The Pentagon Must Undertake Its Own Transformation

Ask anyone in the Pentagon procurement office how long it takes to field a new drone and you'll get a laugh, not an answer. We're still buying ships and jets on timelines designed for a world where the Soviet Union was the only rival worth planning against. Meanwhile China builds a navy the size of ours in the time it takes us to finish an environmental impact study on a runway extension.

This isn't about spending more money. We already spend more than the next several countries combined and still can't get a working missile defense system fielded on schedule. The problem is structural. Layers of contractors, layers of oversight, layers of committees that exist mainly to protect jobs in specific congressional districts rather than to protect the country.

A real transformation means killing programs that don't work even when a senator's home state depends on them. It means buying software and drones the way Silicon Valley builds them, in months, not the way we build aircraft carriers, in decades. Congress has to actually let the Pentagon prioritize speed over process.

We keep hearing this is finally the moment for reform. Believe it when the first legacy program actually gets cancelled and stays cancelled.