23 ms·

The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

• sd9 11mo ago
  More weapons more quickly. This is what I want. I'm sure they will be used for good. /s I'm sure there are good reasons for this, and the approach doesn't seem totally unreasonable, to be fair. I'm just personally woefully unequipped to understand how to deploy weapons humanely and morally, and naively think less weapons is better. Thankfully there are adults in the room making these decisions for me...
  • NickC25 11mo ago
    >deploy weapons humanely and morally A bit of an oxymoron there wouldn't you say? >naively think less weapons is better This I agree with. We should really only have a few dozen nuclear weapons, and nothing more. The whole point is to have a clear line of "DO NOT FUCKING CROSS AT ALL", and that's it. You cross us? We nuke you. We don't bother you, you don't bother us unless you want to face nuclear annihilation. Seems to work for North Korea.
    • bonsai_spool 11mo ago
      > You cross us? We nuke you. We don't bother you, you don't bother us unless you want to face nuclear annihilation. Seems to work for North Korea. I think this is interesting on a few levels. One issue with North Korea is that they have an enormous number of uneducated, malnourished citizens that no country can reasonably absorb. I feel that the potential chaos from the fall of NK was part of the brinkmanship that led to them getting nuclear capabilities. Second, if you only have nuclear weapons then you lose a lot of tactical possibilities (bunker busting bombs for example) and you lose the ability to dial up/down aggression as we've seen with Russia. In all, I think have a continuum of force options is rational. What is scary is that this continuum may no longer involve soldiers - and if there's no risk of soldiers' dying, force projection becomes a lot 'cheaper' in a political sense.
    • chemotaxis 11mo ago
      > You cross us? We nuke you. It's a nice theory, but it works only if every act of war is clearly an act of total war and there's a responsible party to nuke. Who were we supposed to nuke after 9/11? Who do we nuke if the next big North Korean hack takes out Microsoft instead of Sony? Or if it disrupts the US power grid for a week? Who do we nuke if Russia props up the regime in Iran and Iran props up a terror group that attacks our close ally? That's the thing: nuclear wars appear to have a good track record of preventing conventional war in the mold of "we show up at your border with tanks". But it doesn't prevent the kinds of conflicts in which nuking another country might not be a defensible reaction.
    • chasd00 11mo ago
      The threat only works in an existential crisis. As in, if you legitimately attempt to destroy our government then we will nuke you. Using nuclear weapons successfully in a war that doesn't result in a full exchange between all super powers demonstrates the feasibility of limited nuclear war which is just nuclear armageddon in slow motion. Nations (and the earth) want to avoid that just as much as a full nuclear exchange.
• sebmellen 11mo ago
  Out of all of the hires of this new administration, Hegseth is the most surprisingly competent.
  • UltraSane 11mo ago
    He is competent at firing more competent people than himself.
  • giraffe_lady 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • sebmellen 11mo ago
      I think this article mirrors my thoughts well: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/opinion/pete-hegseth-speech-dei.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/opinion/pete-hegseth-spee....
      • giraffe_lady 11mo ago
        Yeah I kinda figured but thanks for the confirmation.
    • NickC25 11mo ago
      The metric of competence here is that he spends less time on his makeup on a daily basis than his boss.
      • mikeyouse 11mo ago
        I’m not certain that’s true. One of many absurdities buried by the avalanche of corruption and malfeasance: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hegseth-orders-makeup-studio-installed-pentagon/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hegseth-orders-makeup-studi...
  • noir_lord 11mo ago
    > Out of all of the hires of this new administration, Hegseth is the most surprisingly competent. He is indeed the worlds tallest midget.
• giraffe_lady 11mo ago
  Embarrassing regurgitation of propaganda. This is basically the military DOGE. Are these systems dysfunctional in some ways, could well-intended sweeping reforms improve them? Sure, maybe, I don't know much about it. Is that what's happening here? No, this a way to get the existing functions out from under the oversight and constraints of acquisition laws to reduce friction for corruption and war profiteering. If you fell for DOGE don't fall for this too.
  • NickC25 11mo ago
    It's also allowing for "good enough" solutions to enter the field of battle. Which is fucking frightening. We don't want "good enough", we want weapons that are fully capable and best-in-class. After all, that's why the Department's budget is nearly a trillion dollars a year. We aren't paying for good enough, we're paying for the best of the best of the best. We should first solve for why we've allowed massive scope creep in the development of our flagship fighters, and why that scope creep has come at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to our nation. Yet we can't ask why the likes of Boeing or Lockheed Martin are allowed to function as entities that need to please Wall Street and lobbyists instead of scaring the living shit out of anyone who wishes to do us harm via pure technological prowess. We've allowed the management class to take over our defense manufacturing at great cost to our country.
    • outside1234 11mo ago
      If the SNAP and Healthcare debate didn't convince you that they don't care about people or soldiers then perhaps this will...
    • AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
      > We don't want "good enough", we want weapons that are fully capable and best-in-class. OK... > We should first solve for why we've allowed massive scope creep in the development of our flagship fighters, and why that scope creep has come at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to our nation. Because we want best-in-class, and best-in-class means "better than everything else that currently exists", and that's really hard.
• zzless 11mo ago
  Army PIT? Ah, this is not a good name...
• SirFatty 11mo ago
  Department of Defense... unless Congress changes the name.
  • jachee 11mo ago
    Yeah… just in the use of those glorified nicknames tells me a lot about the author’s standpoints, and dictates the size of the grain of salt I take their opinions with.
    • b59831 11mo ago
      [dead]
    • danesparza 11mo ago
      He launched the "lean" movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank So of course he's excited about this. sigh
  • kingforaday 11mo ago
    War.gov seems pretty official, so according to the USG official site, it is Department of War.
    • hypeatei 11mo ago
      De facto vs de jure. The Trump admin can create any .gov domain they want (doge.gov, trumpcard.gov) and use whatever terminology they want but it doesn't adhere to the law necessarily.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  • postalrat 11mo ago
    Department of Defense always sounded too close to Ministry of Truth.
• fnord77 11mo ago
  I feel uneasy about the govt taking the "move fast and break things" approach.
  • ACCount37 11mo ago
    It's what Ukraine was forced to do, because the more traditional approaches failed them. It's wiser to enact change before the next big war happens and the same exact failures pop up in the US MIC too.
    • kykat 11mo ago
      But Ukraine was/is forced to "benchmark" their approaches with the reality of the war. How will success be measured for this reform?
      • actionfromafar 11mo ago
        More money to Trump Jr.
    • Terr_ 11mo ago
      But what's the limit, especially when there is no sign "the next big war" is imminent or big? If we assume that we'll have a Ukraine-like scenario, then we might as well start with nationalizing industries like US steel, snatching "untrustworthy" residents to put them into internment camps, start rationing how much food people can eat, and... Heyyyyy waitaminute...
      • esseph 11mo ago
        If you listen to generals and admirals for the past few years, much of the US military force alignments and procurements have been around fighting on islands in the Pacific... This is why the US Marines don't have tanks anymore.
    • sapphicsnail 11mo ago
      Does anyone believe these changes are being made for some sort of pragmatic reason? I feel like I'm insane. This administration is doing so many grifts how does anyone take what they say at face value anymore?
• thatguymike 11mo ago
  Based on this article alone, I can believe this is a good thing. The US military suffers incredibly from its monopsony position and without a doubt will get a heavy wakeup call (read: dead young people) next time it has to fight a real war. In addition the army should be the most accountable and results oriented branch of government, since it’s the only one that’s actively oppositional. If we can’t fix procurement there then what hope do we have for the rest of government?
  • bonsai_spool 11mo ago
    > In addition the army should be the most accountable and results oriented branch of government The army isn't a branch of government - and if you then wish for Defense to be accountable, there's the question of how to allocate money for secret things. I don't know how other countries do this and if there are better ways to structure this.
    • themafia 11mo ago
      > there's the question of how to allocate money for secret things. In the history of war I find very few examples where an obscure secret technology was the key to military victory.
      • nradov 11mo ago
        Cryptography, radar, proximity fuses, and nuclear bombs are all examples of obscure secret technologies that were keys to military victory in WWII.
        • deleted 11mo ago
          [deleted]
        • themafia 11mo ago
          We weren't the only nation using any of those technologies. The Germans, for their part, were trying all of that. It was neither obscure or secret. Technical acumen in using commonly shared technologies was the difference. It's why people like to forget there were three distinct phases to that war. Russia was not always on our side. The outset was bleak, the middle was indeterminate, and the end, the part we like to remember, was when the tide really started going our way. In any case, we weren't invested in any of those things _before_ the war, so even if you do believe your premise, there's no reason to suspect that we wouldn't be able to do the same in the next conflict. Trying to prognosticate what the next war will look like has led to some embarrassing military defeats throughout history. The military fails to be egalitarian. Speaking of proximity fuses you should look into what it took to _actually_ get them used on the battlefield as I think it highlights this point. In concert with that I like to think about the "Millennium Challenge 2002." War is won by skilled soldiers not by lavish spending or deep secret technologies.
• kingkawn 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • euroderf 11mo ago
    Still tho, DoW is a bit more truthful innit ? After Iraq (and other fights) it should be obvious that the department's job is quite a bit broader than defense. The idea that the department is strictly about defense is a comforting story we tell ourselves.
• troelsSteegin 11mo ago
  A big assumption with this change is that the "Modular Open Systems Approach" (MOSA) [0] [1] will be adequate for integrating new systems developed and acquired under this "fast track". MOSA appears to be about 6 years old as a mandate [2] and is something that big contractors - SAIC, BAI, Palantir [3] - talk about. But, 6 years seems brand new in this sector. I'd be curious to see if LLM's have leverage for MOSA software system integrations. [0] https://breakingdefense.com/tag/modular-open-systems-architecture/ https://breakingdefense.com/tag/modular-open-systems-archite... [1] https://www.dsp.dla.mil/Programs/MOSA/ https://www.dsp.dla.mil/Programs/MOSA/ [2] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2016-title10/USCODE-2016-title10-subtitleA-partIV-chap144B-subchapI-sec2446a https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2016-title10/USCO... [3] https://blog.palantir.com/implementing-mosa-with-software-defined-systems-integration-4882b12f74ce https://blog.palantir.com/implementing-mosa-with-software-de...
• pragmatic 11mo ago
  So fast forward five years and 50% of our war materials are produced in foreign countries? I can't help but believe this is going to weaken our war footing because the dumbest people in the room are behind it. Thirsty Pete does not inspire confidence in the Department of War Thunder. I mean on the surface it sounds good, but LEAN is why we had no PPE on hand during covid. In order to have off the shelf supplies we are going have an active international arms market by definition. Is this what we want?
  • fragmede 11mo ago
    The lack of PPE manufacturing in the US after 2021 is a travesty that does not simplify to LEAN is why we didn't. Dismantling the pandemic response unit didn't help. Not replenishing a stockpile of masks that existed for that specific reason didn't help. A lack of tooling supply base didn't help, Straight up corruption; no bid government contracts going to friends of the administration with no. proven capability to deliver (and they didn't). By the time this was discovered, months that could have been used to build and certify actual factories had been wasted. Worse though, is 3M and Honeywell built factories to make masks, only to get fucked on it. Factories (must grow but also) take time to build. In the 6-9 months it took for them to build those factories after the initial delay, China started allowing exports again, and those factories folded basically before we got any use out of them. I wouldn't expect 3M to build needed factories a second time we need them to save our asses.
    • Brybry 11mo ago
      Which 3M PPE factory folded? Cursory searching says in 2020 they created a new production line in Wisconsin and moved it to 3M Aberdeen.[1][2] If you look on Google street view dates for the Aberdeen factory and compare 2019 to 2023 it had a big expansion that's still there. The other major 3M PPE factory, 3M Valley, was expanded in 2024. [3] Edit: For the curious, Honeywell did fire their pandemic mask factory workers, closed a pandemic mask factory, and then exited the PPE business entirely. [4][5][6] [1] https://www.startribune.com/3m-says-it-s-on-track-with-n95-production-goals/571710872 https://www.startribune.com/3m-says-it-s-on-track-with-n95-p... [2] https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/coronavirus/us-policy-creation-supply-chain/ https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/coronavirus/us-policy... [3] https://news.3m.com/2024-05-03-3M-expands-facility-in-Valley,-Nebraska https://news.3m.com/2024-05-03-3M-expands-facility-in-Valley... [4] https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/honeywell-manufactured-n95-masks-until-hundreds-laid-off-doug-ducey-contract-money-ran-out-12767988/ https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/honeywell-manufactured-... [5] https://www.wpri.com/business-news/honeywell-smithfield-facility-closing-122-out-of-jobs/ https://www.wpri.com/business-news/honeywell-smithfield-faci... [6] https://www.honeywell.com/us/en/press/2025/05/honeywell-completes-sale-of-personal-protective-equipment-business-to-protective-industrial-products https://www.honeywell.com/us/en/press/2025/05/honeywell-comp...
• mcphage 11mo ago
  > The DoW is being redesigned to now operate at the speed of Silicon Valley, delivering more, better, and faster. Our warfighters will benefit from the innovation and lower cost of commercial technology, and the nation will once again get a military second to none. So move fast and break things, and now the thing we’re breaking is our national defense?
• M95D 11mo ago
  Remember Fat Leonard? This time there's going to be more than one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal
  • rkomorn 11mo ago
    Damn. Didn't know about this until now but it looks like, at least, he sure put in the effort. "exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers, ships and subs to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal." The devil works hard but apparently Fat Leonard works harder.
    • mrguyorama 11mo ago
      "Directing the government to spend money at places you control" isn't a scandal anymore. It's how Donald Trump directing like a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to his businesses
  • ebbi 11mo ago
    Sounds like a name that would be given to a GTA character!
    • ReptileMan 11mo ago
      He was a GTA character but IRL
    • fakedang 11mo ago
      Even looks the part.
  • SpicyUme 11mo ago
    Like piggies to the trough. There are plenty of things to criticize in procurement. I don't see this as a useful reaction or attempt to fix issues in a long term way.
  • 11mo ago
• NicoJuicy 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  • outside1234 11mo ago
    Building off the self weapons and parts from whomever bribes them the most
  • bpodgursky 11mo ago
    Don't shoot down good ideas just because Hegseth is an idiot. US procurement is utterly broken and if they are taking lessons from Ukraine wrt drone operations it is an extremely good thing and will save our ass and many lives in the next war.
    • NicoJuicy 11mo ago
      They are going to buy off the shelf from whoever bribes them the most. It's not just that he's a drunk. It's the open corruption, because they are even too stupid to hide it. Not a single administration in the West is as corrupt as the current day US. And that's why they are changing the 100s of billion dollar procurement for the US military.
• chiph 11mo ago
  > Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to build. (the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic)
  • gyulai 11mo ago
    > sustain conflict ...this turn of phrase in relation to goal-setting really makes you think twice.
    • ACCount37 11mo ago
      Welcome to war. If you can't sustain a conflict, you will lose to anyone who can.
      • gyulai 11mo ago
        There's no need to welcome me to war. I'm not in one, despite the fact that the powers that be are hellbent on getting me (and everyone else) into one.
        • ACCount37 11mo ago
          Oh, yes. That's exactly how it works. No one would ask you "do you want to get into a war"? Ukraine didn't want to get into a war. Turns out it wasn't their call to make! Least you can do is be prepared. If a hostile country believes "oh, they can't handle a war, it's going to be so easy", the risk of that country trying shit goes up. And if you really can't, the war would be more devastating than if you can.
          • wartywhoa23 11mo ago
            The truth is that countries can't want anything, be hostile, or have any other personal trait simply because countries are not animate entities but rather a huge number of absolutely different people with different goals, and most of them would just love to mind their own business and don't want to kill and die in the name of some scum calling itself government. Speaking of war as something inevitable, something unconditionally built in into human nature, and telling people who want peace to prepare, as in Orwell's "war is peace", simply reinforces the narratives of said scum and spins this morbid wheel up into total destruction.
• awwaiid 11mo ago
  I was very confused until I realized the author was Steve Blank not Steve Klabnik.
  • steveklabnik 11mo ago
    I'll be honest with you: every time I see a link to his blog here I go "oh no why is a post of mine on HN I didn't even write anything" and then realize it isn't me. Ha!
• henning 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• stackskipton 11mo ago
  As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally. Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue. Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes. Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.
  • IT4MD 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • themafia 11mo ago
    > but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell. Time has already told us. Historically it means it was more expensive. If it wasn't, it would be such a rare an interesting case, that it would deserve a documentary on the surprising result.
  • Alupis 11mo ago
    The F-35 was Lockheed's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSF has roots going back to 1996. The X-35 first flew in 2000. The F-35 first flew in 2006, and didn't enter service until 2015(!!). That's nearly 20 years to develop a single airframe. Yes, it's the most sophisticated airframe to date, but 20 years is not trivial. The F-35 had many issues during trials and early deployment - some are excusable for a new airframe and some were not. I suspect the issue wasn't "move fast, break things" but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline. The F-22 was part of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program which dates back to 1981. It's prototype, the YF-22 first flew in 1990, and the F-22 itself first flew in 1997. It entered production in 2005. Again, 20+ years to field a new airframe. Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies. By the time these technologies are fielded, a whole generation of employees have retired and leadership has turned over multiple times.
• Hizonner 11mo ago
  The United States does not have a "Department of War".
  • thaunatos 11mo ago
    It does. https://www.war.gov/ https://www.war.gov/
    • gjsman-1000 11mo ago
      Considering the sheer amount of wars the CIA and DoD are responsible for that are ongoing; the rebranding is more honest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century#21st-century_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
      • marbro 11mo ago
        [dead]
    • felixgallo 11mo ago
      nope: https://www.military.com/feature/2025/10/17/department-of-war-not-legally-what-trumps-executive-order-really-does.html https://www.military.com/feature/2025/10/17/department-of-wa...
      • gjsman-1000 11mo ago
        Nobody uses statutory titles for anything to be honest; when’s the last time you referred to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act instead of “Obamacare”? When’s the last time you referred to the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program instead of “Social Security”? I’ve never heard anyone say Title XIX of the Social Security Act instead of “Medicaid,” or Title XVIII of the Social Security Act instead of “Medicare,” or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act instead of “Welfare.”
• homeonthemtn 11mo ago
  This reads like a propaganda piece. (Cautiously) Great that we're attempting modernization, but maybe don't huff the press release like a stick of finely aged glue
• aussieguy1234 11mo ago
  Get ready for the Department Of Corruption
  • avs733 11mo ago
    Tomato / tomato Feature / bug
  • 9cb14c1ec0 11mo ago
    You think it wasn't corrupt previously?
    • tomrod 11mo ago
      Not nearly as much as it is now that OIGs have been replaced.
    • SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
      There's just no comparison. The current administration routinely, publicly, accepts literal bars of gold as bribes for favorable treatment. Trump just got a new one from Switzerland this week.
    • aussieguy1234 11mo ago
      Well compared to countries that don't have these checks and balances, not overly corrupt. But it's not possible to have a government without corruption at least at some level. But if you take these checks and balances away, say goodbye to "good" governance.
• dgoodell 11mo ago
  I think we use the same PPBE process at NASA. Many of the systems and procedures that NASA uses are are defense-derived. If it's anything like what we do, then it's a total mess and we mostly just go through the motions with it, knowing it doesn't actually reflect reality and it's kind of a waste of time for everybody. However, it's risky to assume that scrapping a crappy system will result in things being better. The current shitty system was almost certainly the result of scrapping and replacing something else that had some problems. Anyway, hopefully this works well, because we'll probably end up copying it at NASA.
  • mmooss 11mo ago
    NASA turns out amazing results, and to the point of DoD's goals, the most amazing technology in human history. So the system 'works'. Is there a non-crappy system for managing projects and organizations that large?
• tehjoker 11mo ago
  We don’t need more weapons. We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • dctoedt 11mo ago
    > We also don’t have real adversaries, that’s war propaganda. Granting for the sake of argument the (gravely-unrealistic) premise, we have to "skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is" — the father of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, a.k.a. The Great One.
  • tomrod 11mo ago
    Looks like they want to add parts of South America to the hegemony, for reasons unknown.
    • gottorf 11mo ago
      The Monroe Doctrine goes back 200 years; the reasons are quite well known.
      • HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
        The Monroe Doctrine was about preventing monarchies from operating in the Americas in a time when the United States was heady with its eighteenth-century democratic framework. The USA was preindustrial, trade was much simpler, and there was an honest belief among political elites that American democracy was uniquely good and a flame worthy of spreading. While the Monroe Doctrine persists, I think the actual reasons for it changed drastically by the twentieth century, when preventing foreign expansion in the Americas was so blatantly about protecting American economic interests, democracy in those countries be damned. And today geopolitical doctrine makes the other superpowers adversaries regardless of what political system they espouse.
    • beeflet 11mo ago
• Havoc 11mo ago
  >DoW will prioritize buying off-the-shelf things that already exist Hey Hegseth. You could use SAP - that's off the shelf & I'm reliably informed by an army of consultants that they can customize it to fit the exacting needs of the department of war! (psst China - if I pull this off you better slide me a couple billion as thanks)
• parsimo2010 11mo ago
  I skimmed this and want everyone to be aware of the danger in articles like this- it sounds like the author is knowledgeable but there are some real conceptual problems. I’ll list a few so that maybe you won’t read this and think that it’s time to jump into defense contracting. Before I start I’ll state that I’m a statistics professor but also worked in acquisitions for the USAF for 10 years, which is apparently 10 years more experience than the author has. Not to denigrate the author’s service in Vietnam, but it looks like he got out and jumped into Silicon Valley and never actually worked in government acquisitions, all his experience seems to be from the side of the contractor. If you’re looking for a tl;dr (or a BLUF), it’s that nothing has actually changed. Issue 1: “using fast-track acquisition processes, rather than the cumbersome existing Federal Acquisition Regulations.” This is just plain wrong. The FAR always applies. It has special considerations for buying COTS products, but you’re still required to follow the FAR. Issue 2: “Instead of buying custom-designed weapons, the DoW will prioritize buying off-the-shelf things that already exist” this isn’t something that Hegseth thought up, it has been a priority since at least the late 2000s, it’s in my FAM training material. The issue is that there are no COTS fighter jets or tanks. So we might prioritize COTS but the big ticket items are going to be custom. Issue 3: (paraphrasing) “We’ve created PAEs, and there so much different than the clunky PEOs!” They actually sound like almost the exact same thing to me. The General Officer, whatever you call him, might notice a few different people showing up to his meetings. He’s still calling the shots. There is a slight difference that we seem to be trimming the number of portfolios, which means that each GO will have a few more programs to be responsible for. Issue 4: (paraphrasing) “The PAEs will be able to trade cost, schedule, and performance!” This has literally always been the only job of acquisition. This isn’t new. Issue 5: “Companies selling to the DoW previously had to comply with the impenetrable DFAR and FAR – the Defense and Federal Acquisition Regulations – with over 5,000 pages of complex rules. … Now the DoW is telling PAEs to toss those and use Non-FAR regulations like OTAs (Other Transaction Authorities).” I researched options for OTAs for my program director during the Biden administration. They are a great way to do research and possibly even get a prototype made with significant participation by a non-traditional contractor. Unfortunately you can’t get anything mass produced under an OTA, so it allows you to speed by without a contract until you actually need to order a production run, and then the FAR applies. So any contractor that hopes to get a big order has to be planning for FAR compliance during development anyway. The profit isn’t in the prototype. “Weapons Will Be Able to Talk to Each Other” Yup, we’ve had that one since at least the late 2000s. This is just rewording the “Net-ready KPP” that all major systems have to meet. Modular open systems aren’t new. (Okay, a few years ago this was downgraded from a KPP, but literally all modern weapons systems are still networked on common standards). “To retrain/reeducate contracting and acquisition officers, the “Defense Acquisition University” will become the “Warfighting Acquisition University.” Fine. I’ll start using the word sex instead of gender and I’ll start sprinkling the word “merit” in my reports. It doesn’t change the end product. “In JCIDS’ place the Secretary of War created three new organizations…” Holy shit, I thought we were streamlining this process! You cut off one dysfunctional organization and three grew in its place! Is this Hegseth or the Hydra? Anyway, nothing has actually changed until Congress changes the laws that we have to follow. Until then it’s all window dressing.
• rpmisms 11mo ago
  Prima Facie: probably good. The existing system is pure and simple money laundering, the legendary $900 toilet seat is absurd and this seems to be a step away from the supply-chain-for-everything system in place currently. I believe the defense budget could be cut in half with increased capability, at least in theory. There's that much cruft.
  • api 11mo ago
    I always assumed it was $50 for the toilet seat and $850 toward some hypersonic stealth cruise bomber being flown in the Nevada desert. But maybe it’s just graft.
  • freddie_mercury 11mo ago
    Nobody ever paid $900 for a toilet seat. That was a statistical artifact caused by an accounting method called "equal allocation". "The equal allocation method calculates prices for large numbers of items in a contract by assigning "support' costs such as indirect labor and overhead equally to each item. Take a contract to provide spare parts for a set of radar tracking monitors. Suppose a monitor has 100 parts and support costs amount to a total of $100,000. Using the equal allocation method each part is assigned $1,000 in such costs, even though one item may be a sophisticated circuit card assembly, which requires the attention of high-salaried engineers and managers, and another item may be a plastic knob. Add $1,000 to the direct cost of the part and you get a billing price. This is what the government is billed, though not what the part is really worth--the circuit card being undervalued, the knob being overvalued. The need for billing prices arises because contractors want to be paid up front for items that are shipped earlier than others."
• celloductor 11mo ago
  ‘Two organizations ought to be very concerned – China and the defense prime contractors.’ the department was not built with a single country as their focus, and their target will come and go with the times. would have read the whole article the blatant bias is off putting.
  • jrajav 11mo ago
    China is the only country that is not aligned with the US and has the military might and production capacity to go toe to toe with the US in an all-out war. Russia would drain their coffers within a year. China is likely to start out producing the US on a similar timeframe. It is pretty reasonable to assume that China is top of mind for any war planning.
  • dmix 11mo ago
    China is the only game in town
  • scuff3d 11mo ago
    > It’s big, bold and brave and long overdue. I quit reading at this point. Figured I could find something not so full of braindead nonsense.
• kryogen1c 11mo ago
  We had... the cheap version of procurement? I mean... that's just fucking not true. My ship threw tools and parts overboard before pulling into a long shipyard overhaul because they knew they would get more. I knew shipyard workers who got told to come to work and do nothing so they could mark billable hours (worker gets paid, contract is making money on the workers hourly, so who loses? Not counting the dipshit American taxpayer, of course) New equipment installed with copy and pasted filters, except new equipment has 100x flowrate so filters last weeks instead of years. Whole system overhauls descoped from the shipyard maintenance plan so the ship could be delivered "early" and bonuses paid. Cheney and Halliburton? Stories too numerous to mention. Only someone who's never seen this up close could think we're doing the cost efficient, safe thing.
• mcswell 11mo ago
  Not sure, but to me this sounds a lot like the song from Paint your Wagon. (I was thinking that it came from The Way the West was Won, which would be more ironic.) Where am I goin'? I don't know! Where am I headin'? I ain't certain! All I know is I am on my way. When will I be there? I don't know. When will I get there? I ain't certain. All that I know is I am on my way.
• ricksunny 11mo ago
  Sad that Steve Blank of customer development fame now redirects his prodigious intellectual energies toward the security state.
  • deleted 11mo ago
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• spiritplumber 11mo ago
  Can we please keep calling the DoD with its actual name and not humor the stupids? Thanks.
  • electrondood 11mo ago
    Exactly. "Department of War" is guidance that applies only to Federal employees, and the Department of Defense was named through Congressional legislation. That is still the department's name, whatever Trump decrees.
• dzink 11mo ago
  Wasn’t the son of the current president invested in one of the drone companies selling to the Pentagon? Speedy purchases with no consideration for cost are great are very handy for that kind of investment.
  • antonymoose 11mo ago
    I’m unsure if his sons, but it was discussed on the Joe Rogan (Brian Redban) episode released yesterday that the Vice President has substantial holdings. His prior job had him investing in these companies, while I’m not sure the total sum, he himself holds a few hundred thousand in personal holdings. Sorry I’m unable to link to the source time on the episode.
• ares623 11mo ago
  You’re about to find out how Russia’s military couldn’t beat a smaller force despite looking very fierce for decades.
  • wartywhoa23 11mo ago
    The reason that Russian military is unable to beat a smaller force is beause some entities need this meatgrinder to churn on as long as possible and grind as many Slavic men on both sides as possible. It's a perfectly controlled process.
• pjdesno 11mo ago
  The mere fact that the title says "Department of War" is a raging red flag...
  • senkora 11mo ago
    Do you mean a red flag for the quality of the article, or for the actions of the department? "Department of War" is currently a real name for the department: > On September 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing "Department of War" and "secretary of war" as secondary titles to the main titles of "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense." The terms must be accommodated by federal agencies and are permitted in executive branch communications, ceremonial settings, and non-statutory documents. However, only an act of Congress can legally and formally change the department's name and secretary's title, so "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense" remain legally official.[10][11] Trump described his rebranding as an effort to project a stronger and more bellicose name and said the "defense" names were "woke".[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...
    • SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
      No, it's not. As your quote says, the Department of Defense was created by Congress; the President has no authority whatsoever to rename it or designate a secondary name for it. Writing the words "executive order" on a document doesn't make it legally effective. Any citizen, of course, can use whatever fake names they'd like for people or places or government organizations. It's a free country. But I don't see any reason to choose this particular fake name except for the purpose of delivering propaganda to your readers.
    • ethin 11mo ago
      I'm 99 percent sure that executive orders are not at all legally binding. They're just ways of setting out policy. But the president does not have the authority to override congress with an executive order. An executive order can say whatever the president wishes.
    • electrondood 11mo ago
• burnt-resistor 11mo ago
  Perhaps if the Department of Whatever engineered and built things they needed themselves*, or at least controlled the program management and knew all of the sub-sub-sub-sub-contractors, they wouldn't be incorporating improperly acquired metals or ballooning programs into mega pork projects for all 50 states. The DoD is a jobs program and wastes money that could be used for housing, healthcare, and food instead of lining the pockets of "defense" contractors as the larger budget in the world compared to the next 9 countries combined and maintaining 750 bases in 80 nations. * They and the private sector ran out of TNT because of UA-RU and Israel's flattening of Gaza and so they won't have enough for 2 years from now because corporate consolidation leads to unpreparedness because it's more profitable than keeping essential supply chain infrastructure alive. (It used to cost $0.50/kg but now it's $20/kg.) OTOH, they forge the barrels for tanks and artillery mostly themselves. This inconsistency and creeping of megacorp profiteering never lends itself to security or capital efficiency.. privatization isn't "flexibility" or "efficient", it's price-gouging and risky.
• giorgioz 11mo ago
  Why are they not calling it Department of Defense? Department of War hasn't been in used since 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Wa... https://www.war.gov/ https://www.war.gov/ I'm quite concernedd by the decision to use again terms such as department of War. It feels we are going back to war-driven nationalism.
• sciencesama 11mo ago
  Make more weapons faster !! Kill more people faster !!
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  • tdeck 11mo ago
    You're only allowed to be mad because he called it the "department of war". The premise that the US always needs more weapons and should be fighting constant wars must go unchallenged.
• poulpy123 11mo ago
  I don't care either way, but if there is something that cannot be said about the US it is that they are bad at creating and producing weapons. I bet it's some scheme to get more money from the taxpayer for the friends of Donald Trump. Also I cannot take serioulsy someone saying that the US cannot match ukraine production of drones
• m0llusk 11mo ago
  Kind of strange that weapons procurement has gotten so much attention while the ability of the country to react to epidemics by creating medicines has essentially been disabled.
• jimnotgym 11mo ago
  What has this got to do with accountants. In a normal control model the one thing accountants are not allowed to do is buy stuff, because they can also pay for stuff. This woyld make fraud all too easy. Yes everything is easier without controls, until something goes wrong. Fast cars have the best brakes for a reason. Removing budgetary controls makes development much easier. That is until you spent so much money on a space laser that you can no longer afford to feed your Navy.
• jyounker 11mo ago
  Given Hegseth's record of financial mismanagement I have deep misgivings about what's being done. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/02/pete-hegseth-non-profit-allegations https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/02/pete-hegseth...
• stuaxo 11mo ago
  See: The UK and the VIP lane during Covid, billions spent on unsuitable equipment, much of it burned in the end.
• jonahbenton 11mo ago
  Given the pervasiveness of bribery across this admin, this smells like just eliminating the obstacles to a more direct and corrupt patronage and kickback system. Steve Blank might be wishing it will be LEAN when in reality it will be GREEN.
  • stevenwoo 11mo ago
    This is going to make the Bush administration disappearing billions in cash in Iraq look like chump change.
• djoldman 11mo ago
  My understanding is that one of the huge barriers to a lot of DoD projects is seemingly unending feature creep: 1. let's make the "next-gen airplane" 2. (work 5 years) 3. ok now we want it to have better radar cloaking 4. (work 5 years) 5. ok now we want it to be faster 6. (work 5 years) 7. ok now we want it to lift off vertically Eventually every vehicle has all capabilities as opposed to focusing on some limited number. We saw the same thing with the new USPS vehicle.
  • Night_Thastus 11mo ago
    Yep. No matter what industry, you cannot make a miracle product that accounts for every use case and is amazing at everything. You can burn trillions trying and still come up short. The better way is focused products/specialization. Make something that fills a specific niche very well at a good price. You'll might need more products to get complete (or close to complete) coverage, but you'll end up paying FAR less in the long run on R&D, maintenance, delays, etc.
    • Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 11mo ago
      Well. Feature creep happens because the project is not modular enough that any addition has to be a feature instead of an external addon. But modularity would not be compatible with locking in the government.
      • Night_Thastus 11mo ago
        Trying to make a product that is both modular and at the absolute cutting edge of technology in multiple fields is nearly impossible.
• Synaesthesia 11mo ago
  I'm so glad the whole world is in an arms race while tensions between superpowers keep rising. Really makes me feel reassured about the future.
• tsoukase 11mo ago
  There might be no 80 year long period in global history more peaceful than the current (measured by war fatalities per global population). And this happened due to a single reason: nuclear warheads. The super-powers USA, China, India whatever better go back to a cold war: stable balance, no casualties, only media fights. Every body, war guys and normal people, is happy. And in case the things escalate we are all to a sudden death than to a painful recovery.
  • MangoToupe 11mo ago
    > And this happened due to a single reason: nuclear warheads. I think this happened in spite of nuclear warheads. US naval dominance has had far greater material impact, even vs other world powers. > And in case the things escalate we are all to a sudden death than to a painful recovery. I don't think nuclear war ever implied the complete extinction of the human race.
  • AniseAbyss 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • welcome_dragon 11mo ago
    Then maybe American politics can go back to fighting a common enemy instead of each other.
  • carefulfungi 11mo ago
    I thought this was interesting speculation and googled quickly. It seems... debatable? Close? Obviously a challenging dataset to gather accurately. https://www3.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Rates%20of%20Death%20in%20War.pdf https://www3.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Rates%20of%20Death%20in%20War....
  • moregrist 11mo ago
    This puts far too much emphasis on weapons and far too little on the diplomatic soft power that made the threat of these weapons effective. I don’t think we would have had decades of stability without the Marshall plan investing in western Europe. Similarly the US investment in post-WWII Japan and South Korea gave the US strong allies that had common purpose. It’s not separate; soft diplomacy made the extensive network of US military bases palatable to foreign governments. I think pointing to nukes as the only factor neglects a lot of other important work. Stability requires the status quo to be another intolerable for governments and their people. The mutually-assured destruction of nuclear deterrence alone doesn’t give you that.
• herewulf 11mo ago
  Elements of the Department of Defense have reorganized and changed names of things multitudes of times, yet nothing ever changes.
• electrondood 11mo ago
  Fun fact: The Department of Defense was named through legislation. Trump's EO that "renames" it only applies to Federal employees as guidance. No one else needs to call it that, and it's still legally the Department of Defense.
• LightBug1 11mo ago
  When you have an effectively infinite supply of money, what is the need for accountants?
• fwip 11mo ago
  Article has LLM-stank on it. Hard to tell how much is actually Steve Blank's original thoughts, and how much is just AI slop. TBH, it fits the philosophy - why write a good article yourself, when you can get a 70% article for 5% of the effort?
• sidewndr46 11mo ago
  The Department of Defense has never actually completed an audit anyways, despite it being a Congressional requirement. The last time they tried it everyone just agreed to stop after spending millions of dollars on an audit that revealed what everyone already knew. There's not much reason to follow FAR when you don't have to account for cash flows in the first place
  • IncreasePosts 11mo ago
    An audit is about the journey, not the destination. Auditing an organization spending almost $1T/year is going to be difficult no matter what, let alone dealing with all of the compartmentalization that exists there
• w10-1 11mo ago
  Don't let hatred of bureaucracy blind you. Russia and China definitely love this: choosing time over features or quality is a recipe for failed products and corrupted contractors who specialize in defrauding the government. This turned the universal hatred of bureaucracy against our greatest capability. The US has both more features and more quality in all its armaments, which has given us enduring advantages (notwithstanding being spread too thin). Unlike making products, time actually matters less than feature or quality in war-making because you avoid war as long as possible, and you choose to engage/deploy based on your actual capabilities. Yes, in rare occasion when you've stumbled into an assymmetrical quagmire, you need to catch up, with armor against roadside bombs in Iraq or drone swarms now. But it's critical to be better by default, and be faster as needed. The US military has expressly countered the sclerosis of bureaucracy by pushing decisions down to local commanders and funding a broad swath of experimental technologies. But a program like the F35 necessarily involves a ridiculous amount of integration, and it's just hard to get that right. Saying "just do it faster" is an armchair quarterback fantasy. Never let your enemy use your weaknesses against you.
• 1970-01-01 11mo ago
  When will the $500 hammer come back to $10? https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+case+for+the+%24435+hammer.-a04619906 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+case+for+the+%24435+hamme...
• 0manrho 11mo ago
  > The DoW is being redesigned to now operate at the speed of Silicon Valley We're so screwed.