Pentagon hit by AI's 'biggest problem' after Army burns a year’s tokens for one service

Just weeks after highlighting that nearly half of its 3.5 million military and civilian personnel have been using artificial intelligence (AI) on the job, the Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) has hit a massive computational wall. The US Army has reportedly burned through its entire annual budget of AI processing “tokens” in a matter of weeks, forcing military leaders to re-impose strict usage caps across departments, a report has said. According to Wired, the shortage highlights growing concern over corporate and governmental ‘overconsumption’ of generative AI tools even as other organisations struggle to manage skyrocketing cloud computing costs.Army token pool runs emptyIn May 2026, the Army Chief Information Officer (CIO) announced that personnel would be granted virtually unlimited access to generative AI. However, internal emails sent to members of the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) revealed a sharp reversal by mid-June.“Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits. Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service,” an Army insider told WIRED.The service in question is Ask Sage: a secure, accredited platform that allows military personnel to run top commercial AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alphabet’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama. The AI models are being used for tasks like rewriting job descriptions and processing procurement acquisitions.Previously, to encourage adoption, the Army initially granted workers at least 200,000 tokens per month and automatically bumped up allowances for heavy users. They even sent reminder emails to inactive employees urging them to use their allotments. That aggressive push led to rapid exhaustion of the Army's annual 100-million-token “enterprise pack.”Reliability concerns amid rolloutsDespite token depletion, the Pentagon continues to integrate AI into sensitive workflows, the report said, indicating that the DOW recently cut staff at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, opting instead to develop automated AI software to evaluate civilian casualty risks in active combat zones.However, rank-and-file personnel express skepticism about whether the current generation of AI tools is ready for prime-time military deployment.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.