Our President who never seems to sleep, has come up with another “out of the box” idea. He wants our War Department to start getting its money’s worth from the defense industrial complex. What a novel idea.
On Truth Social, Secretary of War Hegseth posted:
All United State Defense Contractors, and the Defense Industry as a whole, BEWARE: While we make the best Military Equipment in the World (No other Country is even close!), Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!
It seems the Trump administration wants executive and shareholder compensation redirected to more rapid and economical fielding of quality defense systems. The President is big unhappy that it takes defense contractors decades to do what commercial companies can do in months or years.
I have no issue with reigning in the obscene salaries that defense CEO’s pay themselves, and I agree whole heartedly that our performance in fielding new systems is shameful. But the problem isn’t compensation or investment – it’s the process. If you want to get better sausage, you’ve got to pay attention to how the sausage is made, as unpleasant as that will be.
In the late 1960s, my former employer, Northern Ordnance, designed and delivered a fully automatic, 5-inch gun prototype, to the US Navy, in under a year. They were thrilled with it and ordered more. Just one year later, production guns were rolling off the assembly line and heading to shipyards. The process had required two years – from “we’ve got a new idea” to “sailors have got a new weapon.”
Unfortunately, the process slowed considerably over the next two and a half decades.
In 1990, the US Army expressed interest in automating their howitzers – weapons which are technically very similar to the naval guns provided by my employer. We assured the Army that with our decades of naval experience we could deliver a prototype within 4 years, and have production up and running a few years after that. It wasn’t as fast as we’d done 25 years earlier, but not too bad by acquisition processes of the day.
Army acquisition officials told us, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
They wanted the howitzer, but not as fast as we were offering to provide it. They proceeded to “educate” us on defense systems “best practices.”
They estimated that full production would require a 2–3-year production ramp-up. They would schedule their purchases (i.e. appropriations) accordingly.
But they informed us, the Army couldn’t possibly authorize full production without first receiving a limited production run – for the troops to play with and start getting used to. Their process provided another 3-5 years for that.
Of course, before any production (limited or otherwise) could be authorized, combat hardened prototypes would need to be designed, built, and tested. No matter what we estimated it would cost to do that, they would spread the funding out over a 4–6-year period. No front loading the money to do it faster – the process doesn’t allow that.
But naturally the Army is not the Navy, and before we could even begin drawing something up that looked like it could be painted green, we’d need to demonstrate the technology. They allocated “proof of principle” money, also spread out over 4 years.
With 18 years of actual “do stuff” time, and many months of bid and proposal time between each contract, the Army should get its new howitzers in just over two decades – per the process, and assuming nothing changed between the 20th and 21st centuries.
But along the way, the Army leadership changed a few times, along with their expectations (requirements) for their new field artillery piece. When Barack Obama was elected, we were on our third redesign. [Note: A redesign (design of a new product) is not a design iteration (improvement of an existing design).]
Just 8 months after the Light Bringer took office, the Obama administration cancelled the Army’s automated howitzer program. After 19 years of engineering work
- $3 billion of taxpayer money had been flushed,
- Two decades of engineering innovation was tossed in the trashcan, and
- The cannon cockers in the field got zilch.
That failure wasn’t because our “high paid help” was paid too high. It was because a process created to prevent mistakes, only prevents progress.
Let’s compare our defense system acquisition process with the SpaceX development process.
SpaceX uses a “try/break/try again” process, in which failures are accepted as an investment in learning. Elon Musk knows that every iteration of a design improves the product. Therefore, he wants lots of iterations, fast – even if some of them only allow his engineers to learn what doesn’t work. Musk has learned that speed is better than perfection, because perfection is the enemy of good.
SpaceX’s performance validates Musk’s approach. NASA has spent decades trying to relearn how to reliably make round-trip excursions into low-earth orbit. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore showed us last summer that the Federal government’s space program still hasn’t figured it out.
But in a fraction of that time, SpaceX has accomplished the impossible. It has made space travel economical enough to be used industrially, and has placed Mars within our grasp.
Compare that to how the Department of War does product development. It subscribes to the “government is entitled to perfection” philosophy. Failures aren’t learning opportunities, they are lost opportunities for prevention. The defense system acquisition process is layered with hundreds of multi-discipline tests, reviews, and decision points, intended to ensure that every design works and every test is a success. It is a process built on the assumption that “if we do it right the first time” only one iteration will be needed.
But by the time any new system runs the gauntlet of reviews, approvals, and funding appropriations, it reaches soldiers in combat with technology that is already decades old – if it gets there at all.
Defense contractors aren’t blameless in this system either. With no incentive to go fast, they have learned to go slow. With no acceptance of failure, they have become risk averse. With incentives tied to process rather than product, they have learned to profit by delivering paper rather than weapons.
A world-class athlete can’t maintain his skills without playing games. Similarly, the industrial skills of defense contractors can’t be world-class by pushing paper rather than steel. My former employer became very profitable at the business of “bid and proposal,” but forgot how to make the products it was proposing.
I agree that executive compensation is exorbitant, for delivering disappointing products, which arrive late, and cost too much. But if Secretary Hegseth wants quality systems, on time, at a good price, it’s going to take more than paying executives their actual rather than perceived worth. A system which has atrophied for decades, will not be rejuvenated with a check book. We need to start by rethinking how product development should be done.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA