President Trump is out with a new executive order that could, if faithfully implemented, mark a sharp shift in what weapons the Pentagon buys and how such purchases are regulated.
The order, entitled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” closely tracks the arguments that have been made by emerging military tech firms in Silicon Valley. It calls for reforms that will provide “the speed and flexibility our Armed Forces need to have decisive advantages in the future” by delivering “state‐of‐the‐art capabilities at speed and scale through a comprehensive overhaul” of the Pentagon’s process for developing and buying new weapons systems.
For example, the new order tracks the approach proposed in a manifesto published by the emerging military tech firm Anduril, entitled “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy.” Anduril is an up and coming military tech firm that has received contracts for unmanned underwater vehicles, anti-drone systems, and surveillance towers at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as competing to build drones that would serve as “wingmen” for the new F-47 combat aircraft.
Anduril’s document calls for the U.S. government to nurture “a new breed of defense technology companies” by helping to ‘'recapture [the] spirit of innovation and bring cutting-edge technology to our armed forces.”
Not coincidentally, the Anduril memo suggests that this “new breed” of company should be modeled on firms like SpaceX, Anduril and Palantir that specialize in integrating advanced software and artificial intelligence into next generation weapons systems. And it is quick to point out that old guard firms like Lockheed Martin are not up to the task because they “do not have the software expertise or business model” to build “tomorrow’s weapons – autonomous systems, cyberweapons and defenses, networked systems, and more.”
The document further notes that traditional arms firms “work slowly, while the best engineers work at speed,” and that “the software engineering talent who can build faster than our adversaries resides in the commercial sector, not at large defense firms.”
In theory, the president’s executive order, reinforced by the continuing influence of Elon Musk, could augur a shift away from the big platforms that feed the bottom lines of the nation’s largest arms firms towards more unpiloted systems, robotic weapons, and AI-driven surveillance and targeting systems.
The executive order also states that any program 15 percent over budget, 15 percent behind schedule, or that is “unable to meet any key performance parameters,” will be considered for potential cancellation. If actually implemented, that would put many of the most lucrative programs carried out by big weapons firms in jeopardy. After all, according to a Government Accountability Office review from June 2024, the average time it takes a major defense program “to deliver even an initial capability to the warfighter is 10 years — a time frame incompatible with maintaining military advantage in an environment shaped by the need for technological advantage.”
Major systems like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and Northrop Grumman’s Sentinel ICBM have been plagued by cost overruns and performance delays of the kind targeted by the new executive order.
The Sentinel has experienced a whopping 81% cost growth in its first few years of development. And Elon Musk has called the F-35 “the worst military value for money” in the history of Pentagon procurement, suggesting that it should be replaced by swarms of unpiloted drones.
Unfortunately, a Pentagon review of the Sentinel similar to the kind proposed in the new executive order ended with the Pentagon deciding to stay the course on the program, even though outside experts like former Defense Secretary William Perry have called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons we have” because a president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them on warning of an attack, thereby increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm.
Furthermore, specialists in nuclear deterrence at the Union of Concerned Scientists have noted that the United States has enough nuclear warheads on bombers and submarines to dissuade any nation from attacking the United States, rendering the new ICBM redundant.
Other systems ripe for review include new aircraft carriers, which can cost up to $13 billion each and are vulnerable to attack by modern high speed missiles; heavy tanks, which have been of little use in the war in Ukraine and are unlikely to serve a useful purpose in the most likely wars of the future.
Whether the reviews mandated by the new order actually lead to cancellation of any existing weapons programs remains to be seen. The order makes clear that even if a program breaches all of the cost, schedule, and performance requirements it will only "be considered for potential cancellation." Nothing about that is binding on the Pentagon, and Congress, as always, is free to provide the Pentagon funding weapons it doesn’t ask for, as it does nearly every year.
But if some of those systems are put on the shelf, current plans call for any savings to be plowed into other Pentagon programs and the department’s budget will continue its relentless growth, as indicated by the president’s recent suggestion that his administration’s Pentagon budget proposal for next year could reach $1 trillion, the highest figure since World War II.
There are other challenges to be considered if a shift from old to new tech is actually pursued. First, company claims about the future performance of high tech weapons — that these systems are the key to restoring U.S. global military dominance and sustaining the capability to win a war with China — are unproven. And the reductions in vetting new projects suggested by the new executive order could make it harder to evaluate whether proposed autonomous systems will work as advertised.
Last but not least, technology is only one measure of military strength, and not necessarily the most important one. Well-trained, well-motivated personnel are the foundation of any effective military force. And all the technology in the world will not win ill-considered conflicts like the U.S. war in Iraq. In that war, the U.S was outmaneuvered by highly motivated local forces with a better understanding of the conflict terrain and were able to develop relatively cheap countermeasures like improvised explosive devices. A similar dynamic prevailed in Afghanistan as a war that U.S. national security leaders viewed as essentially unwinnable was allowed to drag on for 20 years.
In addition, in the event that the new, better systems can be produced more cheaply than current big ticket weapons, why is the administration proposing a record Pentagon budget? What will the excess funds be spent on? And will a new approach to weapons acquisition tackle issues like excessive executive pay at companies that subsist largely on our tax dollars, or their penchant for buying back their own stock to boost share prices rather than spending those funds on building capable defense systems?
These larger questions will have more to do with whether the United States can develop an affordable, effective defense system than will shifting funds from one kind of weapon to another within a rising Pentagon budget.
