H.R. 10189: Defense AI Reliability and Reporting Act

This bill would require the Department of Defense to create a centralized program for reporting and handling problems with artificial intelligence systems used by the military.

What the program would do

The program would collect, track, analyze, and help fix two kinds of issues:

• AI incidents — events where an AI system causes unintended harm, goes beyond its approved limits, materially hurts mission performance, fails to respond to a shutdown or disengagement command, or otherwise raises concerns about control or autonomy.
• AI vulnerabilities — weaknesses or systemic issues that could affect mission performance, system integrity, safety, or cause unauthorized or unintended behavior.

The Defense Secretary would have to designate an official to run the program. That official would receive reports, standardize them, look for trends, identify recurring problems, and issue guidance, alerts, or recommendations as needed.

How reporting would work

The bill would require prompt reporting of covered AI incidents and vulnerabilities to the designated Defense Department official. Reports would be sorted based on how serious or broad the problem is:

• department-wide,
• program-level, or
• local.

If an issue is serious enough to require a department-wide or program-level response, the Defense Department could order corrective steps such as remediation, retesting, mitigation, or limits on deployment. For the most serious department-wide issues, the bill would require a written corrective action plan and confirmation that fixes were actually put in place before the system could keep being used operationally.

Protection for people who report problems

The bill would create a protected disclosure process so that service members, civilian employees, contractors, and subcontractors could report AI problems in good faith. People who report in good faith could not be punished by the Defense Department just because they made the report.

The Department would also have to protect sensitive, proprietary, and classified information that comes in through this process. The reporting system would be designed to encourage openness while still protecting confidential data.

Annual reporting to Congress

From 2027 through 2031, the Defense Secretary would have to send Congress an annual report on the program. That report would include:

• the number of incidents and vulnerabilities reported,
• how they were categorized,
• major trends and recurring problems,
• corrective actions taken,
• special details for any AI incident that caused death or bodily harm to a service member, and
• any recommendations for changing testing, procurement, cybersecurity, or deployment policies.

These reports would generally be unclassified, but they could include a classified appendix if needed.

Relevant Companies

• None found