Common European acquisition processes often move very slowly, even by U.S. standards. Procurement issues are compounded by inconsistent demand signals from governments across Europe. Once defense equipment is procured, the interoperability of that equipment is sometimes questionable.

Limitations in national defense budgets mean that governments are constrained in their ability to throw money at any of these problems.

Beyond the borders of Europe, industrial base readiness is also an increasingly salient issue. Refilling the stocks of munitions and other systems supplied to Ukraine in its self-defense against Russia’s invasion has taken on new urgency as stocks across the world dwindle and the West works to meet Ukraine’s demand.

In the United States, challenges in increasing the levels of defense production link to an industrial base that has been incentivized over the decades to prioritize efficiency over maintaining slack, difficulties in recruiting new factory workers in an economy with a low rate of unemployment, and supply chain limitations compounded by a lack of transparency into the lower tiers.

The idea of “ally-shoring” or “friendshoring” has frequently been offered as a solution. Under this model, the industrial base of the U.S. and its allies may be understood as a joint asset to supply capability as needed and to backfill what has been provided to Ukraine, or to build capability for other potential contingencies.

Building out unused capacity in manufacturing plants for new production is significantly cheaper and easier than building new factories, meaning that output could be available faster. During World War II, the “arsenal of democracy” took five years to engage — and defense manufacturing has only become more complicated since those days.

European nations make up many of the United States’ closest and longest-standing allies, so the European defense-industrial base is a natural place for the U.S. to look for refilling stocks if any excess capacity exists. However, even if it does, the lack of coherence in the European defense-industrial base creates a challenge for a cooperation strategy that extends beyond the standard intellectual property concerns and export control policies.

National interests continuing to prevail when it comes to defense production will limit the opportunities for increased cooperation useful for defense-industrial resilience, both on the European continent and across the Atlantic. And given that this cooperation may be necessary to develop and produce the capabilities needed for any future warfighting success, this represents a strategic risk.

Rather than waiting until the need is urgent — when there is a conflict underway — working together now can build the process expertise and communication pathways that support successful cooperation. The proverb “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now” applies to defense-industrial collaboration as well.

There are certainly examples of defense-industrial cooperation in Europe today. The question is whether these are seen as individual projects or part of a pathway toward something new.

While NATO or the European Union working to enhance defense-industrial cooperation as an alliance may yield the greatest results, even bilateral agreements can help build bridges. Nations dissatisfied with existing defense-industrial policy approaches can work to bridge national boundaries and embrace an evolution toward a more integrated strategy, with a specific focus on building on success over time.

A “crawl, walk, run” approach focused on developing cooperation will yield better results than one starting with the most complex problems, even if they are urgent.

Initially, nations could cooperate to fill specific and pressing gaps, such as munitions for legacy systems, including 155mm howitzer shells. These systems have a high degree of standardization and are not subject to some of the most stringent export controls.

An intermediate and more complicated step could be designing the manufacturing enterprise for a weapon system that spans national boundaries and is tuned to provide manufacturing surge capacity, to enhance resilience. This will require industry and governments to work together — for governments to understand that surge capacity is something that they have to invest in as a distinct capability.

A larger vision of integration would be the international procurement of interchangeable defense systems across a network of allies and partners. This may prove to be a generational political and economic challenge, but building that capability and capacity to cooperate will make Europe and the United States more responsive and resilient to existing and future threats.

Cynthia Cook is director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and a senior fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Given the grave rhetoric, reports of possible 10% to 20% cuts to Army special operations forces — a prime force for competing in the “gray zone” to achieve U.S. aims short of armed conflict — seem misaligned with U.S. goals. While it is important to weigh the potential strategic ramifications of these reductions, it is as critical to recognize that they are just the latest manifestation of a misalignment between U.S. defense strategy and resources. This misalignment compels the Army to make short-term decisions to meet budgetary constraints that harm the joint force’s ability to execute the U.S. defense strategy.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes the most complex strategic environment the United States has faced in decades. The joint force must outpace the People’s Republic of China, deter Russia’s “acute threat,” and remain vigilant of the “persistent threats” of North Korea, Iran and global violent extremist organizations. The 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission assessed that to execute the 2018 NDS — the core tenets of which the 2022 NDS maintains — U.S. defense funding required 3% to 5% of real annual growth.

But between 2019 and 2023, the defense budget was more than $200 billion below what was necessary to have achieved 5% real growth. The fiscal 2024 defense budget request is a 0.8% increase in real terms, but it will be a decrease if inflation remains above 2.4%.

The Army has faced the most severe budgetary challenges of the joint force. Assumptions that the United States will likely fight short, high-tech wars predominantly in the air and sea, instead of protracted ground wars, have resulted in budgets that accept excessive risk to U.S. land power and the joint force. Between FY19 and FY23, the Army lost nearly $40 billion in buying power, and the FY24 request represents a 3.3% decrease in real terms from the previous year.

The Army’s end strength has fallen to its lowest level since 1940 to satisfy budgetary constraints while maintaining fight-tonight readiness and keeping modernization on track. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has indicated that, in part driven by current recruiting shortfalls, more force structure cuts are on the horizon.

These trends would be less alarming if the historical data of all major U.S. wars in the past eight decades were not so definitive about the Army’s central role in combat. Across WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army has averaged approximately 60% of forces deployed to the combat theater and about 70% of wartime fatalities.

Counter to the conventional wisdom that ground forces play a minimal role in the Indo-Pacific region, the Army’s share of combat deployments and casualties in the United States’ three major ground wars in the theater has been consistent with wars fought elsewhere. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that while the character of warfare is constantly evolving, there is no substitute for land forces in imposing political will.

Even in times of relative peace, the Army accounts for about two-thirds of global U.S. combatant commander requirements. As an example, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Army provided about three-fourths of the additional U.S. forces deployed to reinforce Eastern European NATO allies. Additionally, the Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve have been instrumental in training U.S. partners and allies, enabling global operations with logistics support, and responding to crises at home, whether COVID-19 or natural disasters.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is quoted as saying: “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you your strategy.” A budget that disproportionately decrements the service that routinely faces the heaviest demands both in times of peace and war is divorced from the aims of the ambitious National Defense Strategy. One temptation might be to drastically reduce U.S. commitments — in the Middle East, Africa or even Europe — to close the resource gap. But this ignores the increasingly interconnected nature of geopolitics, forfeits the strategic competitive space and discounts the potential for security deterioration that later requires a more significant U.S. commitment once vital interests are threatened. There are few risk-free reductions in either budget or global force posture.

To safeguard American security, Congress should ensure that the Army’s budget receives 3% to 5% real annual growth, matched by the necessary investments in U.S. air, sea, space and cyber power. If this is truly a “decisive decade,” the military’s budget must reflect this urgency. A joint force capable of converging each service’s capabilities across warfighting domains is one that potential adversaries will not seek to fight. To quote Milley: “The only thing more expensive than deterrence is actually fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is fighting one and losing one.”

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Robert Brown is the president and CEO of the Association of the United States Army. He previously served as the commander of U.S. Army Pacific.

The U.S. government created the A-10 in the 1970s to provide close-air support to American ground troops. At the time it was an effective counterweight to the threat of Soviet tanks, and in the decades since it has served the military faithfully.

The A-10 proved especially useful in the Gulf War, when it flew 8,100 sorties and destroyed thousands of Soviet-era combat vehicles and equipment. Later, it helped the U.S. destroy hardened enemy positions in the war on terrorism.

But major military operations in the Middle East have ceased. Today, our greatest adversary is communist China, whose tanks and emplacements are much more advanced than those used by the Soviets or Islamic terrorists.

To prepare to counter Beijing in a future conflict, we must make the best possible use of our limited hangar space and procurement dollars. To do that, we must retire the A-10, as senior military leaders have called for. This will make room for aircraft like the F-35 Lightning II, and free funds for the development and construction of next-generation missiles and missile defense systems, which will be invaluable in any future Indo-Pacific conflict, whether that’s in Taiwan, the South China Sea or the Korean Peninsula.

However, the A-10 can still do a lot of good if transferred to allies and partners in need of it. The most obvious example is Ukraine, which is preparing to mount a counteroffensive against Soviet-era tanks and entrenched Russian positions.

At the recent G7 summit, President Joe Biden stated he supports training Ukrainian forces to operate F-16 Fighting Falcons, a first step to allies providing the planes to Ukraine. But even if we accept the president’s position, there is good reason to wonder if an air-to-air fighter makes the most sense. Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief, for one, believes Ukraine would fare better with A-10s. Moreover, F-16s require 6,000 feet of tarmac — increasingly rare in bombed-out Ukraine — to take off and land, while A-10s only require 4,000 feet of dirt runway.

Beyond Ukraine, potential beneficiaries of an A-10 transfer program include African countries in the Sahel fighting ISIS and Boko Haram, or even Latin American nations combating paramilitary rebels and drug cartels in the jungle.

Such a program would be neither unprecedented nor unusual. The U.S. manufactures and sells vehicles and platforms the U.S. military no longer uses on a semi-regular basis. For instance, production of the A-29 Super Tucano employs hundreds of Floridians in Jacksonville and supports counterterrorism operations in Africa and Colombia.

Simply put, phasing out the A-10 by transferring it to allies and partners is the smart thing to do. Not only would it help America adapt to the challenges of the 21st century, it would also help our friends confront their own challenges without deep U.S. intervention. That’s killing two birds with one stone — the best kind of public policy.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and services on the Foreign Relations Committee.

The current plan is to begin training experienced Ukrainian pilots while European nations begin to send aircraft from their existing inventories. Many of these aircraft were purchased in the 1980s. Most have received some upgrades, such as modern networking equipment, allowing aircraft to share targeting data with one another (known as Link 16). However, these aircraft do not have the latest sensors and electronic protections.

Many NATO members fly the F-16 and are ordering new aircraft — mainly the F-35 — to replace their aging fleets. F-35s are slow to arrive, however, meaning that only a handful nations are prepared now to provide aircraft.

The F-16 is designed to fly up to 8,000 hours. They typically fly between 200 and 350 hours a year in peace time. Likely aircraft going to Ukraine could have up to 7,000 hours of flight time. Thus, while F-16s might offer improved capabilities compared to Ukraine’s Soviet-era fleet, they will need to be replaced in perhaps four to six years.

One option might be to provide Ukraine with new F-16 Block 70s. This option would keep Ukraine in the F-16 ecosystem — streamlining both training and sustainment — and offer the latest software, radar and electronic protection technologies. It would also allow Ukraine to continue using the weapons it has been given. But this option would be expensive and take years, and the U.S. would surely bear the cost rather than sharing it with allies.

Challenges with new F-16s

Recent F-16 Foreign Military Sales cases to Bulgaria and Slovakia illustrate the cost of modern fighters — nearly $200 million per aircraft. F-16 flight packages include initial stockpiles of parts, munitions and training. Ukraine says it intends to procure between 40 and 100 aircraft. Low-end estimates would amount to $8 billion. With funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative running out soon, new aircraft, as the Department of Defense has said, might break the bank.

F-16s also cost a substantial amount to operate. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, operating one F-16 costs $4.6 million a year, or $184 million for a fleet of 40 aircraft. Ukraine’s Air Force budget in 2020 was nearly $1.1 billion, which included support for about 70 older, former Soviet fighters.

Time delays are another major consideration. Lockheed Martin moved the F-16 production line from Fort Worth, Texas, to Greenville, South Carolina. This required both training a new cohort of workers to produce the aircraft and the installation of machine tooling.

Slovakia, for example, placed orders for F-16s in 2018, but its first delivery will occur only in 2024, or five to six years from contract award to aircraft delivery.

Are there other options?

European allies may receive F-35s over a period of some years. This means they could continue for some time to transfer used F-16s, allowing Ukraine access to a flow of these aircraft for a decade or more. This option would allow for continued allied burden-sharing.

This also makes sense in a strategic context since Russia’s war on Ukraine may be viewed as an existential challenge to European security.

There might be other options for combat fighters, such as the Saab Gripen, the Dassault Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon.

The Gripen is expensive to buy but cheaper to operate than the F-16. In recent years, Rafale aircraft have outsold F-16s on the international market, implying improved capabilities. The Eurofighter might offer the most advanced capabilities compared to the other options.

These aircraft could be available sooner than new F-16s and might offer some improved capabilities compared to older F-16s. Introducing multiple Western combat aircraft into Ukraine’s Air Force might offer some improved capabilities, but at the cost of sustainment and training challenges.

Europeans may be unlikely to finance the provision of new aircraft for Ukraine, but might be willing to provide used aircraft. Ukraine could end up with a used fleet of multiple aircraft with different maintenance, repair and overhaul requirements.

It is encouraging that Ukraine might receive F-16s to improve its combat capabilities. Over the longer term, Ukraine may seek a continuing flow of used F-16s and possibly of one or more European combat fighters. Western policymakers might begin thinking now about what the Ukrainian Air Force may require in the future, especially if the Russian threat remains acute.

John Hoehn is an associate policy researcher at the Rand think tank and a former military analyst with the Congressional Research Service. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at Rand and former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

The report’s finding should have instead been that America’s defense-industrial base is failing our warfighters and taxpayers, as the Pentagon has willfully and with foresight created today’s monopolistic, overregulated and costly defense marketplace. That marketplace has left the DoD without the ability to procure at scale the goods and services it needs to fight a major war, demonstrated by munitions shortfalls from the conflict in Ukraine. It’s also left the Pentagon in need of a change to its profit policy as CBS’ “60 Minutes” segment on price gouging in the defense-industrial base recently showed.

The origins of today’s defense marketplace are as follows: First, the leadership of major defense primes are mostly compensated with stock awards, which, while substantial, are expected within our capitalistic system. Wall Street then rewards these companies with higher share prices based upon their ability to provide profits for dividends and stock buybacks. But thanks to the Pentagon, these returns are less a result of competitive market forces and more a result of industry consolidation.

In the 1950s and in the 1980s, the Pentagon’s spending power created a healthy, competitive marketplace where defense firms competed on both price and innovative capabilities. This marketplace fostered free and open competition, equipping the United States with the best military in history. Despite this success, the Pentagon killed the proverbial golden goose by consolidating the defense-industrial base in the 1990s, leaving fewer suppliers and, therefore, little competition.

Industry consolidation is but one piece of the puzzle when it comes to how the Pentagon has elevated prices for taxpayers. Another is the Pentagon’s misguided divest-to-invest strategy, which devotes an ever-greater share of the department’s investment dollars to research and development rather than adequately funding procurement. R&D has thinner profit margins, meaning that for every dollar the government spends on R&D, few are able to become profit for contractors.

As the prices for weapons and components increase, the Pentagon orders less of each. With less purchased, the primes are poised to negotiate harder for higher prices so that they can maintain or increase their total profits, further raising the price of their products and leading to even fewer purchases. This means that, in effect, the divest-to-invest strategy is a pricing-to-procurement death spiral, threatening readiness and fair prices.

Elevated prices are also a consequence of the interactions between prime contractors and their array of subcontractors. Not subject to the same payment terms or timely cash flow from the government as the primes, the subcontractors receive less cash themselves. This squeezes the suppliers, already often sole- or single-source, leading to less redundancy and less capacity. The suppliers left standing then become economically powerful, as “60 Minutes” correctly noted.

But what’s most important here is that this results in a lack of surge production.

An inability to surge production is also a product of rosy planning assumptions where the Pentagon’s leaders essentially assume away the problem. The defense-industrial base is healthy if you assume only one very quick war. If this assumption isn’t correct, the Pentagon then believes that allies will pick up the slack, but their weapons’ cupboards are barer than ours.

In short, forced consolidation, faulty Pentagon planning assumptions, a focus on R&D at the expense of procurement, and the cash flow structure of the major defense primes have led us to the situation that we find ourselves in today: We’re in need of warfighting capabilities — a lot of them — but cannot produce them at scale and at prices that a functioning capitalistic market would allow.

Thankfully, the Pentagon can start to turn this around. First, when starting the acquisition of new weapons systems, it should err on the side of not developing them as joint programs, which are essentially a synonym for “contract-to-monopoly.” Consolidation of buying power into the purchase of one system kills off competitors and creates a monopoly; the market for fighter jets shows this to be true.

Secondly, the Pentagon should procure much more, and it should do so by making multiyear procurement contracts and block buys the rule rather than the exception.

Lastly, the federal government can break open the doors to competition by eliminating unnecessary regulations that make it difficult and costly for emerging startups to do business with the DoD.

Failing to take these actions will mean that we’ll be stuck with a defense-industrial base that’s unhealthy, not meeting the needs of the warfighters and, on the most basic level, not providing the American taxpayer with a fair deal. And that’s an industrial base that we shouldn’t accept.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service. Charles Rahr is a research assistant at AEI.

So, what’s going on?

The claim that hypersonic weapons are invincible is one of the many beliefs about these weapons. Here’s why it’s wrong.

Kinzhal is an air-launched ballistic missile with fins that allow it to maneuver as it approaches its target. It is called “hypersonic” since its top speed is reportedly around Mach 10, which would give it a range of somewhat over 1,000 km. This system is not, however, what defense analysts typically mean by the term “hypersonic weapon” since it is not designed to glide over a significant fraction of its trajectory. Its high speed and ability to maneuver, however, mean that it poses a similar challenge as true hypersonic weapons to terminal missile defenses, like Patriot, that are used to defend against weapons of this range.

A maneuvering missile traveling at Mach 10 would be too fast for the U.S. Patriot PAC-3 and similar defense systems to intercept reliably. However, Mach 10 is roughly Kinzhal’s maximum speed, and its speed drops sharply as it reenters and travels through the increasingly dense atmosphere to hit a target on the ground.

Patriot is designed to intercept missiles at low altitudes, and my estimates show that Kinzhal slows enough during its dive that current versions of PAC-3 should be capable of intercepting it. Moreover, reports indicate that at least for the first of the Kinzhal intercepts, Ukraine was not using the most advanced version of the PAC-3 (called MSE, which is 25 percent faster than the previous version).

This analysis has two important implications.

First, Ukraine’s claims that it intercepted Kinzhal missiles are credible, and its defenses may be able to blunt a significant weapon in Russia’s arsenal.

Second and more generally, the medium-range hypersonic glide weapons like those the United States, Russia, and China are currently developing may not be as effective at performing key mission as advocates often claim.

A common argument for building hypersonic weapons is the desire to use them to destroy enemy missile and air defenses early in a conflict, to clear the way for subsequent attacks. Technical modeling, however, shows that the hypersonic weapons the United States has been developing – including the Air-Launched Rapid Response hypersonic Weapon (ARRW), the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) – may also be vulnerable to interception by missile defenses.

In particular, reports about the speeds and ranges of these weapons imply that they begin the glide phase of their trajectory with a speed of about Mach 12 or less. Their speed decreases due to atmospheric drag during the glide phase – especially if they are maneuvering significantly – and will decrease even further as they dive into the thick atmosphere on their way to their targets on the ground. My estimates show that these effects will likely make these systems vulnerable to interception by systems similar to current versions of PAC-3, although intercepting them may require the advanced PAC-3 MSE.

The United States must assume it will face defenses like these in other countries — soon if not now.

To be able to evade such defenses, hypersonic weapons would need to be launched with even higher speeds. Doing so would significantly increase the intense heating they experience during flight, which is a key obstacle to developing these weapons. Increasing their speed also makes them larger and heavier, which reduces the number that aircraft can carry.

Adding propulsion, such as scramjet engines being developed for hypersonic cruise missiles, could help the weapon maintain its speed during the glide phase. But these engines are unlikely to be powerful enough to help much against the exponentially increasing drag encountered during the dive phase, which could leave these weapons vulnerable to interception.

Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons similar to these U.S. systems (such as the Russian Zircon and Chinese DF-ZF and Starry Sky 2) are also likely to be vulnerable to defenses like PAC-3. In this sense, these weapons do not represent a revolution in threat beyond that posed by medium-range ballistic missiles.

The Ukrainian experience with Kinzhal may be a wake-up call for Russia. It should also be a wake-up call for the United States. Congress and the U.S. military need to think clearly about the missions these weapons can realistically accomplish and whether they justify the high priority and budget share they are getting.

David Wright is a visiting scholar in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering’s Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy.

Ukraine’s layered air defense system makes its airspace a highly lethal environment for 4th-generation aircraft like the Su-25 and Su-34.

When I was NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, NATO air power comprised primarily Western 4th-generation aircraft, such as F-15s, Typhoons, and Rafales, albeit with some 5th-generation F-22s. The F-35, by and large, came onto the scene in 2016.

The technological edge, or “overmatch,” which NATO had always relied upon to establish air superiority had eroded over the years because of advances in Russian anti-air defenses. The S-400, for example, could track and kill 4th-generation fighters with large radar signatures at ranges in the hundreds of miles.

I’m both relieved and heartened that today we are watching NATO airpower undergo a transformation that is restoring allied overmatch, thanks to the F-35.

The 5th-generation F-35 is a true game changer in the European theater – a phenomenon that has been remarkable to witness, particularly in the last 18 months.

In January of 2022, the first American F-35s arrived at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. In the following months, we saw American, British, Dutch and Italian F-35s participate in NATO exercises in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

The Baltic states, Poland and Romania – all front-line NATO members – have been greatly reassured by the NATO F-35s conducting operations in and around their airspace. American, British, and Norwegian F-35s have also been training in the Arctic.

When F-35s arrived at Germany’s Spangdahlem Air Base in February 2022, their mission was to collect data on surface-to-air missiles and aircraft across Eastern Europe and deter Russia.

The F-35 excelled in that role because of the aircraft’s unmatched combination of stealth, advanced sensors, and weapons systems.

Its stealth makes it difficult for Russian radar to detect, while its advanced sensors and weapons systems enable it to engage targets at long ranges. The F-35 is also a highly survivable aircraft, due to its advanced avionics and self-defense systems.

In addition to its deterrent value, the F-35 improves interoperability among U.S. allies and partners. The F-35 is compatible with a wide range of allied systems and its use in joint operations helps to bring allied militaries closer together. This interoperability is essential for NATO as it allows the alliance to operate more effectively and efficiently.

And that interoperability is growing as more and more F-35s join NATO countries’ air forces. For example, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently toured an assembly line in Georgia, where the components of Poland’s first F-35s are being assembled.

Belgium and Denmark will receive their first F-35s later this year, joining Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom. In the past 18 months, several other NATO countries have selected the F-35, including Canada, Finland and Germany. Many others, including the Czech Republic, Greece and Romania, have expressed a strong interest in the F-35, making it the true “freedom fighter” for NATO.

Despite all these votes of confidence by our NATO allies, we aren’t throttling up F-35 orders the way we should here at home. America needs as many F-35s as we can field, as fast as we can.

The F-35 is one of the few platforms America can produce at scale today to provide significant deterrent effects today, and well into the future with continuous modernization.

Congress and the administration must maximize F-35 production to ensure NATO has the capabilities it needs to defend its members and deter aggression. We must ensure that America and its allies overmatch our adversaries in the sky today, tomorrow, and for decades to come. The choice is ours.

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove served as NATO’s 17th supreme allied commander Europe (2013-2016), commanded U.S. European Command, and served as the 32nd vice chief of staff of the Air Force.

The competitively awarded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and recently reauthorized by Congress, can play a greater role in bridging that gap.

As the Pentagon’s recently published Small Business Strategy makes clear, small companies are key to helping the U.S. ensure its technological superiority over China and other potential adversaries.

“Despite their significance to the defense mission, the Department of Defense has yet to utilize the full potential of small businesses,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote. The document singles out the SBIR and STTR programs as key entry points for small businesses into the broader defense-industrial base.

The DoD’s own review of the economic impacts of the SBIR program reported a 22-to-1 return on its investment and $28 billion in sales of new technology to the military. In her testimony to Congress in support of reauthorization of the program, the undersecretary for research and engineering, Heidi Shyu, said the “SBIR/STTR programs play a vital role in enabling the U.S. to maintain technological dominance and provide the innovation to allow the U.S. to remain ahead of our adversaries.”

At our company, Physical Sciences, SBIR-funded research and development has enabled us to provide advanced technology to a range of DoD programs. Key SBIR-developed technology, for instance, has allowed us to domestically produce specialized battery systems meant to improve the safety and performance of unmanned underwater vehicles.

This is one example of technology needed for national defense, but so focused it has very limited markets. These kinds of technologies take a long time to mature and face multiple barriers to entry in the cumbersome DoD acquisition processes — what Austin called “a complex web of entry points and intricate regulations.”

Earlier reauthorizations of the SBIR/STTR programs have increased technology transition success by creating pathways to provide the additional funding necessary to successful mature technologies, including the Commercialization Readiness Program and the Rapid Innovation Fund. Acquisition authorities are becoming more adept at recognizing and applying additional SBIR funds to technologies with merit. Congress in September reauthorized the programs for three years, including with some welcome reforms to ensure oversight.

Now, they can be strengthened even further by the Biden administration and Congress.

One of the most persistent questions we get from prime contractors is about our ability to scale production to become a reliable supplier of our own technology. The production of many of these items is capital-intensive, and subject to extensive and expensive qualification requirements without parallel in the commercial world.

The Pentagon has sought a variety of novel ways to encourage sufficient investment to make the leap from prototype to production and supply chain viability — most recently setting up the Office of Strategic Capital to help small businesses secure venture capital and loans. But the lack of venture interest in many of these markets limits the impact of that approach. Any small business contemplating borrowing to fund expansion, at levels approaching its entity value, would be very reluctant to do so considering the high degree of uncertainty in the budgets of its sole customer.

There are some immediate ways the Biden administration and Congress can double down on success. In Executive Order 14017, the president directed the DoD to deploy incentives through the Defense Production Act “to support sustainably-produced strategic and critical materials, including scaling proven research and development (R&D) concepts and emerging technologies from other programs such as the Small Business Innovation Research awardees.”

Congress can provide more effective pathways to implement that policy. It can appropriate additional funding for the Defense Production Act as well as for the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program, intended in part to cultivate emerging defense sectors and invest in greater partnerships across the industrial base. As it considers these programs, Congress should directly fund and improve access to these funds for SBIR-developed technologies.

Finally, Congress needs to provide additional stability to the SBIR/STTR programs. Its recent reauthorization came down to the wire, delayed key awards, had the potential to exclude many successful performers from the program, and in the end was only for three years. Few would risk making investment decisions supporting acquisition cycles that last over a decade in that climate. It is time to permanently authorize the program.

The Department of Defense is rightly pursuing a host of investment strategies and incentives to help ensure next-generation technologies reach our troops. But while building new bridges, it should also strengthen those that exist. The alternative is squandering investments across the entire defense R&D spectrum and relinquishing technology leadership to our adversaries.

Bill Marinelli is chief executive of Physical Sciences, a U.S.-based company that develops electro-optical/infrared sensing systems and technologies for the defense, homeland security, medical and energy sectors.

The last several years have shown us concerning developments in our adversaries’ approach to cybercrime. While reported cyber incidents decreased last year, our adversaries have grown more sophisticated in their approach. As we evolve our defenses, our adversaries evolve their tactics.

This is a game of one-upmanship and we’re losing.

For example, multi-extortion tactics—where an attacker exfiltrates data to extort a victim before their data is locked in a ransomware attack—occurred in about 70% of ransomware cases, compared to only 40% in mid-2021. Our adversaries’ ability to exploit the very technology Americans rely on day in and day out is extremely concerning.

Cyber criminals and malicious nation states do not distinguish between industries, business size, or geographical location. These attackers use domestic-based infrastructure to launch attacks on U.S. soil. Leveraging domestic cloud infrastructure, email providers, and other services, bad actors disguise themselves as legitimate network traffic to evade detection.

Preventing and disrupting these attacks will require enhanced public-private partnerships. In the 2018 National Cyber Strategy, the Trump administration called out this challenge and the need to address it. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to grapple with a response to this growing threat trend in its 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy. This is a time for decisive leadership, not hesitation.

While cyber criminals take advantage of gaps in our visibility over domestic infrastructure, foreign nation states, such as Russia, give them safe harbor and shelter them from prosecution. In April 2021, the Biden administration levied sanctions on Russia in part for cultivating and shielding cyber criminals. These sanctions, while necessary, have clearly not been enough to deter Russian-based attacks.

To mitigate the risk of the increasingly complex cyber threat landscape and to deter the harboring of cyber criminals by nations, the U.S. must take a strong, cross-sector, and whole-of-government approach.

Serving as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I see the immense value of our government agencies working together to address the threat both from home and abroad. Unfortunately, cyber defense is often siloed within each government agency, leaving gaps in communication and interagency cooperation.

The creation of the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy gives us a tremendous opportunity to improve this interagency cooperation. To make the best of this opportunity, the State Department must prioritize efforts to engage the international community in addressing the growing threat from cybercrime as well as cyber aggression from nation states like China. This should be done in close coordination with the Office of the National Cyber Director, which Congress created to streamline efforts across the government, including with our international partners. Doing this will improve our collective cybersecurity.

As Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I have oversight responsibility over the Department of Homeland Security, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA plays a vital role in protecting our domestic infrastructure, but over 80% of critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated. This means success is dependent on a voluntary relationship framework, not duplicative bureaucratic red-tape. CISA must build trust and establish close partnerships with the private sector and other government stakeholders, like the State Department and ONCD, to share timely, actionable, and contextualized information to stop cyber-attacks in their tracks.

The need for increased information sharing between the federal government and private industry is not new; it has been a foundational dilemma in cybersecurity for years. CISA’s recent efforts, such as the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, are steps in the right direction. But it’s clear that this effort is a work in progress, and Congress must play a role in refining the process.

This is just a small facet of a complicated threat picture. However, an overarching strategy to guide individual agency and sector efforts across government and industry will help combat cyber threats. The Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy has the potential to be that strategic guide, as long as a strong and clear implementation plan follows.

When it comes to our nation’s cyber defenses, time is of the essence. Every minute our networks are not properly defended and prepared to meet new threats gives our foreign adversaries the upper hand.

Cybercriminals and nation states do not consider the agencies involved or the boundaries between sectors when they plot and carry out attacks, so it is imperative that our government agencies and the private sector work together to defeat them before it’s too late.

Rep. Mark Green, a Republican, is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served three tours. He is chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

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To become that accelerator, Congress could give the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit a slice of security assistance funds bound for Ukraine in coming aid packages.

In announcing the creation of DIU in 2015, late-Defense Secretary Ash Carter noted that the organization would “strengthen existing relationships and build new ones; help scout for new technologies; and help function as a local interface for the department. Down the road, they could help startups find new work to do with [the Department of Defense].”

Eight years has since passed since its founding, and it’s safe to say that DIU has met each of these aims, but maybe not at the scale needed to change the Pentagon. Consistent with the organization’s most basic objective in bringing commercial technologies into the hands of our warfighters, DIU has transitioned 52 technologies and platforms into Department of Defense contracts since 2016. Those 52 projects, spanning capabilities in unmanned aircraft systems, predictive maintenance and a variety of other areas, come from 48 different companies and have a combined contract ceiling of $4.9 billion.

While $4.9 billion may be a drop in the bucket for a department that annually receives hundreds of billions of dollars in appropriations, partially accounting for that relatively low cost to the department is private capital. According to DIU, its 52 successfully transitioned projects are supported by more than $18 billion in private investment.

As an additional sign of the organization’s success, the rate at which DIU is transitioning technologies is increasing. The transition contracts awarded for commercial tech more than doubled between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022, increasing from 8 to 17.

In successfully helping commercial technologies enter the hands of our warfighters, DIU has brought a much-needed shakeup to an acquisition system that’s overly bureaucratic and, by and large, favors large prime contractors over innovative startups. Despite its success, the administration is considering cutting the organization’s budget in the coming fiscal year.

As described by our colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Elaine McCusker, the administration appears to be slashing DIU’s budget by 6.3% in FY24, and even as much as 26% if funding for capital budgets and for its sister organization, the National Security Innovation Network, are taken into account. Congress should resist such a damaging cut and consider adding more funds to DIU in the near term through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

One of the major impediments to the DoD’s adoption of commercial technologies — and why it continues to fall behind — is its fear of and rigid restrictions on allowing systems and software to operate on the DoD network. Only the large defense primes and well-funded startups can withstand the timeline and cost of getting the authority to operate. The Ukrainians have no such restriction, and as such can and are becoming the perfect laboratory for cutting-edge technologies and software.

Giving DIU even a small percentage of the money dedicated to Ukraine could make a real difference. If Congress were to provide DIU 4% of the funds obligated to Ukraine during the last fiscal year, DIU would receive around $252 million — well over the $203 million DIU awarded in prototype contracts that year. Doing so would accelerate existing prototyping efforts, bringing needed technologies to scale on a faster timeline.

In addition, such funds would allow DIU to facilitate contracts for some of its already transitioned technologies. That would put money toward startups that routinely cannot make it through the DoD valley of death. In particular, DIU could focus its investments in software, artificial intelligence and networked devices, all of which have extreme difficulty getting traction in the DoD ecosystem.

While the specifics of this proposal would certainly have to be worked out between Congress and the Pentagon, there is no doubt that it’s needed for the Ukrainians but also for the tech startups in the United States. The Ukrainians have enthusiastically adopted commercial technologies on the battlefield, from the Starlink satellite constellation to the use of cheap drones, and used them to great effect. However, many tech startups cannot afford to bankroll their products onto the battlefield, but DIU could. Adding more to the mix would be a welcome addition for a force that is constantly tinkering and MacGyver-ing its weapons and tech.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the Army. Charles Rahr is a research assistant at AEI.

But the DoD can’t do this alone. Development of an innovative workforce requires a combined effort of the entire national security ecosystem — government, industry and academia — to achieve the flow of new ideas and collaborative mindset necessary to outpace near-peer adversaries. To ensure the success of budding workforce initiatives, we must avoid burdening them with well-intentioned but overreaching bureaucracy.

Last week, the DoD released the 2023 National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, which emphasized a commitment to sharpening its competitive edge by cultivating the current workforce and developing the workforce of the future. In particular, the strategy recognized the importance of rotation and exchange assignments between industry, think tanks, and academia, and it acknowledged that without a creative and knowledgeable workforce, the United States will be unable to execute the 2022 National Defense Strategy and create enduring advantages over U.S. competitors.

This is consistent with the finding of a recent report by the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption, which found that U.S. service members are equipped with technology that lags behind adversaries and commercial peers alike, and identified as a significant challenge to innovation adoption the “hamstrung workforce [for whom c]reative problem-solving and measured risk-taking are not often rewarded, and too few individuals with an industry background agree to take senior leadership roles at the DoD.”

There is interest in post-governmental employment legislative restrictions working its way through the national defense authorization process, threatening to set back efforts to make more robust use of industry exchange programs under the specter of conflicts of interest. Contorting legitimate concerns over post-government employment conflicts to such lengths diminishes workforce improvement efforts. The proposal would add layers of bureaucracy to an already complex ethics system and reinforce anxiety and hesitance among employees seeking developmental assignments.

This is exactly the culture of fear and risk-aversion that must be replaced with one of bold creativity and teamwork.

A 2021 Government Accountability Office report on the DoD’s post-government employment restrictions recognized the DoD already has measures in place to guard against conflicts of interest and ensure public trust in the integrity of decision-making processes. GAO made no recommendations for additional rules, noting that “both DOD and defense contractors benefit from the contractors’ employment of former government officials. For example, contractors benefit from the knowledge and skills that former DOD officials developed at DOD. DOD benefits from improved communication.”

The Partnership for Public Service has observed that talent exchanges are particularly attractive to Generation Z — which values opportunities for collaboration and career development — and urged Congress to enable wide use of the authority as a retention tool.

The Acquisition Innovation Research Center, an academic consortium dedicated to enabling DoD innovation through applied policy, has an opportunity to design a deliberative approach to talent exchange programs, carefully tailored to avoid conflicts of interest. By engaging ethics experts across government, academia and industry to build a set of best practices, AIRC can host candid discussions about the limitations of ethics letters (which cover only joint ethics regulations) and develop firewall best practices that can be implemented as effectively by large corporations as smaller, emerging tech firms.

The AIRC can go even further, using the Defense Civilian Training Corps pilot, which will offer DoD internships and an experiential learning-based curriculum on college campuses, to engage students in real-life national security problem-solving while adhering to the values of public service and integrity.

This commitment to integrity in early professional development can increase public confidence in government and help recruit students to the national security workforce. A more educated public, inculcated with the positive values of national and public service is itself a public good and helps tap into the aspirations of future generations.

The effort to become more adaptive and innovative amounts to nothing short of culture change, demanding both top-down leadership support and bottom-up involvement by the workforce. Most importantly, the workforce must feel a responsibility to change. In this sense, culture change is the greatest demonstration of integrity and commitment to uphold public trust. For junior members of the acquisition workforce, talent exchange programs between the DoD and industry partners are an opportunity to build trust and cohesion across the national security ecosystem.

We should invite Gen Z to join us in turning the “revolving door” narrative on its head and create in its place a portal to building trust across government, industry and academia. If we are to succeed, it will take all of us.

Karen DaPonte Thornton is a professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University. She previously served as a professional staff member with the House Armed Services Committee.

The Department of Defense is full of talented, patriotic leaders who show up to work every day to keep Americans safe. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set a new course for the department by personally committing not to join a defense contractor board or lobby on their behalf once he leaves public service. The secretary demonstrates true leadership, but there are still too many Pentagon employees who are cozy with a vast industry of influence peddlers. The revolving door between the Department of Defense and the high-priced world of defense contracting and consulting threatens our national security — and it’s time to slap a padlock on it.

Every year, the Department of Defense receives more discretionary taxpayer dollars from the federal budget than any other part of the government. The defense industry produces the weapons we need, and it also produces enormous rewards for its executives and investors. Companies want to keep the money flowing, so they hire Pentagon officials to help them win multibillion dollar government contracts — contracts that are awarded by their own former colleagues. For example, Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s biggest contractor, added the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to their corporate board. The boards of the Pentagon’s other top weapons contractors include former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Chiefs of Naval Operations John Richardson and Gary Roughead, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, and Vice Chairman James Winnefeld.

The defense industry revolving door pays off — for the defense industry. In 2019, a government watchdog found that the Pentagon’s 14 largest contractors had hired 1,700 former Department of Defense senior civilian and military officials. That’s an entire small town of Pentagon officials going to work for the defense industry — and the vast majority of them came straight from jobs managing contracts for the department. That same year, DoD’s six largest contractors reported $18.4 billion in profits. To many Americans, this looks like corruption.

This isn’t just about former acquisition officials winning big contracts for Boeing or Lockheed Martin. Our top national security officials commonly leave public service to hang out a shingle, providing their strategic and military advice in exchange for lucrative fees. Many end up on the payroll of foreign governments. The Washington Post found officers working “mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression” like Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates. Since 2015, more than 500 retired military officers, including admirals and generals, retired from the U.S. military only to sign up to be on the payroll of foreign governments. In response to a letter I sent with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Department of Defense provided information that strongly suggests that the Pentagon routinely rubberstamps approvals for former American military officials to work for foreign governments.

Our national security policy is distorted when defense contractors have an outsized influence over the Pentagon or when senior leaders see no problem with selling their credentials to the highest bidder. The next chair of the Joint Chiefs should set an example from the top by making strong ethics commitments. In addition, the Pentagon and Congress should make other structural changes.

It’s time to tighten up our nation’s lobbying laws. That means closing loopholes that allow corporations to avoid reporting their influence-peddling activities and ending the practice of companies giving officials golden parachutes before they enter government service.

All senior military and civilian officials at the Pentagon should be barred from working for or on behalf of major contractors for at least four years after they leave service. The Constitution barred officers from working for foreign governments; we should return to that standard. Any exceptions granted by DoD should be made available to the public.

In 1959, Congress held 25 hearings to investigate the revolving door between defense contractors and senior military officials. Gen. Omar Bradley, our country’s first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified he did not believe any former government official should “bring any influence” to win contracts for a company.

Self-dealing through the revolving door undermines public confidence and fails to honor the sacrifices service members and their families make to keep this country safe. The best way to show our gratitude is to make sure national security decisions are driven only by what keeps Americans safe.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., serves as chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.

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As a result, they now need to perform at higher levels, work more closely together, comply with challenging new mandates, and modernize legacy systems. Additionally, organizations must do this in the face of a confusing array of choices, and in a rapidly evolving landscape of emerging technologies like blockchain, robotics and artificial intelligence.

AI-powered surveillance sought for US Central Command

One of the emerging technologies already affecting the sector is digital twins, particularly in supply chain management. A combination of enabling technologies and analytic capabilities, digital twins produce a virtual model of a process, system, or object, informed by real-time data.

A new report from Accenture, based on interviews with senior military, defense and aerospace officials, acknowledges the benefits of digital twins for defense supply chains, including cost efficiency, situational awareness, force readiness, fleet management and sustainability.

Digital twins tap real-time and historical data sources to enable learning, reasoning, and dynamic recalibration for improved decision-making. These emerging predictive capabilities can help reduce risk and empower leaders to make more informed decisions, faster.

However, the same report also found four primary barriers to successful digital twin deployment by defense organizations seeking to explore digital twins on a path to more advanced management of their supply chain challenges. Only by identifying and adapting to these challenges can success by guaranteed.

The knowledge deficit

The value of digital twins is in combining the power of technology and human ingenuity to support decision making. Unfortunately, the global defense community currently has a relatively low level of awareness around digital twins, even at the leadership level. Defense organizations should work to ensure senior leaders know about their effectiveness and understand that adoption is led by them, not their IT organization.

Skill deficits can also be addressed through internal learning, new on-demand talent models and through strategic partnerships with vendors and academic and research institutions.

The data dilemma

Real-time data is the oxygen for digital twins, and often, organizations allow their concerns over the quality, volume and complexity of data and the time and costs involved in managing it to supersede its deployment. Many do not realize they can build digital twins with the data they have today and evolve models and inputs over time.

The security paradox

Digital twins deliver more value to the military ecosystem when they extend beyond one organization and integrate with the entire supply chain. However, security concerns can make this difficult to do. Given this and the nascency of digital twin applications in defense supply chains, governance is lagging and perpetuates fears around security and compliance.

The way around this is to update policies and agreements on data security to ensure they also support supply chain data sharing. It also requires refining data security accreditation standards to clarify compliance with sharing rules, and ultimately prioritizing cloud adoption to connect and protect data in a consolidated manner.

The supplier gap

As momentum for digital twins grows, defense organizations will need additional criteria around digitalization and data literacy, as well as modernized contracting protocols, to select suitable suppliers. They will need agreements on data ownership and sharing to provide end-to-end visibility while enabling suppliers to protect intellectual property.

Digital twins can support a process of continuous reinvention, as organizations leading the effort strive to improve data literacy through coaching, commercial incentives, adoption of learnings and modern technologies and tools for supply chain management.

As the world adapts to volatility around markets, the environment and geopolitical events, defense organizations must prepare for more dynamic, informed management of supply chains. Digital twins will become central to supply chain management in defense and are likely to set apart leaders and laggards in military readiness and effectiveness in the years ahead. Tomorrow’s defense leaders are today forging ahead to harness the strategic value of digital twins.

Matthew Gollings is Accenture’s Global Defense Industry Lead. He also leads Accenture’s Defence & National Security Team in Australia and New Zealand.

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Despite the heavy toll of Russia’s missile war on Ukraine, the attacks have, in the aggregate, failed to produce the kind of decisive strategic effects Moscow likely expected would bring about Ukrainian capitulation. My recently released report, Putin’s Missile War, attributes Russia’s underperformance to incompetency within its military and to Ukraine’s skillful use of air defenses and passive measures like dispersion and deception.

Although our understanding of what has transpired in the air war over Ukraine remains incomplete, some things are becoming clearer. More than a year into the war, the Ukrainian military’s command-and-control apparatus remains intact.

Ukraine’s air force and air defenses continue to frustrate Russian air and missile operations. Western weaponry continues to flow to the front lines, and the morale of the Ukrainian people remains steadfast despite enormous hardships.

As we enter spring, Ukraine’s electric grid remains fragile, but functional. And while Discord leaks indicate Ukraine is running low on air defense interceptors, new Western air defense systems continue to arrive to mitigate a future shortfall.

Meanwhile, Russian missile attacks against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure are becoming less frequent. Pre-war Russian missile stocks are largely diminished, and Moscow is likely now reliant on smaller numbers of newly produced missiles.

The results of Russia’s long-range strike campaign in Ukraine contrasts with those waged by the United States and coalition military forces during Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In those wars, U.S. cruise missiles and other precision-guided munitions played a pivotal role in fracturing Iraq’s military from its political leadership, suppressing enemy air defenses and achieving coalition air supremacy.

Russia’s inability to achieve similar strategic effects with its early air campaigns gave Ukraine the time and breathing room to disperse and reconstitute its forces. And Russia’s continued inability to achieve air superiority and significantly disrupt Ukrainian logistics has permitted the Ukrainian Armed Forces to prosecute aggressive counteroffensives with increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

In a successful strike campaign, one would expect a belligerent to become less dependent on stand-off strike assets over time as it wore down its adversary’s air force and air defenses. Yet Russia has experienced the opposite. Its failure to achieve air superiority in the early phases has caused an increasing dependence on missiles and other stand-off weapons, such as one-way attack drones, to strike targets anywhere beyond the front lines. In this way, Russia has become a victim of the kind of anti-access/area denial strategies it has sought to develop over many years.

In the broadest sense, one cannot separate Russia’s haphazard missile campaign against Ukraine from wider strategic failures that have plagued nearly all aspects of Moscow’s war effort. Yet some unique factors have contributed to the underperformance of Russian missile forces. Russia’s intelligence and targeting capabilities have been too slow and inflexible to keep pace with the dynamic, fast-changing battlespace.

Russia also underestimated the scale of strike operations needed to accomplish its initial war goals. Effective Ukrainian air defenses too have limited the number of Russian missiles successfully reaching their targets. Although the impact of Ukrainian air defenses is difficult to independently confirm, the general trend lines suggest the force is growing more efficient and capable of thinning out Russian missile and drone salvos.

At the start of the conflict, for instance, Ukraine was intercepting no more than 10% of incoming Russian cruise missiles. By early fall, Ukraine was claiming to intercept around half of Russian cruise missile salvos. By the end of 2022, after the arrival of longer-range Western air defenses like NASAMS and IRIS-T, Ukraine regularly claims to intercept 75%-80% of cruise missile salvos.

Russia’s missile strikes against Ukraine have nevertheless taken a tragic toll. Since failing to reach its initial military objectives, Russia has focused its missile attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and industry, including the electric grid and transportation infrastructure.

In the longer term, the damage Russian missiles have inflicted will likely weigh down Ukraine’s economic recovery and make additional foreign assistance critical to rebuilding. The continued provision of air defenses now will mitigate these future costs and reinforce a sense of security that could encourage Ukrainian refugees to return home. Such refugee repatriations will be important to Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery and future self-sufficiency.

In its struggle against Russian missile attacks, Ukraine has shown that Russian missiles are dangerous but not unstoppable. Even under harrowing circumstances, Ukraine has defeated advanced Russian cruise missiles with high-tech counters such as active air defenses and low-tech practices such as dispersion, mobility, deception, and camouflage.

One cannot assume Russia or others would repeat the same operational blunders in a future war. Still, Ukraine’s experience illustrates that air and missile defense works, and when combined with passive measures like dispersion and deception, can mitigate even numerous and advanced missile threats from a near-peer adversary.

Ian Williams is a fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and deputy director of the Missile Defense Project.

While raising the debt limit is an urgent task, Congress is also discussing the readiness and safety of American forces as it prepares annual defense authorization and appropriations measures to fulfill its fundamental duty.

Maintaining and sustaining equipment and facilities, and persistently training in joint and coalition exercises, may not be as exciting as buying shiny new ships, planes, tanks and missiles, but it is crucial to a combat-credible operational fighting force and to the safety of those who populate that force.

According to the Defense Department’s fiscal 2024 budget overview: “Strategic readiness is the ability to build, maintain, and balance warfighting capabilities and competitive advantages that ensure the DoD can achieve strategic objectives across threats and time horizons.” The strategic framework used to develop the budget “expands the Department’s view of how it thinks about readiness” and “leverages tools and assessments to inform a broader understanding of the cumulative and cascading impact of decisions on readiness.”

The department is right: Useful data for decision-making is important. But while readiness can be a difficult thing to measure — particularly in understanding and balancing risk to force, to mission and to strategy — money is important, too.

Yet budgets for the operations and maintenance accounts that fund training and readiness have declined by close to 17% over the last 12 years. The cut is 50% for the Army. While some of this decrease can be attributed to a reduction in contingency funding for combat operations, the trend remains troubling and is further evidenced by the submission of $3 billion in unfunded priorities for these accounts. The Army’s unfunded list is notable in that it lacks a request for readiness and training funds, despite the fact it recently halted flight operations due to the accidents noted above.

Further emphasizing the damage of continued underinvestment in readiness efforts, the General Accountability Office recently reported that the Navy’s ship maintenance backlog has grown to nearly $1.8 billion, while maintenance and supply issues limit the availability of aging aircraft.

Shortfalls in funding for sustainment and modernization of facilities also directly contributes to readiness challenges. The military departments and combatant commands have reported a combined $3.4 billion infrastructure gap, and GAO reports continued backlogs in deferred facility maintenance of at least $137 billion.

In addition to the overall downward trend in funding, the operations and maintenance accounts are negatively affected by the impacts of continuing resolutions, which have been used by Congress to extend funding and priorities into the new fiscal year in all but three of the last 47 years.

The use of continuing resolutions, or CR, to keep the government running when annual appropriations are not passed on time results in lost time and billons in lost buying power each year. In the last 13 years, military competitiveness and readiness have been delayed for 1,600 days. Lost time can’t be recovered.

During testimony on the current readiness of the joint force before the House and Senate Armed Services committees this year, senior leaders of the military services all noted the importance of on-time budgets. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin summed it up well, saying that “this Congress can make the most positive impact on our readiness through a timely budget appropriation. ... A CR will essentially rob us of something both critical and irreversible as we face growing threats to our nation. And that is time.”

Marine Corps Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith added: “During any CR we are unable to improve as we otherwise would have done. Our adversaries don’t have that problem.”

While the DoD has also emphasized the importance of on-time budgets to enable the military services to properly plan training events and exercises, the current budget request does not adequately fund these activities.

The safety and readiness of the force is too important to get lost in clever language about decision frameworks, assessment tools, and balancing current and future needs.

Time is short: Only 37 joint legislative days are currently planned between May 12 and the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2023. As congressional defense committees prepare to complete drafts of the FY24 authorization and appropriations bills in the coming weeks, it is crucial that they apply their knowledge and influence to support the current force by reversing the trend of declining operations and facilities funding, and that they provide these funds on time.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She is a former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller).

The genesis of an amphibious lift shortfall is the Corps’ abandonment of its long-standing requirement for a larger fleet of 38 ships. This requirement, formalized in a 2009 agreement between the secretary of the Navy, the Marine commandant and the chief of Naval operations, led to a decadelong reversal in declining numbers of amphibious ships.

That positive trend changed with the commandant’s 2019 guidance, in which he stated that the primary rationale for 38, the ability to support a two-brigade landing, was no longer valid.

Setting the stage for the Corps’ future operating concept, Force Design 2030, the commandant argued that “different approaches are required” in the face of modern threats to “massed naval armadas.”

Instead, the Corps would focus on smaller units dispersed across the littorals.

Dispersion may well be warranted in light of projected threats, but what the commandant overlooked was that abandoning one requirement without articulating a new one meant the Navy would simply shift funding. In short, the Corps touted its “divest to invest” approach, the Navy only heard “divest.”

As the retirement of older ships and the delay of new ones became reality, Marine leadership struggled to stem the bleeding.

It articulated a new minimum of 31 ships in 2022, but unlike the previous requirement, the new number offered no operational logic beyond past Department of the Navy studies, which actually allowed as few as 28 ships.

Congress supported the Marines’ new number nevertheless, and inserted language in the 2023 National Defense ­Authorization Act to require the Navy to maintain a fleet of 31.

At office of the secretary of defense’s (OSD) direction, the Navy plans to pause its successful dock landing platform (LPD-17 Flight II) shipbuilding program and accelerate the decommissioning of its dock landing ships (LSD-41/49) early. If the dock landing platform ship line is not continued, the amphibious fleet eventually will decline to 25 ships when the last of the dock landing ships are gone.

Marine leadership is now fixated on maintaining 31 ships. A Marine official recently commented that the size of the Navy’s amphibious fleet left the Corps ­unable to respond to the earthquake in Turkey. He used the occasion to reinforce the requirement: “31 is the number.”

The problem is, the Navy currently has 31 amphibious ships. A listener would be forgiven for some confusion: A 31-ship fleet is inadequate, but a 31-ship fleet is what the Corps must have?

As the crisis in Sudan demonstrates, 31 ships are not nearly enough. A fleet that small does not support the Corps’ needs, including deployments of sufficient Marine expeditionary units. These ­forward-deployed units provide flexible forces for a variety of routine operations like engagement with allies and partners and presence in troubled areas. The ­Marines, vehicles, aircraft and other equipment are uniquely suited to respond to earthquakes, typhoons, noncombatant evacuations and other contingencies. But they can do this only if they have the ships from which to operate.

In the past, Marine expeditionary units and the Navy amphibious ready group ships upon which they embark deployed in overlapping cycles, ensuring continuous presence in key areas. With 31 ships, this presence is routinely “gapped,” meaning a deployed MEU/ARG returns home months before the next one sails.

The absence of a MEU/ARG anywhere near Sudan is a foreseeable consequence of an inadequate fleet. The MEU/ARG closest to Sudan remains in predeployment training, their predecessors having returned to the U.S. months ago.

Deploying ships to meet a small-scale contingency, or to reinforce units responding to a larger one, is often impossible with a fleet this small. A robust amphibious fleet is essential for crisis response, and the inability to respond in Sudan and Turkey are only the latest examples. When asked to accelerate a MEU/ARG deployment as the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022, the ships could not deploy early, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl told the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee.

Fewer ships stress the remaining fleet. Ships require extended maintenance periods between deployments.

However, as maintenance begins, additional problems, often corrosion-related, are discovered, and decisions are required whether to extend maintenance or to ­defer the repairs. Amphibious ships, whose well decks literally invite the sea inside the ship’s hull, are especially susceptible.

Record-low ship readiness rates are an indicator of an overstretched fleet more than any other contributing factor. According to the commandant, fewer than one-third of the Navy’s amphibious ships are ready to deploy, Defense One reported.

The commandant is mounting a strong effort to reverse these developments, but rebuilding the fleet will require a long-term, sustained effort, and a true partnership with the Navy, OSD and Congress to prioritize the resources toward this critical national requirement. ■

Maj. Gen. Christopher Owens (retired) is a career Marine Corps officer, aviator, educator and operational planner. From 2015–2017, he served as the chief of Naval operations’ director of expeditionary warfare (OPNAV N95).

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In early 2022, a missile and drone attack on the United Arab Emirates by Iran-backed rebels in Yemen killed three civilians. Collectively, the attacks highlighted an unsettling reality: the U.S. and its partners are one successful Iranian strike away from catastrophe, resulting in mass casualties, destruction of infrastructure vital to the global economy or both.

In the face of Iran’s growing threat, America’s Middle East friends urgently need to improve their defenses. As explained in a new task force report we authored for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, that means getting U.S. partners to integrate their air defense systems into a broader regionwide network. Working together, each country’s ability to defeat Iranian attacks would be enhanced over what they can achieve acting alone.

While the logic of integrated air and missile defenses (IAMD) is compelling, achieving it has historically proven difficult. The region’s political rivalries have repeatedly foiled efforts at multinational cooperation —especially in an area like IAMD that puts a premium on sharing sensitive data.

Importantly, that may be changing. Mounting attacks have concentrated the minds of the region’s states as never before on the severity of the challenge not only from Iran, but from its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Their offensive strike power is now a 360-degree threat no single nation can effectively address alone.

Also driving the opportunity for IAMD is Israel’s expanding security relations with its neighbors — thanks to the Abraham Accords, but even more importantly to Israel’s move to U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility. CENTCOM’s convening power provides a venue for Israel’s military to interact regularly with America’s Arab partners. Possessing the most advanced multilayered defenses in the world, Israel’s addition to U.S. IAMD efforts could be a game changer for Arab countries seeking solutions.

CENTCOM has already taken advantage of the opening. Unprecedented progress has been made over the past two years in assembling an informal coalition, including Israel and six Arab states. This group convenes regular meetings not only of chiefs of defense, but at multiple lower levels of command as well, to discuss IAMD.

Members of the coalition are already sharing aerial threat information with CENTCOM’s Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar that passes it to neighbors at risk. Despite using antiquated communications like telephone calls, this rudimentary cooperation on a regionwide early warning system represents a genuine breakthrough after years of stillborn efforts to advance cooperation.

While useful against slow-moving drones, a voluntary system of information sharing based on analog technologies is insufficient to meet the full scope of the Iranian challenge. True integration will require a willingness to share threats at the speed of modern warfare. The critical first step should be digitally connecting each state’s air defense sensors and radars to the operations center, where multiple data streams can be fused into a common operating picture of the region’s airspace.

By gaining access to sensors deployed on the territory of their neighbors, a common operating picture will significantly enhance the air domain awareness of each member, allowing it to close gaps in its own radar coverage and to track a larger number of threats — earlier, more accurately and at greater distance from its own territory.

With appropriate investments, the technical challenge of digitally connecting sensors to the operations center using encrypted data-sharing links is resolvable. The larger impediment remains political. Countries fear sharing data will expose sensitive information about capabilities and vulnerabilities that neighbors could leak or abuse.

CENTCOM’s role in allaying these concerns is pivotal. Every U.S. partner trusts CENTCOM more than its neighbors. With the operations center at the center of a hub-and-spoke system, CENTCOM should conduct constant simulations and training to demonstrate both the utility and its ability to secure each member’s data.

But CENTCOM’s commitment alone isn’t sufficient. U.S. partners will also need to be convinced President Joe Biden is fully invested in the project. In a post-Afghanistan era, the message that America is leaving the Middle East has metastasized.

Some suspect Washington’s interest in integration is a ruse to facilitate further withdrawal. Overcoming those doubts will require a sustained campaign to make clear a U.S.-led effort on IAMD is designed to consolidate — not abandon — America’s enduring commitment to the region.

For 20 years, U.S. administrations have failed to advance Middle East IAMD. New dynamics have created the best opportunity in a generation for progress. But realizing it likely depends on Biden’s readiness to move the issue higher on his already-crowded list of national security priorities.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella served as the U.S. Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for operations and as commander of U.S. Air Forces Central. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David Mann served as commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. John Hannah, a senior fellow with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, served as national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Unfortunately, this ship is an expeditionary fast transport that serves as an ocean-going ferry for limited transport of personnel or equipment. A similar type of vessel, the former USNS Swift, which was transferred to the United Arab Emirates and engaged in humanitarian missions, was hit by a cruise missile in these same waters in 2016. These waters are hazardous. It is reassuring that the expeditionary sea base Hershel “Woody” Williams and the destroyer Truxton are also supporting the Sudan mission.

While it is good to have a U.S. presence available for evacuation of civilians from Sudan, ordinarily an operation like this would involve an expeditionary strike group, or ESG, made up of three big-deck amphibious ships: one light helicopter assault ship, one landing platform dock ship and one landing ship dock. Loitering off the coast, an ESG brings the president of the United States and the combatant commander multiple employment options. Humanitarian lift operations can be conducted via air, land or sea. In the event of hostilities, the kit bag of an ESG includes armed, fixed-wing and rotary aircraft that can enter a nonpermissive or hostile environment, suppress fires, pick up personnel, and deliver them to safety.

In the case of violence in Sudan, these options were unavailable. The problem is both one of readiness and inventory.

The Navy and Marine Corps have studied the question on the correct number of amphibious ships for several years now, and there seems to be consensus among those armed services that the correct number is 31 big-deck amphibious ships. The problem in getting to and sustaining that number does not reside inside the Navy or the Marine Corps, but rather with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which does not embrace the value of the amphibious warship in 21st century warfare.

While I would agree it is unlikely we will see another Iwo Jima- or Inchon-like amphibious invasion in the near or distant future, expeditionary strike groups and amphibious warships provide much in terms of capability to include forward presence and showing the flag; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; noncombatant evacuation operations; delivery of combat capability ashore with massive sealift and airlift capacity; and a mobile Level 2 surgical hospital facility. Ad hoc groups such as the one currently assembled do not deliver the same set of options.

During Exercise Trident Juncture in 2018 — at the time considered the largest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War, with about 50,000 participants; 65 ships; 250 aircraft of various types; and 10,000 vehicles — the ability to lift a Marine expeditionary unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to the fjords of Norway in response to a simulated attack by the Russian Federation was made possible by the U.S. Navy’s Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group. About 8,500 U.S. Marines participated in this exercise to augment allies and partners in an Article 5 operation that enabled operations in the air, from the sea and on the land.

During my time as commander of Naval Forces Europe and Naval Forces Africa, there was a constant demand signal, blessed by the combatant commanders, for a permanent presence of an expeditionary strike group in the Mediterranean. In lieu of a permanent presence, the commanders now receive transient presence, which occurs when the ESG (or other platforms) stop and operate in theater for a few weeks, vice a six-month deployment rotation.

As a result, we have the situation that we are watching now in real time. Last week, the commandant of the Marine Corps testified before the House Armed Services Committee that he felt he had “let down the combatant commander.” He was referring to fellow Marine Gen. Michael Langley — the current leader of U.S. African Command — and the Navy and Marine Corps’ inability to generate an expeditionary strike group with a Marine expeditionary unit to conduct more than one mission in the last six months — earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria, plus the outbreak of violence between warring factions in Sudan, with American citizens caught in the crossfire.

There is a simple solution, and that is to permanently deploy an expeditionary strike group in the Pacific theater and another in the Europe, Africa and Central commands’ areas of responsibility, 24/7 and 365 days of the year. In doing so, there would be no need to drive American citizens roughly 500 kilometers from Khartoum to Port Sudan in the middle of a combat zone. The Marine expeditionary unit and the organic lift on the strike group can do this from the sea.

While we may have dodged a bullet this time, the conflict is nowhere near over. And like Afghanistan, we will continue to hear of the plight of Americans and dual citizens who are caught up in the fray for the foreseeable future.

Retired U.S. Navy Adm. James G. Foggo is the dean for the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy. He previously served as commander of Naval Forces Europe and of Naval Forces, Africa.

In January, the United States and Japan agreed to keep the U.S. 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa (instead of Guam) and to replace it with the new 12th Marine Littoral Regiment in 2025. The two countries also agreed to share ammunition storage at Kadena Air Base.

In February, the United States and the Philippines agreed to designate four new sites as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, which provides access for U.S. forces.

In March, the United States agreed as part of the AUKUS security partnership to increased U.S. submarine port visits to Australia and to rotate up to four Virginia-class submarines by as early as 2027.

Also in March, the Pentagon’s budget request included $2.3 billion for military construction west of the international date line — a $400 million increase from the prior year.

So far so good. But overcoming a decade-long “say-do” gap on Indo-Pacific posture and keeping pace with a rapidly evolving Chinese military threat will require sustained urgency matched by robust investment.

Building on recent political momentum is critical. With Japan, we need ambitious defense diplomacy to secure new access for U.S. forces and to make shared use of bases, ports, airfields and other facilities the rule, not the exception. And after years of legal and political challenges, the U.S. and the Philippines need to make up for lost time and maximize the potential of EDCA sites through accelerated investment and expanded combined training and operations.

More posture dollars should be focused directly on achieving a more distributed and resilient posture. Most investment in the Indo-Pacific is dedicated to maintaining existing facilities or executing legacy posture initiatives, some of questionable relevance to the current or future threat. That investment is also geographically concentrated. West of the international date line, the Pentagon plans to spend 75% of fiscal 2024 military construction funds in Japan and Guam — up from 66% the previous year. Going forward, more investment is needed in the second island chain, Oceania and Southeast Asia.

Beyond politics and budgets, achieving a “transformative” effect on Indo-Pacific posture requires actually moving forces. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” was matched with two additional destroyers and fifth-generation fighters in Japan; an additional submarine and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery in Guam; and rotational littoral combat ships in Singapore, among other moves. The Biden administration needs to demonstrate similar follow-through, and there’s plenty of options to do so.

The Air Force has operated fifth-generation aircraft for nearly two decades, but it has no plan to permanently station its most advanced fighters in the Indo-Pacific. The Air Force has promised to maintain a continuous fighter presence at Kadena Air Base in Japan, including fifth-generation aircraft, as it withdraws and retires F-15C/D aircraft. Beyond that, it has offered no specifics. Basing F-35As at Misawa Air Base in Japan would be a strong next step.

The Multi-Domain Task Force is central to the Army’s contribution toward joint operations in the Indo-Pacific. But while it has based MDTFs in Washington state and Hawaii, the Army does not yet plan to station an MDTF west of the international date line. The Army chief of staff recently hinted this may change. The Biden administration should ensure it does, including by prioritizing access for an MDTF in defense diplomacy with Japan.

The Navy has long pledged to send its most advanced ships and aircraft to the Indo-Pacific. However, of the Navy’s 20 commissioned Virginia-class submarines — critical to the U.S. military’s advantage over China — the Navy has sent 14 to Atlantic ports and just six to Pacific ports. And none of the Navy’s most advanced attack boats are homeported west of the international date line. While keeping pace with Russia’s submarine threat is critical, the Biden administration should rebalance that laydown by stationing Virginia-class submarines in Guam and San Diego, California.

The Biden administration should also accelerate investment in the logistics network that is essential for credible deterrence and effective warfighting. Fuel storage and distribution is critical, especially with the planned closure of Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. But the Pentagon is kicking the fuel can down the road. The Defense Logistics Agency plans to spend at least $360 million over the five-year Future Years Defense Program in projects for fuel facilities and storage west of the international date line. But it has requested no funding for those projects in next two fiscal years, and punted most projects to FY27 and FY28. Working with Congress, the Biden administration should accelerate these projects as able.

The weaknesses of U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific have contributed to the erosion of credible deterrence. But with sustained diplomatic urgency, robust investment and more advanced capabilities, a transformation of U.S. force posture can help restore and preserve credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

Dustin Walker is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. He was previously a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and an adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Far too many innovations are mired in the world of research and development that never reach the warfighter. The reasons for the lack of progress are twofold. First, there is a critical gap in how collaboration is fostered between the S&T community, program executive offices and tech companies. Collaboration among these stakeholders is crucial to accelerate the pace at which our defense-industrial base can deploy rapidly fielded capabilities.

Second, institutional incentives must align with the desire to fast-track technology to warfighters. Currently, the DoD is failing to provide sufficient incentives to transition from research and development to actual procurement. Additionally, there are far too many innovation offices that lack ties to programs and program executive offices. The DoD should reduce or remove these offices, and focus on those that work and can transition programs like the Defense Innovation Unit and AFWERX. In this regard, the recent announcement to elevate the DIU director to a direct report to the defense secretary reflects a positive step forward.

Fostering greater collaboration between S&T, acquisition and tech communities requires a cultural shift in the DoD’s mindset. This shift will not occur on its own.

One idea: Force S&T offices that receive more than $10 million in funding to align themselves with and become subordinate to program executive offices to which they plan to transition.

In addition, S&T must be required to first look for available commercial technology before using research, development, testing and evaluation funding to avoid duplication with the commercial market and wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. If this is not an option, the Defense Department should enable program executive offices to use procurement funding for early testing, evaluation and modification.

For instances where S&T must pursue RDT&E funding, there should be an opportunity for open competition or a “bake-off” before said funding is obligated. As a corollary measure, when RDT&E is needed, such as for emerging technology capabilities, S&T should only be allowed to use research funding for a maximum of four years. In the second year, the office should be required to identify a program executive office for transition. If the technology is not transitioned within a four-year period, then the program should be canceled or require senior acquisition executive approval to continue.

The concepts above not only bring about the “fail fast” mentality of rapidly developing and testing key technology areas, but also reduce the “experiment forever” mindset. The result is a better equipped warfighter ready for the fight tomorrow.

Aside from implementing these guardrails, several incentives should be implemented to accelerate the deployment of new technology capabilities. For example, the DoD should adjust the ratio of RDT&E to procurement funding to motivate services to purchase and modify existing technologies rather than waste time by developing (or redeveloping) new ones from the ground up.

As it stands, outsized RDT&E funding, coupled with insufficient funding for procurement, results in a lack of incentives to advance programs from S&T. Very often the commercial world has already solved the DoD’s problems; they just need the ability to leverage it.

The Department of Defense must also incentivize greater private sector involvement by increasing procurement funding for innovative technology. This is a critical imperative because we live in a world where most new and emerging technology is built by the private sector.

All these proposals engender a cultural change in how the DoD approaches procurement for new technological capabilities. Some might argue that shifting the paradigm on such a massive scale is impossible. However, parts of the armed services have already taken proactive steps to rapidly field new technological capabilities with success. Two concepts come to mind.

The first is the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 — a complete transformational effort with a central focus on using cutting-edge technology. The Marines moved into low-rate initial production for a highly innovative autonomy program. This progress occurred because the Marine Corps went directly to a program office and simultaneously conducted fielding and development.

How the Marines will use uncrewed tech, according to acquisitions boss

Second, within the Space Force — an armed service organized under the Department of the Air Force — a new mantra emphasizing the need to “go fast in space acquisition” is taking shape, with a goal of three years or less from contract authority to launch. All branches and every program executive office should follow the same path.

The Department of Defense can either respond to incentives that Congress gives it, or change from within. Those incentives should be to field capable systems quickly. The key to successful reform lies in enhancing accountability, fostering collaboration and creating incentives for rapid capability fielding. By addressing these challenges, the DoD will improve its ability to field new capabilities and therefore maintain its competitive edge in a constantly changing global security landscape.

The real valley of death is not funding — it’s the transition from S&T to programs of record. Make no mistake: The DoD is already equipped to succeed with current authorities and without new rules.

Scott Sanders is chief growth officer at autonomous technology firm RRAI. He previously led business development efforts for the national security technology firm Vannevar Labs, worked as the senior director for Anduril’s counter-drone division and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Adi Raval is the head of communications for RRAI. He previously served in the U.S. government as the communications director for the Obama administration’s Power Africa initiative, and as a diplomat based in Afghanistan.

Given this stark reality, it is crucial that Congress block the Air Force’s budget-driven request to retire 32 of its F-22s, while also providing the resources necessary for tomorrow’s air superiority mission.

The Air Force’s fighter inventory stands at less than half of what it was in 1990. Does anyone think the world is any safer today? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Chinese aggression in the Pacific, combined with Iran’s and North Korea’s aggressive nuclear ambitions, suggest otherwise.

These aircraft average nearly three decades in age. They were flown hard in nonstop combat deployments that began with 1991′s Operation Desert Storm and have never stopped. That has exacted an extreme toll on their physical condition. Old, small and worn is a recipe for disaster when facing a burgeoning set of global security demands — but that is an accurate description of today’s Air Force.

Focusing on Air Force fighters is important; while the Navy and Marine Corps have fighters, they largely exist to support organic functions like carrier battle group defense and Marine Air-Ground Task Force support. Even if these objectives are met, these fighter inventories are too small to meet large-scale combatant command requirements.

The same holds true for allied air forces; U.S. Air Force fighters stand alone in the ability to directly meet combatant command demands as job No. 1 in large volume.

Air Force leaders have long known these realities, and that is why they made plans in the 1980s and 1990s to replace F-15s, F-16s and A-10s with a new generation of fighters in the form of the F-22 and F-35. However, post-Cold War cuts, compounded by a subsequent focus on combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, saw these plans go by the wayside.

The requirement for 781 F-22s was cut numerous times, with 187 aircraft ultimately procured before production was canceled in 2009, representing less than half the stated military requirement. F-35s were supposed to be acquired in high volume — with Defense Secretary Robert Gates committing to the Air Force procuring 80 F-35s per year from 2015 through the 2020s, with the final Air Force F-35As procured in 2034.

That did not happen — with every annual request far below that figure. That is why the current fighter force is in a freefall, with aircraft retiring without new backfills (note the F-15s withdrawn from Kadena Air Force Base last year without a direct replacement).

Bottom line: The nation has assumed tremendous risk in its fighter modernization portfolio; the legacy fighter backstop is out of life while demand is surging.

That is why Congress must stop further erosion in the Air Force’s fighter inventory and block the request to retire 32 F-22s. Service leaders are arguing that the F-22s in question are early production examples that do not meet combat deployment standards. This is partially true, but even these versions can defeat any fourth-generation enemy fighter.

US Air Force warns of aging fighters, poor purchasing efforts

Regardless, even in their present form they are sufficient to meet training requirements. That is a crucial contribution, for absent that capacity, the more modern versions would have to pick up the training load, effectively decreasing the size of F-22 combat force. Not only would this increase fatigue, but it would reduce F-22 availability to combatant commands where they are in high demand; that is more than a squadron’s worth of the world’s most advanced air superiority aircraft. That is taking excessive risk given combatant commands’ demands far outstrip supply.

These circumstances reveal the Air Force’s precarious fiscal position. Service leaders openly acknowledge the issue is money. They are forced to cut the F-22 program due to insufficient funding to invest in both F-22 sustainment and the Next Generation Air Dominance effort — the eventual F-22 replacement. While there is no question that NGAD is crucial, the most optimistic forecasts suggest it will not be fielded until 2030. That is an aggressive target, and reality suggests it will slip.

Hope should not be confused for a viable set of combat capabilities in adequate numbers. The real answer demands resourcing the Air Force to retain and adequately fund its full F-22 inventory, while also providing adequate resources for NGAD.

Build rates for types in production, like the F-35, should also be boosted to fund current capacity gaps. Given that the Air Force has received less money than the Army and Navy for the past 31 years in a row, it is no wonder why its resources are strained. It is older and smaller than it’s ever been in its history.

This Air Force fighter resourcing decision portends massive implications for joint force operations. That this problem exists in the context of the war in Ukraine — a conflict where the inability to secure air superiority highlights the criticality of this mission in the starkest possible terms — makes it even more concerning.

Congress needs to do the right thing: Fund the Air Force sufficiently so it can secure air superiority today and tomorrow. If leaders think this expense is too great to bear, they need to consider the alternative. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley recently testified, “the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is losing a war.”

Douglas A. Birkey is the executive director for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

As we overlay these priorities with news last fall that the Pentagon has yet to achieve a clean opinion on its financial statements, it is useful to assess the real value of the audit, which comes from lasting improvements being made to business systems, cybersecurity, inventory and personnel management, and data analytics.

While a full financial statement audit is required by law, and obtaining a clean opinion would be useful and good, that eventual passing grade is actually secondary to the kind of progress driven by the audit.

To understand the audit, it is useful to consider the two types of accounting in play:

• Managerial, which has an internal focus for management and decision-making.
• Financial, which is compliance-oriented and intended for an external audience.

From a personal perspective, the managerial part is similar to your home budget. Paying your rent or mortgage, making decisions on what shopping you need to do and how much you should pay for each item to get the most out of your budget, and what entertainment you can afford — that’s management.

Balancing your checkbook, doing your tax return based on a specific set of rules, and keeping all your receipts to match what you bought or what you did — that’s financial.

Both are important to help you master your finances, but you don’t need to balance your checkbook to the penny or pass an IRS audit with all your detailed documentation in order to effectively run your life or your household, or to have a clear picture of where your money is going and what you are getting for it.

At a much larger level — in size, scope and complexity — the Defense Department is good, and getting better, at managerial accounting. It is also pretty good at financial accounting and reporting within small components where 46% of defense assets already have a favorable audit opinion. What the Pentagon needs, as the audit findings reflect, is to become better at enterprise-level financial accounting.

In a new report, we delve into the details of the audit value and the five key progress measures to consider in understanding why the audit journey matters, regardless of when an overall passing grade is achieved.

The Pentagon failed its audit again, but sees progress

The first is culture. The audit drives the entire department — not just the financial management community — to assimilate accuracy, accountability and recordkeeping into their daily missions, jobs and performance measures. Integrity of financial reporting is the business of every uniformed and civilian leader and employee. The growing amount of data, which is historically closely held, collected into a single system shows that responsibility is being taken seriously.

The second is progress in harnessing the power of data. If the digital battlefield is the center of capability and advantage in future warfare, then accurate, timely, reliable data from all defense systems is critical to our defense.

The need for a financial, single source of truth drove the department to create the advancing analytics, or ADVANA, capability, which now includes cyber, readiness, logistics, contracting, personnel and budget execution data, and provides user-friendly tools to answer management and oversight questions on performance across all systems.

Readiness of the force and cybersecurity are the third and fourth measures. Audit findings in the areas of inventory and information technology have prompted situational awareness efforts in relation to cybersecurity, parts and supplies in order to improve readiness and save money. Annual audits provide reassurance from both of these critical operational areas.

For example, the ADVANA Munitions Readiness Initiative collects data on current worldwide inventories. This reveals how readiness is impacted by proposed project deliveries. The initiative displays the health of stockpiles to determine if there are opportunities to either repair or test suspended lots for potential missile shelf-life extensions. It connects current inventory with procurements, expenditures and the industrial base to forecast future inventory and compare it to requirements. This enables the projection of potential impacts on readiness in the future and allows stakeholders to assess procurement increases against “what-if” scenarios.

With 36% of audit findings related to IT and cybersecurity, the cyber and business operations and management capability — created to address audit findings — routinely reviews and reconciles permissions and access agreements across procurement, acquisition and contract-sensitive data while making sure only appropriate and cleared personnel have access.

While this won’t stop criminal disclosure of classified information by those who have been trusted with access, it will help catch vulnerabilities in the system related to controlling that access.

Finally, the audit provides general support for stewardship and cost effectiveness. The efforts above contribute to better stewardship. They produce cost savings as the department reduces orders of parts it already has and better protects its systems, data and programs from cyber vulnerabilities. For example, using new tools developed for the audit, the department was able to identify $15 billion in potential improper payments, and stop those payments before they were made.

There are numerous other examples like those noted above. While passing a full financial audit is the ultimate goal, the real value is happening now. Rather than focusing exclusively on doing whatever is necessary — including fast, temporary fixes — to get that passing grade from auditors, the department’s pursuit of meaningful and lasting improvements make it a smarter customer and a better steward with a more lethal force.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She previously served as acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller) for the U.S. Defense Department, where Mark Easton had served as deputy chief financial officer.

Congress, the White House, the media and the Pentagon itself are repeatedly preoccupied with the question of whether the United States needs a 355-ship, 372-ship or even a 500-ship Navy.

The shipbuilding plan is the most comprehensive official, unclassified statement on the Navy’s plans and goals for both the near and far term. As such, it tends to drive the public debate around the size and shape of the Navy. While procurement numbers and fleet size are important, they are not a proxy for assessing warfighting prowess. The focus needs to shift to metrics that are more relevant to actual capabilities.

As an example, take three naval incidents from the past decade:

• Oct. 1, 2016: The United Arab Emirates’ HSV-2 Swift, a ship formerly operated by the U.S. Navy, was reportedly seriously damaged by a decades-old missile launched by untrained Houthi rebels. The ship, which had no self-defense system, had to be towed back to port.
• April 21, 2021: The Indonesian submarine Nanggala was lost at sea. While the exact cause remains unknown, maintenance issues appear to be the primary suspect.
• April 13, 2022: The Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, reportedly struck by two Ukrainian cruise missiles, sank in the Black Sea despite having significant air defense capabilities. Public reports suggest maintenance or training deficits contributed to the sinking.

All three of these ships would be counted as a single ship in public discourse around fleet size, but none of them could have been “counted” upon to generate naval power. Unfortunately, in public shipbuilding debates here in the U.S., we often fall prey to the same misconception.

For example, a $250 million, 1,500-ton expeditionary fast transport with limited warfighting capability “counts” just as much as a $3 billion, 10,000-ton attack submarine — the Navy’s most survivable and lethal platform. They are each one ship. A strategy of ramping up expeditionary fast transport buys would do wonders for the Navy’s ship count, but it is highly unlikely to turn the tide of power in a conflict with a near-peer competitor.

Even a more nuanced approach that explores the inventory of each ship class leaves much to be desired, as the ships themselves are a single part of the equation. Ships need to be outfitted with the right equipment, have trained crews and be properly maintained. If not, they add little to the Navy’s ability to project power, and they risk suffering a fate similar to that of the Swift, Nanggala or Moskva — a serious casualty in the face of a limited threat, or no threat at all.

The U.S. Navy is the most capable and well-trained maritime force on Earth, and a far more useful debate would focus on a wider variety of metrics that account for these capabilities, based on mission effectiveness. Such metrics could include the number of vertical launching system cells (surface and undersea); torpedo capacity; munitions inventories; sortie generation; lift; fleet distribution; communications capacities; intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; and force flows into theaters of interest.

Why does this matter? The shipbuilding plan is the only unclassified, public statement on the Navy’s stated needs and plan for fleet size and mix. It features prominently in public discussions — and congressional funding decisions — on Navy size, shape and capability. A myopic focus on fleet size at the expense of effectiveness will chart an incorrect course, suggesting victory could be at hand by buying more vessels.

Ships themselves, without the key enabling capabilities, training, maintenance and munitions, unfortunately come to dominate public debate. They become empty numbers in an op-ed, speech or talking point.

A comprehensive shipbuilding plan is not an easy thing to produce. It requires robustly funded enabling capabilities, and must wrestle with the unpredictability of the challenges the Navy may face 10, 20 or 30 years from now. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.” The future is uncertain, with wide potential variance in the scale and scope of potential conflicts; the geopolitical operating environment; and both U.S. and potential adversary capabilities, capacities and concepts of operations.

It is precisely this opacity that drives the need to explore a vast trade space of platforms, capabilities and the concept of operations when debating the future Navy. Doing so requires insight, discussion and analysis around far more than ship count.

These broader discussions on fleet effectiveness informed by a more robust set of metrics are critical for improving budgetary trade-off discussions. As Congress and others debate how many and which ships to buy, it can’t simply be a calculus of “more is better.” The debate should explore where the next marginal shipbuilding dollar should go: To surface ships that have more vertical launch cells but also more survivability challenges? To submarines with less vertical launch but added survivability? To amphibious ships that provide entirely different capabilities?

The debate must also balance shipbuilding versus other investments, like steaming days, flight hours, manpower and weapons. While these discussions occur in the bowels of the Pentagon, in fleet-concentration areas, and in the text of the shipbuilding plan itself, they are largely absent from the public discourse. That discussion needs to begin.

Do we need a larger Navy? The answer is almost certainly yes, but that can’t come at the expense of making the fleet we have today and in the future as lethal and effective as possible. Only with the correct capabilities, training and maintenance will the ships that the Navy is counting be ships the Navy can count upon. It is time to move beyond ship counts.

Andrew Mara is the executive vice president of the Center for Naval Analyses and a former deputy director of the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office at the U.S. Defense Department. Gordon Jaquith is vice president of the Systems, Tactics and Force Development Division at CNA and a former director of the naval forces division at CAPE. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Defense Department nor the U.S. government.

Suggestions that there is no need for a sea-based battle staff platform fly in the face of Cold War and recent history.

Conversion and hybrid flag platforms since World War II have been inadequate in capability or unable to support communications technology advancements. Today’s joint force needs multiple, sea-based options for staff placement, as increasingly accurate weapons make fixed land bases vulnerable. Command ships provide greater survivability and more flexibility than land-based counterparts.

Complex joint operations in the Pacific, such as the invasion of the Philippines in 1944 and even the compact June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy, showed that cramming a senior admiral or general, staff, and radio needs into a combatant ship was good for neither party. Merchant ship conversions became popular as their lack of dedicated weapon systems meant they could have more space for flag facilities, additional radios, boats and staff berthing. One commander of 7th Fleet, Adm. Thomas Kinkaid, had used such a ship in the Leyte Gulf operations: the amphibious force command ship Wasatch.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur used the cruiser Nashville as his flagship for many of his World War II campaigns including Leyte Gulf, but switched to a converted Mount McKinley for the 1950 invasion of Inchon.

The 1970s inaugurated a new period in command ship development with the commissioning of the LCC class (Blue Ridge and Mount Whitney), which were purpose-built as command vessels with the space, weight, power and cooling margins for significant growth. While designated as amphibious command ships, both vessels have performed numerous other command and flagship duties over their long careers.

The converted cruisers and amphibious ships would have been superseded as flagships regardless of their age due to the growth in staff for joint operations. From operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm forward, the U.S. military has increasingly operated as a joint team directed by joint headquarters of increasingly larger size.

Modern, 24-hour continuous, complex joint operations require far greater numbers of people thinking and working to develop solutions for the commander on everything from combat operations, logistics, weather, and political impacts on operations. For a three-star fleet or four-star joint commander, this means hundreds of staff that must be housed, fed, given the chance for exercise and some leisure, and above all enough communication options to be a viable command center.

While some have suggested merchant or cruise ship conversions as cheaper options, costs are still significant. The expeditionary sea base class is a viable option, but the next ship in that class would need to be purpose-built as a command ship with a state-of-the-art communications suite and modularity to serve in a number of roles. The baseline expeditionary sea base is $650 million, but even with these modifications the price would likely remain less than $1 billion for a ship likely to serve three to four decades at good value to the taxpayer.

A cruise ship would be faster but would not be built to military survivability standards, and it would need significant communications upgrades and likely internal changes to accommodate a naval or joint staff of operational size.

Two decades ago the Navy planned a new class of joint command ships, JCC(X). That class never made it to construction due to continued Navy budget cuts during the global war on terror. The five-year hiatus in construction of the amphibious transport dock ship LPD 17 might have instead allowed for a new, four-ship build of two JCC(X) vessels and two new tenders on the same hull form as originally discussed in the early 2000s.

In the last 35 years it has been easy to command from shore-based headquarters often, as all those operations were focused on land-based objectives and had minimal maritime combat components. Some missions — like the 2011 Operation Odyssey Dawn joint multinational operation against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi — were forced to be commanded from the sea due to national caveats of NATO member states.

Moving command of the operation to the Mount Whitney allowed flexibility in conducting operations. Then-President Barack Obama gave a short time to prepare for the operation. And by stipulating “no boots on the ground in Libya,” he made a U.S. Navy command ship and its embarked maritime operations center’s team the perfect tool for the task.

The vast maritime spaces of the Indo-Pacific and Arctic regions limit the number of land locations for command and control, and advanced targeting available to peer competitors makes those land-based locations vulnerable to first-strike action. Having a sea-based command post does not mean that all operations need be controlled from those ships, but rather the command ships offer flexible alternatives for commanders to lead the fight from a mobile and less-targetable location.

Alternatives such as large deck amphibious ships (LHD and LHA) are available, but embarkation of a large staff with significant communications needs would significantly degrade the warfighting potential of those ships and deny operational commanders their full use. For all these reasons the Navy must ensure that Blue Ridge and Mount Whitney remain available as command ships until they can be properly relieved by new-construction command vessels.

Steven Wills is a naval expert at the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy. He served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy.

Over the past eight sessions of Congress, there have been no fewer than 14 different Pentagon efficiency drills. The names are familiar to budget watchers: Better Buying Power 1.0 (and 2.0 … and 3.0), the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act, night court, fourth-estate reform, and others. Some of these efforts were successful; others not so much.

While well-intentioned, a common theme was that these were short-term, budget-bogey exercises that yielded few new dollars for reinvestment into higher priorities. This is due in part to defense reform being over-focused on the acquisition of things. However, the majority of what the military purchases is no longer weapons systems but rather services and technology. Zealous reformers continue to over-focus on weapons buys when hardware is increasingly the commodity.

Moreover, the U.S. military is no longer a monopsony buyer able to move markets due to smaller bets, nor is the organization an original inventor changing the American economy. Rather, the military must increasingly innovate with mostly commercial products and give them a unique defense application.

In addition, the Pentagon finds itself in a new and uncomfortable position: that of needing to work to attract and entice new companies to want to do business with the armed forces. Tech and commercial companies know of the Defense Department’s low appetite for risk-taking and long timelines to take ideas from the lab to the field when compared to the private sector.

Change and modernization are needed, but not simply the rinse-and-repeat acquisition reforms of the past. Instead reform should fall into two categories:

1. Change with respect to reduction — whether of mission, rules, head count, regulations, laws, provisions, workload and more.
2. Modifications that increase accountability for passing appropriations on time and highlighting the true costs of running the U.S. military.

That means accountability, like sequestering congressional paychecks until appropriations are enacted each day after the start of the fiscal year. Appropriators must also revise rules established at a time when the defense budget was a fraction of its size today, and let the Defense Department move more money around after being approved to react in real time to changing technology.

It also means greater transparency on the costs of doing business. As former Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Md., highlighted — but few seem to be aware — Washington spends “$1 billion more on Medicare in the defense budget than we do on new tactical vehicles. We spend more on the Defense Health Program than we do on new ships. In total, some $200 billion in the defense budget are essentially for nondefense purposes — from salaries to health care to basic research.”

Congress should focus on combining the pay and benefits of defense workforces — uniformed and civilian — and their health care into one new account. Such a change should launch a broader discussion of moving certain costs, primarily people and paychecks, out of discretionary and into mandatory federal spending. That will energize a needed debate on how much the United States is spending on direct military capability, compared to expenses beyond the scope of the Defense Department that have little impact on warfighting or belong in the domain of another agency.

When it comes to slashing the barnacles of bureaucracy and taking away mission and work, Pentagon contracting is overdue for a refresh. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Bill Greenwalt has highlighted, federal acquisition regulation clauses mandate companies doing business with the Defense Department must operate in ways that they may not otherwise have to in their commercial operations.

Some of these regulations, such as those in the Truth in Negotiations Act, are undoubtedly necessary as they prevent the taxpayer from being ripped off. Others, while well-intentioned, are simply onerous and drive up compliance costs. Paring back regulations would start updating our Soviet-style acquisition system and allow greater speed and urgency in bolstering deterrence.

In addition to regulatory refresh, the Pentagon should also review whether the work of Space Command is now duplicative or redundant given that the U.S. Space Force has stood up. Congress is poised to debate the future of Space Command as an organization that has potentially outlived its usefulness and should be sunsetted if appropriate — and then statutory work reassigned if needed.

Change doesn’t come overnight at the Pentagon. Rather, defense reform is the patient, hard work of many years, which both requires leadership and doggedness of implementation.

By pursuing these reforms (and straying away from harmful ideas like capping spending at arbitrary levels disconnected from the real world), Congress can begin this essential but difficult job of reform through reduction rather than the addition of new laws and rules that further slow down an already glacial organization. Moreover, policymakers will demonstrate their seriousness about needed defense rehabilitation, while skipping the defense-reform theater that has plagued the military for too long.

Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She also serves on the U.S. Army Science Board.