For a man less than qualified to lead the U.S. military at such a perilous moment, Pete Hegseth does have one priority straight: the need to modernize the Pentagon’s inflexible procurement processes. He addressed the issue in a speech earlier this month, advocating reforms to speed up acquisition timelines by empowering officials to “take risks and make trade-offs” when evaluating products.
The existing system of fragmented accountability has been disastrous. Decades of rules being layered upon rules have congealed into a regulatory labyrinth that officials must navigate to onboard any new weapon or system. Defense-specific regulations for acquisitions now take up 1,462 pages — on top of the 2,030 pages in government-wide rules the Defense Department must follow as well.
Accordingly, the Pentagon takes twelve years on average to deliver the first version of a weapon system. Contractors that develop a prototype must face what’s known as the “valley of death,” waiting around for years without funding as the Defense Department reviews the program. Most small companies don’t survive this period, encouraging consolidation and biasing procurement toward a handful of “prime” contractors that are increasingly isolated from the broader commercial sector. The results of this sclerosis are endless delays, enormous cost overruns, and a military whose technologies are falling behind those of major adversaries.
Secretary Hegseth has done more than talk about the need to reform procurement. This month, the Army announced a plan to streamline its acquisition process into six new offices called “portfolio acquisition executives.” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll says the restructuring will mimic the best practices of private industry, making individual officers accountable when they choose to make an acquisition. Each office will oversee a certain capability portfolio, such as aviation or munitions, allowing for holistic planning. The emphasis is where it has to be: on speed and agility.
These should be considered the first steps in transforming the procurement process across every military branch (your move, Navy and Air Force). Change should come from within the Pentagon, certainly, but lasting reform also requires congressional action. Fortunately, provisions of two bills that would overhaul military procurement, the SPEED Act and the FoRGED Act, are advancing in this year’s defense authorization bill.
Most importantly, policymakers need to trust procurement officials to make decisions using their own judgment and agency, which has long been crowded out by regulations designed to eliminate risk. We cannot afford to wait for every weapon system to meet every conceivable specification. China certainly isn’t. Hegseth got this part right in his speech: “An 85 percent solution in the hands of our armed forces today is infinitely better than an unachievable 100 percent solution, endlessly undergoing testing or awaiting additional technological development. These are of no use to troops in harm’s way.”
Other critical procurement reforms are yet to come, such as creating stable demand signals that require multiyear contracts and long-term funding. But consolidating the Army’s acquisition bureaucracy is a great first step. Start inking those contracts.