President Trump issued an Apr. 9 executive order titled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurning Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base.” This order is the latest in a series of hollow promises from the administration to cut Pentagon waste, and the latest push to deregulate Pentagon acquisition in ways that will lead to dramatically more waste.
The executive order requires the Pentagon to complete a comprehensive review within 90 days of all Major Defense Acquisition Programs. It asserts that “any program more than 15 percent behind schedule based on the current acquisition program baseline" that is "unable to meet any key performance parameters, or unaligned with the Secretary of Defense’s mission priorities, will be considered for potential cancellation.”
The number of programs that fall into this category is stunning. The list should include programs such as the Sentinel ICBM, the F-35, the Constellation-class Frigate, and many more programs that do not meet their cost, schedule or performance goals.
Under normal circumstances this would be cause for celebration, as the current system for addressing overbudget weapons systems is woefully inadequate. While Congress passed the Nunn-McCurdy Act in the 1980s, requiring the Pentagon to review major programs significantly over budget, the requirement has become little more than a box-checking exercise.
For instance, when the Pentagon realized the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile was 37 percent over budget, the Nunn-McCurdy Act required it to inform Congress, review the program, and either cancel it or restructure it and certify it to move forward. In July, the Pentagon cleared it to continue, but not before admitting that the restructured program would actually come in 81 percent over budget.
Unfortunately, President Trump is not serious about cutting Pentagon waste. The Pentagon budget currently sits at about $850 billion. Yet, after DOGE took its first swing at waste in the Pentagon budget, all it had to offer was $80 million in potential cuts, and as of April 8, the Department of Defense ranks 17th in DOGE’s estimate of agency savings despite being No. 1 in discretionary spending.
Further evidence that the president will not deliver on his promises to cut Pentagon waste resides in his warm embrace of congressional proposals to add between $100 billion to $150 billion to the Pentagon budget through budget reconciliation, and in his recent announcement that he plans to request a $1 trillion ...
