If the war against Ukraine has highlighted any truth, it is that the defense industrial bases of the United States and Europe are woefully underequipped for the demands of high-intensity conventional warfare. The United States was and remains the only country that retained the kinds of stockpiles necessary to support Ukraine’s defense and future offense, and it faces competing demands for those declining inventories. Yet, for a country with a nearly $900 billion budget, it seems unable to get what it needs, when it needs it, and at a scale necessary for what it anticipates as future conflicts, not the least of which is with China over Taiwan.
The issue is, fundamentally, one of acquisition and procurement. The speed and urgency that drives the bureaucracy of the Department of Defense has not kept pace with the speed of innovation that drives Silicon Valley. In the age of the iPhone the Pentagon is using the Blackberry, at best (and not a late generation one, at that). There are shoots of growth through the concrete of the military’s purchasing systems. Groups like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU; formerly known as the Defense Innovation Unit—Experimental or DIUx) have sought to bridge the gap between Washington and Silicon Valley. Authors Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff, the former director of DIU and a driver of its creation, respectively, recount the creation of the Unit, its struggles, and its successes in the aptly titled book “Unit X”.
It would seem to be a tall order, make Pentagon acquisition a thrilling read, but Shah and Kirchhoff manage to pull it off and rather well. Filled with anecdotes of how the supposedly technologically cutting-edge services of the American armed forces operated in a surprisingly analogue manner, the authors tell the story of how DIU and others sought to match the warfighters’ needs with Silicon Valley’s innovations. “Unit X” rightly focuses on the challenges of rapid innovation and rapid ingestion of new technologies. This is something for which the Pentagon, as the authors demonstrate, is not designed.
“Unit X” is not a story of nifty new technologies alone. It is really about the challenge of how the United States stays ahead of China, the pacing threat in strategic competition. Here, the Chinese Communist Party enjoys considerable competitive systemic advantages. A vertically integrated authoritarian-capitalist system, Beijing can better direct resources—human or capital—with rapid efficiency and arguably fewer bureaucratic hurdles. China’s aggressive corporate and military espionage campaigns have allowed it to leapfrog generations of innovation and trial and error. More alarmingly, the gap between theft and indigenous innovation is rapidly closing, with China able to develop more novel, domestic technologies at a greater rate than once anticipated.
The authors close “Unit X” by focusing on Ukraine (as is de rigueur today), which for many is seen as the standard-bearer for technological innovation, testing, and deployment. Senior military leaders on both sides of the Atlantic look to Ukraine wistfully, as a model of how they wish they could innovate and ingest new technologies—they want the war-time acquisition system without the war. That last part is key—in the absence of a clear driver of change, change is not forthcoming.
The problem is Ukraine is not the model they often think it is—that rapid adoption of new technologies is by consequence, not design. Those impressive and haunting first-person-video drones are used at such rates due to insufficient quantities of conventional artillery (which the United States and Europe are still failing to deliver). Those drone videos are also only the successful strikes. The ratio of failure to success decidedly favors the former over the latter, especially as Russian electronic warfare improves. Ukraine’s naval successes are deeply impressive, but miss key operational factors that when included make the lessons of the Black Sea unapplicable to other theatres.
One could finish reading “Unit X” and think that American defense procurement and acquisition is improving. That the Department of Defense’s purchasing abilities are increasingly aligned with the speed and capabilities of Silicon Valley, and others. That would, however, be wildly off-the-mark. Even when looking at the pacing threat of China, the Pentagon is moving at a glacial pace.
The Pentagon operates by and large on a stage of performative acquisition theatre, of which DIU was an element—albeit a successful one worthy of highlight. Going 20% faster, for example, on a program sounds all well and good. The program offices will trumpet that as a huge success and the senior leadership will point to that as a sign of progress. In practice, saving 20% on a ten-year program only shaves two years off an acquisition timeline. That simply isn’t fast enough for the demands of strategic competition. Events like ‘pitch days’ are great for public relations, but few if any of those programs that win the large cardboard checks ever become ‘programs of record’; they die in the ‘acquisition valley of death’.
Over the last decade the proliferation of offices like DIU, SOFWERX, AFWERX, and others have all sought with varying degrees of success to ‘fix’ America’s acquisition shortfalls. The existing system that created those shortfalls remains, however, unaddressed. Why? It is simply too hard to move the bureaucracy of the Pentagon from business as usual. The incentive structures are misaligned with the accelerating pace of warfare. The defense industrial base prefers the acquisition system as it currently stands—fixed price contracts, cost-plus contracts, lowest-price/technically acceptable etc. are the defense primes’ bread and butter. It is how they deliver value to shareholders—their primary measure of success.
Within the Pentagon itself, there are few incentives to acquire proven systems. Each wants their own slice of the defense pie and the most advanced equipment possible. Even as they point to Ukraine which demonstrates the value of mass in the form of 155mm artillery, disaggregated simple drones, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, they want the next generation, which is often overbudget and behind schedule. What would the Navy have: proven Harpoon missiles or the next generation hypersonic platform? The defense primes have no incentive to make the old, proven system or to restart production of those lines if there is no demand.
“Unit X” is a compelling read, make no mistake about it, but it is also a read that contributes to the growing ‘reality distortion field’ about progress on acquisition (to borrow a turn of phrase applied to the late Steve Jobs). DIU was and remains a band-aid solution to a much larger problem. The staff of DIU are hard-working, well-meaning, driven individuals dedicated to delivering solutions to the warfighter—and they deserve all the credit for the successes they have achieved. The game they are playing was and remains rigged from the start. Incremental changes do add up, absolutely, but not at the pace necessary for the demands of high-intensity conventional warfare in Europe, or the pacing threat of China.
Joshua C. Huminski
Joshua C. Huminski is the Senior Vice President for National Security & Intelligence Programs, and the Director of the Mike Rogers Center at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress. He is a George Mason University National Security Institute Senior Fellow and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative. He is currently writing a book on the future of Euro-Atlantic defense and security.
- Joshua C. Huminski#molongui-disabled-link
- Joshua C. Huminski#molongui-disabled-link
- Joshua C. Huminski#molongui-disabled-link
- Joshua C. Huminski#molongui-disabled-link
