Public sentiment toward the US Defense Industry reform is largely negative, marked by skepticism and frustration. Concerns include potential corruption, deregulation's role in increasing fraud, and incompetence in administration. Opinions are divided between reducing spending and fostering competition, and the belief that privatization has overreached, with some advocating for nationalization. Overall, commenters express worry about bureaucratic inefficiencies that could threaten national security.

US Government

Defense Contractors

Military-Industrial Complex

This administration is actively removing all firewalls against massive future corruption.

3arrows-white_rose

&gt;(b)  Promote expedited and streamlined acquisitions.  Where new supplemental regulations or internal guidance is proposed, the Secretary of Defense shall apply the ten-for-one rule as described in Executive Order 14192 of January 31, 2025 (Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation).

No new DFARS clauses unless 10 existing DFARS clauses go away.   Why?  Because reasons.   

Surely this will allow regulations to stay up to date with the latest changes required!  /s!

livinginfutureworld

"Looks like fraud is back on the menu, boys!" - private sector.

ni_hao_butches

Although the executive order refers to DOD, I have a feeling that this will eventually make its way to DHS.

In my experience, things such as start at DOD and always end up at DHS as well.

Teufel_hunden0311

actually what im reading is they create whats already there. Cooper cap and NADP are literally senior staff training junior staff… this is like mexico where he stood up to them and they agreed to a public acceptance of the policy already in place. Lets all smile and tell them they’re brilliant and bring new ideas!! it’ll be
like we never dreamed

[deleted]

They’re going to have to rewrite a lot of laws to actually implement this, and given the absolute stupidity of this admin, they’re going to fuck it up and force some clown show bullshit on everyone because they have zero humility and can’t admit mistakes. Dude, our DoD contracting workforce will do what needs to be done, but if they half ass this implementation (and they will, they 100% will because they’re all a bunch of fucking idiots) they won’t get what they want. Also, good luck doing half this shit after jerking themselves off to getting rid federal workers like contract specialists. This is such a great opportunity that will be squandered by these know-nothing, unqualified fuck faces.

Manwithnoplanatall

Melodic-Society-6685

See ya DFARS, just in time for the complete rewrite of the FAR in 90 days

Bunker58

"Right-sizing", "reforming", and conducting "analysis of acquisition workforce levels required to develop, deliver, and sustain warfighting capabilities"...is a marginal improvement from "lol just fire more people" but it's still vague enough that you're as justified in assuming the intent is to reduce as it is to recruit. Not like the last three months exactly support benefit of the doubt here.

NatusLumen

You can tell that the person who wrote this has no idea about contracting

SalamanderNo3872

I'm actually hoping this streamlines the pm office side. A project I'm helping on is literally writing documents because it's the process. But they're not useful at all. It's dumb and slowing down getting this item to the field.

StitchingUnicorn

My initial takes on this EO:

1) The push to utilize more commercial solutions only works if Government requirements are more in line with commercial standards and practices. There has been a push to do this over the years, but unfortunately, Government doesn't work quite like commercial concerns, and for good reasons. The Government is not a for-profit business, so application of commercial practices doesn't always make sense. We don't need to compete in the market place for dollars. Why should we function like a for-profit business, then?

2) Government requirements are much more complex, and that is because of the extra requirements of Government acquisitions, such as WTO, TIAA, labor laws, etc. We are required to follow ALL laws and implement them fairly and equitably. That is how we function as good stewards of the taxpayers' money. 

3) Let's face it, the true purpose of this is to open up more Government work to the private sector. When I hear about wanting to reduce Government programs and spending, what they really mean is privatization. They don't want the money to dry up, they just want a bigger piece of it. Reduce the requirements and restrictions on Government acquisition, and then you can open up more opportunities for contracting out more and more Government services. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Not always, sure, but in the end, it will cost the taxpayers more. We will pay a premium for services to for-profit companies to perform services. 

4) Finally, this will DEFINITELY open up acquisition to more corruption. While following competition rules in FAR Part 6 can seem to be a burden sometimes, those rules are there to ensure that the Government's money is being spent fairly and equitably. Take all that away and make it easier to sole-source contracts, and what it will come down to is which company can convince the Government official to pick them. Also, it will allow corrupt actors in the Government to pick and choose according to their whim (or their pocketbook). 

Yeah, the only good thing I can see coming out of all of this is a possible reduction in clauses, which is not a bad thing at all :)

yagi-san

Regular_Assist_3885

https://preview.redd.it/p2q0dfx04iue1.jpeg?width=1200&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=0da6441a6f047ace6c68172c524aba2732c6cba0

rer115ga

Against corruption? They are doing all that they can to increase corruption and grift.

Staying_Dangerous13

Aromatic_Service_403

Well tbh, it's a very American thing, I mean you don't see Saab doing that shit or Rind I'll be 100% honest, I don't fully see the whole "Lockheed Martin forces the US to do more wars", they weren't the reason we were in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. But as for a solution? Either break up the companies, regulate them more (my personal solution) or nationalize them. The main issue I see with the MIC is the large amounts of waste when contractors over promise and under deliver, leading to delays and gaps in our warfighting abilities.

Avionic7779x

Yep, you hit on a very important issue. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to have your cake and eat it too, so you have to compromise. America does it this way partly because as the old joke goes, if you can built ships faster than they can build torpedos then you win. This is why I can’t take a lot of progressives seriously when they talk about cutting the military while being purposely vague about what capabilities they want to cut.

Just as an example, the US spend more on maintaining its nuclear weapons than Russia does on its entire military. You could argue that’s a colossal waste of money on weapons that most likely will never be used. But the difference is Russia’s nukes may are may not work and only act as deterrence through plausible MAD, while the American nuclear umbrella being 100% reliable is a cornerstone of American diplomacy. Are you willing to give that up to save the money? This is the kind of debate that we should be having.

TheAtomicClock

It's a bit interesting and many nations have their defence industry being nationalised(I think?). Sweden has quite large defence industry which is both a source of pride and shame for us Swedes. Our defence industry is almost entirely private with foreign companies owning large stocks in it. Some probably argue that their high quality output is due to them being private but I'm unsure about that. The Swedish state is what has kept and is keeping most of these companies alive so maybe it is time for them to also be owned by the state.

MansJansson

The way I see it, the MIC is a essentially a special subcategory of corruption.  
There are 4 remedies that come to mind (most of which are implemented at least to some extent):  
1. Transparency - Make it harder to say "It's classified" when it comes to acquisitions and R&amp;D. E.g. Mendate public and detailed fainancial reports from both the military and adjacent industries.  
2. Oversight - Somewhat self explanatory, E.g. independent auditing, congressional oversight &amp; similar.  
3. Personnel rotation - essentially term limits. The goal is to root out and prevent systematic corruption, both by making it harder to hide corruption and by necessitating the remaking of "arrangements" for every rotation in order to maintain a corrupt arrangement (creating multiple points of failure for such).  
4. Regulations of positions of trust - essentially, make it illegal for high ranking military personnel to take certain jobs for a period of time after their retirement.

Note that there will always be some tradeoffs:  rotations limit a military's ability to capitalize on experience, limiting generals entry to the industry deprives the industry of experienced professionals, etc.  

Also note that there isn't a cure-all: Holes can be found in pretty much every form of regulation. Transperency? - some thing genuinely need be classified (which very much dosen't make them immune to corruption) Oversight? - "Congressional" was literally added to the term MIC.  
Hell, congressional approval used to be required for generals to take certain jobs - until congress relegated that to the DOD which pretty much approves such requests automatically ([source](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/veterans-us-foreign-jobs-saudi-arabia/))

**Bottom line - there is no alternative to regulating, and closing loopholes as they emerge.**

OwlMan_001

Canter1Ter_

I would like to emphasize that the US MIC has never been responsible for starting a single war. The MIC has never been in the business of warmongering for the sake of profits. The defense industry is a complicated sector with surprisingly thin margins due to all the red tape and oversight schemes that try to control for and prevent corruption from degrading military readiness. It's fairly common for defense projects to lose the company money due to fixed-price contracts placing the burden of cost overruns on the contractor (like the Air Force One replacements).

The US MIC has done a lot of good for our national defense. Critical technologies that have put us ahead such as stealth aircraft and the attack helicopter exist because the companies that pioneered the concepts put their own money out of their own initiative into those projects believing that the military would eventually come around to embrace them. This enabled us to leapfrog the Soviets and their bloated state-run MIC in technology throughout the entire Cold War.

If there's one glaring problem with the defense industry, it's that it's too consolidated. Back during WWII, there were thousands of small firms bidding on projects and always brought their best knowing that they're one missed contract away from going out of business. Now they number in the dozens to low hundreds and don't have to try as hard to compete. The top six (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls) cover so much ground that they've become too big to fail.

SJshield616

ON-12

Listen we need a military to defend ourself. So we shouldn't get rid of the military but as Eisenhower said, their massive and they have massive influence. 

Listen when you profit off of people dying there needs to be consequences.

If your found to have been responsible for killing people (in war) for profit you need to face serious consequences.

Spend less. I think NATO wants member nations to spend 2% of their respective gdp on military. The US is like 3.4% currently. If I'm correct, could cut $300 billion without jeopardizing security. 

Maybe allow defense contracts to be fulfilled abroad. Currently ~100% of military spending is domestic. This gives Lockheed, etc a near monopoly which has allowed them to get real chummy with American politicians.

idk how military spending works. I'm just spitballing here.

UnhelpfulNotBot



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📣 **[Submission Statement by OP](/r/GeopoliticsIndia/comments/1ksv849/indias_wakeup_call_why_us_defense_reform_must/mtois71/)**:
&gt; SS
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&gt;The article "India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War" emphasizes the necessity for the United States to overhaul its defense acquisition and industrial systems to effectively compete in contemporary warfare. The authors argue that the current U.S. defense infrastructure is too slow and bureaucratic to meet the demands of modern combat, as evidenced by the challenges faced during the Ukraine conflict. The Pentagon's reliance on outdated manufacturing processes and stretched supply chains led to significant delays in producing essential military equipment, such as artillery shells and advanced missile systems. This inefficiency underscores the need for a defense ecosystem that prioritizes speed, scalability, and adaptability.
&gt;
&gt;In contrast, India has demonstrated a more agile approach to defense reform. The Indian military's "Cold Start" doctrine, developed to enable rapid offensive operations, reflects a strategic shift towards speed and efficiency. This doctrine emphasizes the importance of quick mobilization and integrated operations, allowing India to respond swiftly to threats. Additionally, India's focus on self-reliance in defense production has led to the development of indigenous capabilities, reducing dependency on external suppliers and enhancing operational flexibility. The article suggests that the U.S. could learn from India's experience by adopting a more modular, redundant, and rapidly adaptable defense system capable of meeting the urgent needs of modern warfare. 

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SS

The article "India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War" emphasizes the necessity for the United States to overhaul its defense acquisition and industrial systems to effectively compete in contemporary warfare. The authors argue that the current U.S. defense infrastructure is too slow and bureaucratic to meet the demands of modern combat, as evidenced by the challenges faced during the Ukraine conflict. The Pentagon's reliance on outdated manufacturing processes and stretched supply chains led to significant delays in producing essential military equipment, such as artillery shells and advanced missile systems. This inefficiency underscores the need for a defense ecosystem that prioritizes speed, scalability, and adaptability.

In contrast, India has demonstrated a more agile approach to defense reform. The Indian military's "Cold Start" doctrine, developed to enable rapid offensive operations, reflects a strategic shift towards speed and efficiency. This doctrine emphasizes the importance of quick mobilization and integrated operations, allowing India to respond swiftly to threats. Additionally, India's focus on self-reliance in defense production has led to the development of indigenous capabilities, reducing dependency on external suppliers and enhancing operational flexibility. The article suggests that the U.S. could learn from India's experience by adopting a more modular, redundant, and rapidly adaptable defense system capable of meeting the urgent needs of modern warfare.

nishitd

u/nishitd

I mentioned about cold start doctrine to you around 2 weeks ago in another thread. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/GeopoliticsIndia/s/KoYEX6TSdm

AIM-120-AMRAAM


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We already do:   BAE, Leonardo, Thales, Elbit are all fairly big players in US defense industry that are foreign owned.

WittyFault

Churchill was right: Americans really will do anything before doing the right thing.

The reality of defense production is that more is more.  You can’t innovate or partnership your way out of investing in your industry and building up/retaining a skilled workforce.  Those can help, but at the end of the day, money makes the world go, and if lots of it isn’t forthcoming, then things aren’t going to happen.

Pieces like this that propose alternative solutions are just beating around the bush.  The fact that nobody will stand up and say that a massive increase in defense spending - as was done in the 7 consecutive years before Pearl Harbor - is the only way forward constitutes nothing short of cowardice on behalf of DC, the entire US MIC, and all the lobbyists and think tanks that support them.

TenguBlade

Cutting it down from your "macro" argument, to a very specific "micro" argument, I would argue that the one way the US needs to desperately invest in foreign defense industries is shipbuilding, especially if our defense experts truly believe a war with China is inevitable no later than the 2030s.


The Constellation Program has been a disaster and the USN needs more ships, at this point if they could receive 10-20 "off the shelf" new hull FFG's in the next 10 years from a European or Asian ally they should.


I know that is what the Constellation was supposed to be, but the USN has truly messed up that entire program. 


It needs to be cancelled in favor of a true, 100% off the shelf European design with no delays from the USN for design changes. If that means buying new missile systems, do it. 


I 100% agree that in the long run that shipbuilding needs to come here, but it seems like the US defense planners are gearing up for a war with China in or around 2030.

TaskForceD00mer

It sounds like a dilution of US Strategic Interests, by divesting US intellectual property critical to US interests - to foreign firms which lack the capabilities.

It sounds like Chinese stealing of US military plans, but the Europeans want the same thing, with a legal basis.

Abalone-Objective

US don't have allies in the current reality. Canada should be the closest ally and after some Trump comments they are not. You may not like it but this is the reality so only domestic industries could be trusted.

Suspicious_Loads

I sincerely think that procurement in the sense of "man the LCS program is jacked up" is not the problem here. It's more of a culture of waste throughout the DOD, and government in general. For instance:

Operations has way more wastage than procurement. We blow through billions and billions in the last two weeks of every FY on crap like new office furniture and printer toner for machines scheduled for refresh in January anyway.

WillitsThrockmorton

I can answer this I've worked on the defense contracting side, at a national lab and now own a small company that has a defense contract.  


Yes costs are out of control some justifiable some not.  A lot boils down to the uncompetitive nature of many defense projects.  As an example (I just happen to know). Parachutes for airdrops are really expensive like $30,000 instead of say the $3K parachute that a skydiver would use.  As others have mentioned it has to be sourced and manufactured in the US, it also requires mil specs and testing compliance that civilians aren't interested in, and since it's a fixed contract all overhead, setup and tooling cost has to be factored against a small order so they are only making 100 systems a year instead of the thousands a year that a commercial use would have.  This isn't necessarily fraud or abuse it's  just there is no way to downward suppress costs effectively unlike civlian suppliers who are competing against each other and consumer dollars.  

&amp;#x200B;

Now you get into something difficult or expensive and a spare part on a F-22 can cost $50K while a civilian turbine will charge $15K and the part is identical and costs $1K to make.  Some of the contracts are worse because even if you found a new supplier willing to make that $50K part for $15K it takes $50m to recertify an engine, do 3 years of testing and you won't recoup costs,  yeah you could make the manufacturer pay the cert costs but now the part costs $50K again because they will only sell 1000 over 30 years so it's not worth it.   There's a very big bid once win for life concept where unless a contractor is absolutely fucking up it's really hard to underbid or it has to happen once a decade when the contract goes out for bid or the design is updated.   My first 5 years of my career were helping assist line restarts on cold war era  aerospace contracts. As in we were getting $150M a year to restart something like MLRS which hadn't been produced since the 90's and everything was sitting in storage.

I'm not smart enough to know how to change this, it would require throttling back requirements or trying to push dual purpose as much as possible to help increase economies of scale.  It would also require change to the political and defense contracting stage where Boeing and Lockheed and the likes justify defense spending as a really inefficient jobs program and farm out work to everystate.  Some may recall that the army had to ask congress to stop buying tanks because we have thousands of them rusting in Kansas and yet we are still pumping out more.

metarinka

This is my field, in US.

First, millions of pages have been written about 'acquisition reform'. I have read at least one hundred of these white papers myself.  It's a constant worry going back to the founding of the nation.  Revolutionary War primary sources are full of quartermasters  grumbling to their wives about wasteful arms procurement.  So it's nothing new.

Second, at a very high level, government has many different objectives and trades-off between them. Efficiency (lack of waste) in procurement is just one goal that works against other goals, such as fairness, transparency &amp; compliance.  Also, government funding rules make efficient military sourcing particularly difficult. You are swimming upstream.

Third, the US military strategy is to leverage the US's advantage in technology and wealth.  We spend a shit-ton on the military, in part, because, we can, and because we have a strong bias towards expensive new tech. So this stuff is going to be really expensive.  Designing and building avionics from the ground up for a fleet of less than 100 aircraft is outrageously, insanely, mind-blowingly expensive.  That's just one small thing.

I could go on, but I'm on mobile.

PleaseDoNotDoubleDip

"material internal control weaknesses" is auditor-speak for "Looks like the accounting system isn't quite perfect".  It doesn't mean that there is actual waste taking place.  It does mean that DoD has minimized the funds going into accounting, presumably to maximize the funding going into weapons etc. so as to ease the pain of Congressional stinginess.  

Add to that the fact that defense is ***hard***.  Outperforming every possible military opponent is a very tall order.  Trying to do that sometimes means funding plenty of projects that may result in either a substantial secret advantage or complete failure.  

Finally, add to that the high interest from isolationists in defense scandals which they can point to in order to further reduce military expenditures.  Journalists know that a story about waste in the defense department will have a big audience.  

DoD is continuously improving its processes, as well it should.  From my experience inside DoD, inside DoD contractors, inside non-DoD government, and inside non-DoD-related companies, I'd say firstly that none of these sectors is particularly better or worse than the others overall, and secondly that each of these sectors is dysfunctional in its own peculiar way.  The fundamental cause of this is that humans are imperfect and that groups of humans are inevitably dysfunctional.   Although automation is constantly reducing the need for human involvement everywhere, vast amounts of humans are still necessary for most activities.  

The true root of waste can be found in the most human-intensive sector there is: politicians.  Replace Kim Jong-Un with Martin Luther King, Vladimir Putin with Benjamin Franklin, and Xi Jinping with Thomas Jefferson; just those three updates would save hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

rieslingatkos

DoD largely has a "buy American" policy, due to domestic political concerns as well as legitimate security purposes. This means that although a plant may be well run, a large portion of the supply chain/labor force is high wage, unionized American employees doing work that may have been outsourced to a much cheaper company in other cases.

OmNomSandvich

The biggest driver of **wastage** across all the major branches comes down to a lack of understanding of Systems Engineering as a technical discipline to understand and quantify why the DoD needs to acquire a new widget to do the job.

The military leadership needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to reflect the existing and emerging world-view 10 years out and to prioritize its needs accordingly.  It also needs to realize that more often than not, the wars you fight **today** are typically the wars you fight **tomorrow** and should do its best to leverage lessons learned to move forward.

Take, for example, the JLTV humvee replacement.  The Army is so committed to a set-piece Great Power fight it wants to move away from investing in that platform even though it was built on lessons learned from Iraq/Afghanistan.  Lessons paid for in blood.  So that when we invariably get embroiled in the next low-intensity fight, the Army will be equally unprepared.

AdwokatDiabel

* Get money out of politics (ALL of it). 
* Ban Flag and General Officers from working in the defense industry post retirement. 
* Reward innovation not ability to navigate Federal Contracting. 
* DoD owns the IP unless it's off the shelf.
* Better utilize enlisted personnel for defense maintenance projects instead of using contractors for everything.  
* Require government contractors maintain 50% of their revenue from private sector. Otherwise they aren't the private sector, they are an expensive bureaucracy. 
* Foster more competition in the defense industry, not protecting "the only company left that's xyz" (SpaceX destroying ULA's monopoly is a perfect example of this).

The overall cost of defense has to be lowered or we won't be able to keep up with China and our allies won't be able to afford anything.

Fp_Guy

Depends on how you define "waste".

I see more day-to-day stuff myself......for example, guards that leave their vehicles running for *hours* while they go in to talk to somebody.

TheFerretman

Reports highlight the urgent need for reform in the US defense industry, citing inefficiencies and stifled innovation due to oligopoly by major contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

US Defense Industry Reform

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