More than 40 ships and submarines representing 15 international partner nations travel in formation in the Pacific Ocean July 25, 2014, during the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2014 exercise. RIMPAC is a U.S. Pacific Fleet-hosted biennial multinational maritime exercise designed to foster and sustain international cooperation on the security of the world?s oceans. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shannon E. Renfroe, U.S. Navy/Released)
The Department of Defense is a mess. After decades of mismanagement, a real reformer is needed. In The Wall Street Journal, Mike Gallagher explains what Pete Hegseth will face if confirmed. He writes:
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.
The first task is to fix the U.S. Navy. America needs a maritime industrial base that can counter China’s. Pentagon requirements for building maritime assets involve too many uncoordinated stakeholders. The Pentagon establishes war-fighting requirements—such as the number of missiles on a ship—without regard to interdependent technical specifications such as that ship’s center of gravity. When those technical specifications aren’t tightly linked to war-fighting requirements, the mismatch can cause underperformance or unplanned costs and time. The Defense Department should return to the board model that served the Navy well until the 1960s. The Navy would have a forum of senior stakeholders with a chairman empowered to decide both requirements and specifications, ensuring that these work in harmony.
The Navy should also create an office focused on expediting the development and deployment of certain war-fighting technologies, similar to the Rapid Capabilities Office at the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force. The next secretary should insist on more flexible processes to deliver unmanned surface, aerial and underwater vehicles with speed and at scale. He must also work with Congress to help shipyards attract and retain talent.
Rebuilding the maritime industrial base can also help save Aukus—the security partnership between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.—which is in danger of stalling. Under the Aukus agreement, the U.S. Navy intends to sell Australia at least three Virginia-class attack submarines by the early 2030s. To realize this goal, the Navy needs to build more than today’s 1.2 hulls a year and shrink maintenance backlogs that have sidelined nearly 40% of the fleet. Addressing these challenges will demand consistent funding, which will come only if the defense secretary articulates the importance of sea power and presents a coherent shipbuilding plan. The secretary can get Aukus off life support by accelerating U.S. submarine deployments to western Australia, bringing more Australian sailors onto U.S. boats, and establishing a naval reactors organization in Canberra.
The secretary must also confront the West’s depleted arsenal of critical munitions, especially air-defense missiles. In a conflict with China, the U.S. could run out of some munitions within a week. The next secretary must rebuild America’s arsenal by moving to maximum production rates of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Extended Range), Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, Harpoon, Standard Missile 6 and other munitions. Wherever possible, these systems should be equipped with advanced energetic materials to extend their range and destructive power.
Ships, submarines and missiles are all expensive. To save money, the next secretary must enforce fixed-price contracting and force private-sector contractors to acquire products and services that are researched and developed on their dime, not the U.S. taxpayer’s. The Defense Department’s cost-plus contracting model has destroyed competition and innovation while exploding costs. Sen. John McCain mandated fixed-price commercial contracts in 2016, but Congress repealed that mandate five years later, after his death. Lawmakers should rectify this mistake by re-establishing fixed-price contracting and requiring the defense secretary to sign off on any cost-plus contract.
To free up more money, the secretary can reduce the civilian workforce, the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the general and flag officer corps, and the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy. He can sell non-war-fighting assets such as golf courses and resurrect a 2015 Pentagon study that outlined a path to save $125 billion over five years.
Congress can help by ensuring the Defense Department complies with the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994. This statute, which the Pentagon violates frequently, aims to prevent the government from wasting money on developing capabilities that can be purchased from the commercial sector. NASA predicted it would have cost $4 billion to build the Falcon 9 rocket, much more than the $400 million it cost Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build it. It stands to reason, then, that by adhering to the law’s commercial-preference provision, the Defense Department can save tens of billions annually. Additionally, Congress can give the Pentagon authority to use appropriated but unspent funds of between $10 billion and $15 billion per year.
Assuming China sticks to its Taiwan timeline, the next secretary has two years to prevent World War III. To do so, he must put the Pentagon on a war footing, firing any bureaucrat unable or unwilling to work at a wartime pace. The lack of accountability at the Defense Department—after the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, the failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, and the current secretary’s disappearance without informing the White House—has undermined confidence in military leadership. Armed with a bold agenda, the next secretary can regain the trust of the American people and the fear of America’s enemies.
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