Broken defense system threatens US military readiness in future wars

II. During World War II, the United States released the free market Mavericks to solve our most difficult industrial challenges and create a war machine that proves that it was a motor for the victory of the Allies. This machine served us well during the Cold War, but it stopped in the last 30 years.

Today, we are not at the risk of losing our next great war because of a broken defense system full of bureaucratic sclerosis, not for lack of courage or creativity.

Americans are constantly reading headlines about growing threats and potential conflicts as our competitors rapidly innovate. Meanwhile, our defense industry base depends on the regulations built for a past period.

The 2024 Congress Report clearly demonstrates that America has faced the most serious global threats since the Second World War, and we are ready to meet the demands of a great conflict of power.

Rome Burns: America ignores China’s rising red tide

While China raised its twenty years, the US lost its industrial edge, delivered risk tolerance and stressed the results. The result is a limited system that produces very few materials and produces very slow and decreasing quality.

Reports show that the US can consume our long -range, anti -ship missile supply in a short time as one -week conflict with China. It takes almost 12 years for Pentagon to offer the first version of a new weapon system. Our troops are even using radio systems for decades-if you have used their mobile phone?

Years of solid arrangements have once turned our agile industrial base into a timber bureaucracy that could not meet the needs of our warriors and national security interests.

It is not an option to reshape our way of development, production and distribution in the 21st century; This is a mandatory.

Pentagon needs a great reform. Now our luck

In order to maintain agility and deterrence, we must control our military industry base by encouraging the best private sector actors to invest in defense technology and production. Leave the process to innovate, repeat and scal the latest abilities, not the government, not the government. We don’t need more companies that make flirting applications and yoga trousers; We need businesses built to secure the future of America.

Forty years ago, most of the largest companies in America had a healthy defense And Commercial sections that create cross pollination between commercial and government innovation. Now, during the 1990s, they are looking at a Byzantine contract structure that boils our defense industry base only with the government and boils up to a small sect that prevents commercial companies from participating in the defense industry initiatives.

For this reason, we support the attempt of dynamic technology defense reform attempt to break the inertia in this year’s National Defense Authorization Authorization (NDAA), to overhaul the incentive structure that supports a handful of established contractor, and to strengthen new, innovative entries to our defense industry base.

The Chinese government uses the weakness of technology of our government. We need a quick restart

While the traditional prime usually worsen for their role in the stagnation of our defense acquisition, the truth is what Pentagon does them.

Systemic inefficiency for decades created the paradigm we have seen today. FY 2026 ?a is taking important steps to address these problems.

First, NDAA’s “commercial first” model champions speed and agility require the Pentagon acquisition officials to give priority to commercial options according to costly, ordering development programs. This can save us for years of development and billions of taxpayers.

Secondly, by narrowing the requirements of the contract only to the persons required by laws, FY 2026 opens a door to many innovative enterprises that can participate in the defense industry base. This will strengthen cost savings and supply chains by not relying on a lower contractor pool with only one, perhaps two suppliers of our most critical components for military equipment.

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Finally, by reforming how the war department values ​​performance, the Congress ends its duty in the Pentagon. The war department supports the installars who are currently settled on new initiatives – even those who offer superior solutions. Making this change will flatten the playground by focusing on competition and improvement rather than “do not shake the boat” mentality.

These reforms will enable our defense industry base to be alive and produce and reiterate quickly – a necessity for the modern war. For example, take the war between Ukraine and Russia. This conflict consumes thousands of drones, missiles and bombs per month. The US is struggling to do many a year.

The quantity has its own quality. We should just make sure that we cannot produce weapons and materials quickly, but also re -insert, re -insert and re -monitor them.

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The United States cannot afford to wait until the next war starts to correct our broken acquisition system. We cannot sacrifice our national security on the bureaucracy altar.

The time to revive our defense industry base to meet the demands of the 21st century. Let’s start.

Click here to read more than you. Tim Shehy

Katherine Boyle, the general partner of Andreesen Horowitz and the joint leadership of American dynamism practice.