Pentagon’s ‘One Boss’ Fix: The Acquisition Shake-Up America Actually Needs

Key Points and Summary – America wastes time and billions on weapons that arrive late and over budget.

-A leaked Pentagon plan would flip incentives: empower a single senior leader over interrelated programs, kill unjustified reviews, cap change orders, and penalize contractor delays.

(Sept.9, 2011) The Virginia-class submarine Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) California (SSN 781) gets underway from Naval Station Norfolk to conduct weapons systems acceptance trials. California is the eighth Virginia-class submarine and is scheduled to be commissioned Oct. 29. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class William Jamieson/Released)

-By paying earlier and trimming red tape, smaller firms can compete, rebuilding a stagnant industrial base.

-The aim is speed, scale, and cost discipline—treating industry as a true partner: “Here’s the problem—solve it.”

-Success will demand relentless oversight, clear replacement policies (not add-ons), and sustained congressional pressure. If implemented, this reform could restore deterrence by delivering capability on time.

Credit Where It’s Due: The Acquisition Reform America Needs

I’m a Democrat, and I’ve made no secret of my myriad disappointments with the Trump Administration’s approach to national security. President Trump’s decision to alienate India remains a generational mistake. It’s addressing crime by deploying the National Guard is ineffective, expensive, and dangerous. The President’s flip-flopping, Putin-courting approach to ending the war in Ukraine has been downright embarrassing.

Yet I’m an American before I’m a Democrat, and the difference between a patriot and a partisan is the capacity to root for initiatives that are good for the country to succeed, even if the “other team” gets the credit. If a leaked memo is to be believed, the Pentagon’s proposed sweeping changes to how America buys the weapons, platforms, and technologies that ensure it can win its wars is just such an initiative. Democrats and Republicans alike should vocally support it. Indeed, my fellow Democrats must ensure that something so good for our nation rises above partisanship; we don’t want to be on the wrong side of it simply because President Trump supports it.

Constellation-Class Frigate U.S. Navy. Image Credit: Industry Handout.

The current state of affairs is downright dangerous. It squanders tens of billions of dollars every year and, worse yet, invites war with our adversaries; every dollar wasted is a dollar not spent deterring aggressive, malicious adversaries. The current system doubles or even triples the cost of major projects. Just one ship, the USS Gerald Ford, cost $13.3 billion. It was $2.8 billion over budget and six years late. The U.S. Navy’s constant tinkering with the Constellation Class frigate (it has ordered over 500 alterations and counting) has doubled the cost of the first ship in the class. Yet these are a drop in the bucket compared to budget busters like the F-35, which will ultimately cost $2 trillion, or the projected $60 billion for the Littoral Combat Ship disaster.

Ironically, even our attempts to root out waste have proven wasteful. They’ve amounted to layers of bureaucratic hurdles, all of which involve squadrons of attorneys who do not work for free.  Department of Defense (DOD) attorneys make over $150,000 a year. Defense contractors hire attorneys charging $1500 an hour (or more) and pass those costs to the taxpayer.

Littoral Combat Ship Deck National Security Journal Image by Stephen Silver.

If America is going to spend  $900 billion a year – or roughly 3% of our economy – on defense, it stands to reason we should spend that money well. Right now, we’re not.

It’s not just the financial cost; it’s the time overruns, too. The first ship of the Constellation Class will be at least three years late. The fourth block of the Virginia Class submarine is also three years behind schedule. It’s not just the Navy; the fourth block of the F-35 is running five years behind. Nor is it just military hardware; software reviews can take three years, which, given the pace of tech sector innovation, means programs are often obsolete before DOD has even finished installing them. When I worked for the Secretary of the Navy, ancient software made my computer a glorified paperweight.

Getting the three million people (uniformed and civilian) who work for our military invested in a new system is clearly the hard part, but the proposed reforms are exactly what we need. That is why the new plan will flip incentives on their head.

(July 28, 2017) An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 approaches the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) for an arrested landing. The aircraft carrier is underway conducting test and evaluation operations.(U.S. Navy photo by Erik Hildebrandt/Released) 170728-N-UZ648-161
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Right now, everyone’s incentive is to make sure there is no mistake on their piece of the pie, regardless of the impact that has upon the entire project. The new system, according to an internal memo reported by Breaking Defense, would instead set up what reformers have long argued for: a single, senior leader in charge of interrelated projects, giving them substantial power and latitude, and judging them by the speed, scale, and cost-efficiency with which they get the job done. That person could put a stop to all of the change orders that balloon costs and delay projects, as he could see what they’re doing to the project as a whole. After all, he would have the incentive to do so.

The proposed plan also enables us to get rid of decades of bad habits. The memo states  “every process, board, and review must justify its existence.” This new system, then, would start with the assumption that reviews and their associated costs (in money and time) are unnecessary, rather than the existing assumption that the more reviews we run, the less likely we are to make a costly mistake. Such thinking meant we thought we were being prudent each time we added another step in the process, but the cumulative impact proved we were being anything but.

The hope is that eliminating all of these steps will also eliminate the “valley of death” for smaller companies that want to challenge entrenched primes for big contracts. While bigger companies can wait years without revenue from a given project, ambitious young companies cannot, so they don’t even bid. If those younger companies can start seeing revenue earlier, they suddenly become viable contenders for major projects. This strategy, then, could reintroduce competition into the defense industrial base after decades of defense industry consolidation.

Further, the memo recognizes that while the Pentagon has scored countless own goals, partners in the defense industrial base have also often failed to hold up their end of the bargain. The lack of competition has meant incumbents on major projects haven’t felt much pressure to improve performance, even when that performance was poor. After all, no one would be able to take the contract from them, and DOD couldn’t cancel a project without taking a lot of blame itself. The memo, however, tries to give DOD targeted leverage over laggards. Specifically, it allows DOD to “proportionally” penalize contractor delays, and the prospect of losing money has a way of focusing the mind.

Perhaps most excitingly, the new system could ultimately treat building weapons systems as a true public-private partnership. It could move us from the current model, where DOD tells contractors exactly what they want, to a model where DOD tells contractors “here’s the problem we want to solve – tell us how you’d get it done as quickly and cheaply as possible.” This is the public-private partnership model Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue for in Abundance, and it works in states across the country. We Democrats do not have to betray any principles to support it.

What Needs to Happen

It’s far too early to declare “mission accomplished.” While I hope Secretary Hegseth will say the right things during his upcoming speech on acquisition reform, seeing these reforms through will require relentless oversight. It is easy for people who have been purchasing weapons the same way for 30 years to fall into bad habits. It will require detailed new policies and procedures that leave no room for ambiguity and that will replace (rather than simply sit on top of) the old ones.

Most of all, it will require congressional and public pressure and support so entrenched interests cannot gum up the works. Given that the Department of Defense needs Congress to apply relentless pressure on stragglers to make these reforms stick, the Department would be wise to overturn its policy restricting who can speak with congressional offices.

I’d rather be a patriot than a partisan, and, with credit to the late Senator John McCain, I’d rather lose an election than a war. If that means supporting a policy from an administration I vehemently disagree with, so be it. America’s defense acquisition needs this reform, regardless of who is behind it.

About the Author: Neal Urwitz

Neal Urwitz is CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies. He served as a speechwriter for and advisor to the Secretary of the Navy from 2021-2023.