DEFENSE ACQUISITIONThe Battle for Pentagon Acquisition Policy: Tradition Versus New-and-Cheaper
The weapons that get bought in larger or smaller quantities, or are launched or cancelled, will indicate whether US President Donald Trump’s administration will strengthen long-range deterrent forces, order a retreat under his Golden Dome missile-defense system, or spend four years trying to blend incompatible visions of industrial and technological strategy.
An upcoming battle over defense acquisition will have repercussions for US military posture, particularly in the Pacific.
The weapons that get bought in larger or smaller quantities, or are launched or cancelled, will indicate whether US President Donald Trump’s administration will strengthen long-range deterrent forces, order a retreat under his Golden Dome missile-defense system, or spend four years trying to blend incompatible visions of industrial and technological strategy.
It’s a battle between, on one hand, tech-industry advocates of radical, cheaper approaches to defense acquisition and, on the other, traditional political and industry forces that want more of the same—but with an important new emphasis on long range for facing China.
Executive orders (EOs) have become so frequent that they barely register in the news cycle before the next wave hits. An April 9 order on ‘modernizing defense acquisition’ deserves more attention than it has got.
It was warmly welcomed by Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, leading prophet of the tech sector push. ‘This is a Defense Reformation two-fer, right off the bat,’ Sankar wrote in an email. The order directs the Pentagon to buy commercial solutions, if available, and defines them as products developed with private investment.
It also orders a review of all major programs, and states that programs that are 15 percent behind schedule, 15 percent over budget or merely unaligned with the secretary of defense’s priorities—that is to say, any of them—will be considered for cancellation.
The order might have been written by the tech bros pushing for reform, and given how many senior Pentagon leaders had not been confirmed by April 9, it most likely was.
But a couple of weeks later, Republicans on the House and Senate armed services committees unveiled a $150 billion boost to the defense budget, most going to existing and near-future programs: $3.15 billion for more Boeing F-15EX fighters, $4.5 billion to accelerate the Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber, and even $1.5 billion for the ailing ICBM replacement, Sentinel. There was also money to slow retirements of F-15s and F-22s. The new Boeing F-47 and the Navy’s F/A-XX got $400m and $500m respectively. The Lockheed Martin F-35 was not mentioned at all, nor were aircraft carriers.
