The Pentagon's readiness problem has a price tag now. A Government Accountability Office report released in August found the Defense Department carries a $285 billion maintenance backlog, more than double what it was just a few years ago, while a related GAO readiness assessment counts nearly 200 open recommendations across the air, sea, ground, and space domains that the department still hasn't acted on. With roughly a fifth of the Pentagon's budget tied to readiness and legacy tools still unable to keep pace with the scale and complexity of the problem, the pressure is on to find faster ways to turn scattered maintenance, supply, and personnel data into decisions leaders can actually act on. In this panel event, Defense News will examine why the military's readiness gap keeps widening despite years of warnings, and how AI-driven data analysis is starting to close it.