The United States has been fighting tomorrow’s battles with yesterday’s playbook for decades. While America has long been accused of “planning to fight the last war,” nowhere is that seen more than in the arcane policies of military procurement and the ever-changing landscape of artificial intelligence (AI).
With the rapid development of AI the U.S. must prioritize modernizing its outdated systems more than ever.
In July, President Trump released an Executive Order that outlines a plan for strengthening America’s position in the AI race. The Executive Order will require technology companies to develop AI models that are unbiased and consistently produce reliable results. I agree with President Trump and believe this is an important step toward ensuring AI platforms operate at the highest possible level, particular in the defense world.
While we observe warfare revolutionized with drones, precise electronic warfare, and 3D printing, the Pentagon bureaucracy clings desperately to an old procurement system which takes the military decades to deploy new weapon systems. Specifically, this is seen in the Pentagon’s decades-old “requirements approval” process, “lovingly” referred to in the Pentagon as the JCIDS process, upon which tens of thousands of military positions and civil service jobs are dependent to feed the monster of the acquisition bureaucracy, and like most long-term bureaucratic structures, is now simply a chokepoint for innovation rather than a process to fully vet military procurement requirements.
Take the example of the F-35 Lightning II jet, with a first prototype flown in October 2002, the first production airplane flown more than six years later in December 2006, but still not entering operational service until 2015 for the Marines, 2016 for the Air Force, and 2019 for the Navy, fifteen to nineteen years after first flight. Even in 2006, the Government Accountability Office warned about this byzantine procurement process: “the JSF program continues to be risky… [it] has already encountered increases to estimated development costs, delays to planned deliveries, and reductions in the planned number of JSF to be procured that have eroded DOD’s buying power.” Meanwhile, the cost of the F-35 skyrocketed from $89 million per copy in 2010 to $304 million per copy, a 366% increase for a system that took 15 years to field.
Too many private sector defense contractors make bags of money on such traditional contracts, purchased by DoD through conventional and decades-old contract vehicles weighed down by the incredibly complex Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) process that was developed to prevent challenges to contract awards, but not to deliver what the military needs quickly and inexpensively. But when someone raises the specter that such traditional contracting vehicles delay the delivery of what the warfighter needs, the traditional defense contractors breathlessly warn that such contract cancellations will hamstring the military’s ability to operate, when in fact the only things hamstrung are those contractors end of year bonuses.
Enter two key reforms which can transform this process: First, is the development of new procurement methods known as “Other Transaction Agreements” (OTAs), which allows DoD to fast-track emerging research and development systems and prototypes, and “give DoD the flexibility necessary to adopt and incorporate business practices that reflect commercial industry standards and…provide the Government with access to state-of-the-art technology solutions from traditional and non-traditional defense contractors.”
Second, President Trump issued a DoD Acquisition Reform Executive Order on April 9th of this year which directs a wholesale reform of the lethargic Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS, as referenced above), as well as sets down a marker for DoD procurement officials to “prioritized us of…Other Transaction Authority” (OTA) agreements discussed above. Together, these two reforms have the potential to completely transform DoD acquisition into support of military lethality and support for the warrior. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed the President’s Executive Order up the next day with directive to terminate another $5 billion in unnecessary IT contracts which were more a product of the legacy contracting process than a met need of the military’s IT requirements.
And the industry’s been waiting for DoD and its procurement corps to catch up, especially in taking advantage of what artificial intelligence and large-language model systems can provide the military.
Companies have emerged, like Distributed Systems, which specializes in producing advanced AI-powered sensors to detect incoming threats through radio signals. Another is Shield AI, featured on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list as a leading company in the next generation of artificial intelligence, developing drones and integrating A.I. and automation.
One particularly promising company is MetroStar, which through a contract vehicle called Rapid Task Order Response (RAPTOR), is showing how this smart contracting reduces time to field and close capability gaps. The RAPTOR vehicle streamlines the deployment of technology into the field, while still maintaining the oversight and budgetary control the DoD needs to maximize the monies appropriated by Congress.
Whether the traditional vehicle contracting officers within the DoD, or the mega-contractors who’ve built corporate empires hovering around those contracting officers like so many Mandarins in an ancient Chinese warlord movie, like it or not, this is the nature of today’s national security environment. We are now in an era where digital warfare, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence define who wins and who falls behind.
Against this backdrop, the Pentagon must move with clarity and conviction. That means embracing firms that innovate, cutting ties with those that can’t, and rebuilding an acquisition culture that prioritizes agility and outcomes.
Captain Bob “Shoebob” Carey, U.S. Navy (Retired) is the Executive Director of the National Defense Committee, a military and veterans advocacy organization dedicated to military and veterans civil and legal rights. He served as a member of the Senior Executive Service in both the Departments of Defense and Energy and served as the national security advisor to two U.S. Senators.