Broken defense system threatens US military readiness in future wars

During the Second World War ,, The United States Unleashed Free Market Mavericks to solve our toughest industrial challenges and build a war machine that proved to be the engine for the Allied victory. This machine served us well in the Cold War, but in the past 30 years it has stayed a standstill.

Today we are exposed to the risk of losing our next big war, not for lack of courage or ingenuity, but because of a broken defense lawyer system with bureaucratic sclerosis.

Americans constantly read headlines about growing threats and Potential conflicts How our opponents innovate quickly. In the meantime, our defense base has been bound by regulations that have been built for a past era.

A congress report from 2024 has been leaving Clear America since the Second World WarAnd we are incredibly unprepared to meet the requirements of a great conflict of power.

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While China let its military grow for two decades, the United States lost their industrial advantage, gave the risk tolerance and emphasized the process about the results. The result is a limited system that generates too little material, too slowly and in decreasing quality.

According to reports, the United States could exploit our long-distance Anti shipping rocket supply in just one week of the conflict with China. The Pentagon It takes almost 12 years to deliver the first version of a new weapon system. Our troops even use decades old radio systems if they have used a decades old cell phone?

The years of rigid regulations have our once impressive, agile industrial basis for a lumberjack bureaucracy that does not live up to the needs of our throaters and our national security interests.

The way we develop, produce and use weapons in the 21st century is not an option. It is an imperative.

The Pentagon needs a large reform. Now is our chance

In order to maintain agility and deterrence, we have to instruct our military industrial grasp by incorporating the best actors of the private sector for investing in defense technology and manufacturing. Do not let them drive the process, to innovate, canter and scale the latest skills. We no longer need companies that make dating apps and yoga pants. We need companies that have been built Secure the future of America.

Many of the largest companies in America had a healthy defense And Commercial departments that caused a cross pollination between commercial and state innovation. Now you are committed to a Byzantine contract structure that cooked our defense base for a small sect of companies in the nineties, which only concludes a contract with the government with the government and hold commercial companies from taking part in initiatives in the defense industry.

For this reason, we support the Dynamic Tech Defense reform initiative in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to break sluggishness, revise the incentive structure that favors a handful of contractors and enables new, innovative participants in our defense base.

China uses the technical weakness of our government. We need a quick restart

While the traditional prime numbers are often bitter for their role in the stagnation of our defense acquisition, the truth is what the Pentagon did.

Decades of systemic inefficiencies have created the paradigm that we see today. The NDAA for the 2026 financial year takes important steps to tackle these problems.

First, the “Commercial First” models of the NDAA models is speed and agility, in which the Pentagon acquisition officers prioritize commercial options for costly, tailor -made development programs. This can save us years in development and billions in taxpayers’ dollars.

Second, NDAA opens the 2026 financial year by only restricting the legally prescribed requirements for the conclusion of the contract, the doors for a large number of innovative companies that can participate in the BIG and Small, in the defense industrial grain. This saves costs and strengthens the supply chains by ensuring that we are not dependent on a pool of subcontractors that are so small that our most critical components for military devices have only one, perhaps two suppliers.

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Finally through the reform, like that Department of War Values ​​of past performance, the congress ends the tyranny of the term in Pentagon. The Ministry of War is currently preferring permanently anchored contractors towards newer startups – even those who offer superior solutions. If you make this change, the field is compensated for with a focus on competition and improvement instead of a “Rock the Boat” mentality.

These reforms will ensure that our defense base can produce and ittery alive and quickly – a prerequisite for modern warfare. For example, take the war between Ukraine and Russia. This conflict consumes thousands of drones, rockets and bombs per month. The United States has difficulty doing so many in a year.

Quantity has its own quality. We have to make sure that we not only produce weapons and materials quickly, but also, but also, but also New fit, new tool and new they just as quickly.

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

It is now time that the congress has revived our defense base to meet the requirements of the 21st century. We come to work.

Click here to read more of sen. Tim Sheehy

Katherine Boyle is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and co-manager of his American dynamic practice.