start showing up.

Once an invoice is scanned, ocr-ed, an invoice can then be automatically linked to an open order. The line items on the invoice then are being checked against the linen items in the order. IF all goes well, it will go smooth. If you have 5 million orders and a adjudication % of 1, you are looking at a workload of 50.000 orders to be matched with invoices, which in turn may be a multiple of that number, consider that deliveries may pertain to parts of an order.

We can go one step further, and digitize the whole process without paper. It means that orders are send electronically to a party accepting the obligation to deliver goods and services. In turn, all documentation pertaining to delivery are being send electronically as well.

We could envision that in the process of executing a contract, only digital/ electronic information is being exchanged, thus reducing the human error part. It can be integrated such, that orders, invoices, delivery documentation, etc, is such that even payments are being executed automatically once the whole process is correctly executed.

Room for play to pay*:
Here's were the problem starts: What happens when goods or services are no good and being returned?

Here you need to have a very strong control mechanism and clear processes to reconcile all entries. If there is only one case, no problem. But 50.000 may proof to be a burden.

And this is where questions as to the reliability start popping up.

Then there is the process of creating orders. You could say anything, as long as you have the authorization to create an order.

Say I were to create an order for 1 billion dollars pertaining to 1 million helmets. But I am smart, These 1 million helmets are delivered but, the price is lower. Now, I have a 10 million excess on my order. I could use the excess for something else, if I wanted to. This is because the system is based on hierarchy. The lower levels will simply execute what is ordered from the top down. No questions asked, other then: how?

It could be even better when I am in the business of creating kickbacks. It does not need to be that I myself am the better off for it, it may be, I use this option to create black-funds.

Within the system, it will not show up. With the contracting parties, it will not show up. It simply disappears in the whole/hole.

Then we have a system called deliveries and warehousing. Well, there are always surplus stocks.

Let's assume for a moment, we have a stock surplus in rifles. Over time, I could use the mechanism of depreciation to make that stock disappear from the books. A little bit here, a little bit there.

Control:
One of the major items in controlling bookkeeping is material differences. As long as the difference is not material, it is accepted and white washed, despite GAAP ( General ACCEPTED ACCOUNTING PRACTICES). It is a grey area where nice deals can be made if push comes to shove, as long I as can convince the auditors.

There are many more ways to game the system appearing as genuine appropriations, but you now have some idea.

Then, of course there are different means to create black budgets. You have seen one in plain sight: The Afghanistan Withdrawal.

You can pay for goods and services with cash of course. But you can also barter. The Iran-Contra scandal is one such event. There are many more.

You could blow up the FEMA system and create a small emergency scenario. You could do that with DoE, DoD, etc,etc. The list is almost endless. And the complexity adds to the ease of gaming the system with the appearance of legitimacy.

So, in terms of national security, COG, and what not, there are legitimate ways to keep things under wraps, and there are ways to game the system to enhance it. The beauty of National Security is that it is siloed off, and need to know plus plausible deniability.

So, take your pick. There is a lot of wiggle room, that leaves me with the supposition that things may be little bit different than is shown in public. Optics are very important.

If you show optics of being weakened, what will certain parties think? Will it create the conditions under which they may be tempted to act in a certain way? Because when you need things to be legit, there are some other parties you need to fool.

And that is what war is all about.