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Topic: Military Administration Blog Brand: The Buzz Region: Americas Tags: Bureaucracy, Defense Spending, Department of Defense (DoD), Military Budget, North America, and United States The Pentagon Is Fighting Bureaucracy… with More Bureaucracy December 9, 2025 By: Brandon J. Weichert
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The Trump administration’s decision to appoint a new “portfolio manager for critical major weapons systems” is a misguided, if well-intentioned, attempt to reduce Pentagon bloat.
The United States Air Force’s problems are so vast that the Pentagon is creating a new office led by a four-star general who reports to the deputy secretary of defense to address them, according to Defense One.
Lt. Gen. Dale White will be given the title of Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Critical Major Weapons Systems, which includes the new ICBM, B-21 stealth bomber, F-47 sixth-generation warplane, and Air Force One programs…because the Air Force has so thoroughly dropped the ball on its acquisitions and development programs that an entirely new lane for making effective, affordable weapons needs to be established.
Why the Defense Acquisitions Process Is So Broken
The Pentagon’s procurement has been a blight both for military readiness and for the US taxpayer. Slow cycles, budgetary overruns, bureaucratic snafus, and many misaligned incentives have conspired to stymie the ability of our nearly $1 trillion-per-year defense apparatus.
Indeed, it has become such a problem for the Pentagon’s readiness that the broken acquisitions process has incentivized the worst excesses of the government and rewarded corruption.
America’s current defense establishment is a product of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act. A necessary attempt by Congress to reform what was even at that time an inefficient defense establishment, the system those reforms put in place are no longer relevant to the world that America finds itself in today. An entirely new paradigm is needed—and only legislation can achieve such changes.
Yet that legislation will never come. Perverse incentives reward corruption among America’s defense contractors and members of Congress. Defense contractors generally like to pitch exceedingly complex, and therefore expensive, systems to the military. Then, if anything goes wrong, they can continue to extract more money from the taxpayer through fixes—all while failing to deliver a usable product in a timely and affordable manner, and enriching themselves along the way.
Congress doesn’t step in because most of the major defense contractors have created a revolving door between their industry and Congress, wherein elected leaders who do the bidding of the defense contractors while in office are rewarded with high-paying jobs in the defense sector upon leaving office. And those politicians are given massive campaign contributions by the defense sector, so long as they carry water for it.
The White House Is Not Fighting the Right Way
Even the Trump administration’s decision to create a specialized office to effectively push through key programs and prevent those programs from falling prey to the usual inefficiencies of the defense acquisitions process is insufficient.
Creating a new bureaucratic lane to bypass the massive bureaucracy that already exists rather than simply cutting down on the existing bureaucracy to streamline the acquisitions process in the Air Force is most unhelpful.
Sure, it might help to push through ICBM development or the B-21 Raider. But it does little to address the systemic issues within the Pentagon.
A 2024 essay from American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar John Ferrari highlights the problems with creating a new position that would address these procurement issues. “At some point, one would hope people would figure out that reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic does not prevent it from hitting the iceberg,” Ferrari wrote in Breaking Defense. He proposed three solutions that sound much better than whatever Band-Aid the Trump administration is trying with this new Air Force office:
- Return acquisitions back to the uniformed military leadership;
- Replace the antedated Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process with what Ferrari calls a “Defense Resourcing System that would shift over from rigid annual budgeting to continuous strategic planning;
- End all joint programs across service branches (the F-35 is one of the greatest and equally horrifying examples of why these programs never end well).
To compound matters, this new Air Force role was created by an executive order rather than act of Congress, highlighting the abject brokenness of America’s grotesquely overfunded defense establishment. It clearly cannot deliver usable weapons in an affordable way and is, therefore, unprepared for fighting and winning a twenty-first century war.
One can appreciate the Trump administration’s desire to cut through the red tape at all costs. But creating a new centralized mini-bureaucracy in a larger sea of bureaucracy is not what will enhance US military readiness and capabilities. It will just create an entirely new web of problems for the Pentagon to handle—if this new office even lasts beyond the remaining three years of the Trump administration, which is highly unlikely. Congress must fundamentally reform both itself and the Defense Department via legislation.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / Jeremy Christensen.
The post The Pentagon Is Fighting Bureaucracy… with More Bureaucracy appeared first on The National Interest.
Источник: nationalinterest.org