The U.S. Department of Defense should have one key priority: getting weapons to warfighters fast and staying ahead of adversaries, especially China. Call the Pentagon whatever you like; our troops will call it late if the gear shows up after the conflict. What matters is collapsing the time it takes to field new capabilities, not rebranding the letterhead.
President Trump has already shown a willingness to confront the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. His team deserves credit for pushing real acquisition reforms, including eliminating the outdated JCIDS process and beginning to strip out acquisition bottlenecks that add months or years to timelines. These moves are not just housekeeping—they are essential to delivering capability at the speed of modern warfare.
He also demonstrated vision by creating the U.S. Space Force, the first new military service in more than 75 years. With the growing threat from anti-satellite weapons and the increasing militarization of space, this was the right move to ensure America can fight and win in a contested domain. It showed foresight about the future of warfare.
But the harder question now is whether Trump can drive defense reforms to completion—and make them stick. Administrations of both parties have admitted for decades that the system is broken. Trump could be the first to translate recognition into sustained results.
The fastest forcing function in government is presidential attention. When a president cares about an issue and invests political capital in it, bureaucracies move. When that attention drifts, so does momentum. If Trump wants defense reform to be a lasting part of his legacy, he must put his personal authority behind it—not once, but continuously.
That means more than one-off speeches or occasional reviews. It means setting up processes that keep the pressure on, month after month, and holding people accountable for progress. Without this sustained involvement, even the best reforms risk being buried by inertia.
Here are some near-term steps that Trump can take:
• Hold monthly “Speed-to-Field” sessions at the White House with the President. Each session should ask: What has been delivered to the warfighter? What is stuck? Who is responsible for clearing the roadblocks? Program managers, service chiefs, and industry leaders should be held publicly accountable.
• Appoint a White House Coordinator for Defense Reform. A trusted “defense czar” with deep knowledge of defense technology and acquisition can ensure presidential directives are carried out, not stalled by layers of bureaucracy.
• Set strict timelines. Require high-priority programs to deliver a minimum viable capability within 12 months. Perfection can come later; the point is to get something useful into the field quickly and improve it over time.
• Streamline and simplify. Collapse duplicative reviews, consolidate low-value reports, and eliminate paperwork that cannot be certified as mission-critical by a Senate-confirmed official. Less paperwork means more progress.
• Reward outcomes, not process. Promotion and recognition should go to leaders who deliver systems quickly, not those who avoid all risk or perfect briefing slides. The measure that matters is capability in the hands of warfighters.
This is about more than checklists. It’s about culture. For the past 30 years, the Department of Defense has grown increasingly risk-averse. Leaders fear that even small failures will bring congressional investigations, IG audits, or career setbacks. As a result, officials spend more time avoiding blame than pursuing bold solutions.
But the Pentagon is not solely to blame. Congress plays a central role in this dysfunction. Over time, lawmakers have layered statute upon statute, report upon report, and requirement upon requirement—often for good reasons, like oversight and accountability. Yet the cumulative effect has been paralysis. Endless reporting consumes thousands of staff hours that could be spent delivering capability. Budget rules that rigidly divide money into narrow “colors” of money—research, procurement, operations—force needless delays and reprogramming. Turf battles between committees make it even harder to streamline.
Trump should direct the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to compile a list of the most burdensome laws, reports, and regulations that should be eliminated. Then he should use his political leverage to push Congress to act. This is not about weakening oversight. It is about clearing away the underbrush of bureaucracy that suffocates speed.
History shows that the United States can move with speed when it chooses. The Polaris ballistic missile system was designed, developed, and deployed in just five years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By contrast, many of today’s programs take more than a decade. What changed?
Marc Dunkelman, in his book Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Bring It Back, makes the case that excessive layers of regulation, oversight, and risk aversion have strangled America’s ability to deliver. John Hyten, a former Joint Chiefs vice chairman, has also spokenpowerfully about how these burdens cripple the Pentagon’s ability to field capabilities quickly. Both are right. The culture of delay is not inevitable—it is a choice. And choices can be changed.
Acquisition reform is necessary, but it is not sufficient. America’s military-technical edge rests on two other pillars: immigration and the federal–university research partnership.
As I have argued in Defense One and Defense News, America’s ability to attract global talent is one of its greatest advantages over China. Cutting legal immigration or restricting the ability of top scientists and engineers to work in the United States would be self-defeating. Similarly, our unparalleled university system has incubated countless breakthroughs in defense-related technology, from stealth to semiconductors.
If we allow funding for federal research to decline, or if we sever ties between universities and government research programs, we will be handing China a long-term advantage. Trump should not just reform acquisition; he should double down on these partnerships that keep America at the cutting edge.
During my time in government, I saw the cost of bureaucracy up close. Teams were often overwhelmed producing reports no one read while urgent missions waited. The lesson is clear: when leaders put speed at the center—and back it with authority—capability moves. When they don’t, it doesn’t.
Trump has a chance to make defense reform a defining legacy. But success will require sustained focus, not symbolic gestures. It will require cutting through paperwork, empowering risk-takers, and holding leaders accountable for results.
If America wants to stay ahead of adversaries like China, we must out-build, out-code, and out-ship them. That means setting the right measure—time to first unit equipped—and relentlessly driving it down. Publish cycle-time dashboards. Celebrate the programs that beat the clock. Cancel the ones that don’t.
Trump can make defense reform work. But only if he keeps his focus on the right issue: speeding the delivery of weapons to the warfighter, fixing the congressional–Pentagon bottlenecks that slow the system, and sustaining the innovation ecosystem that underpins U.S. strength.
Renaming a department won’t achieve that. Leadership, persistence, and the courage to break bureaucratic habits will. That is the real test of whether Trump can translate political power into military capability—and whether America will stay ahead of its adversaries in the decades to come.
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