The secretary of defense’s concept of Integrated Deterrence, which he indicates will be foundational to the revised National Defense Strategy, furthers the subservience of hard power and military capability—which should be his primary function in backing foreign policy.

Every time a new mission is assigned to DoD, it must manage, plan, execute, assess, and report on the activity. This draws personnel, management focus, and resources, beyond those appropriated for the function, away from what should be its core mission: preparing for, fighting, and winning America’s wars. 

For example, the DoD spends more on the Defense Health Program than on new ships. It spends almost $10 billion more on Medicare than on new tactical vehicles. It spends more on environmental restoration and running schools than on microelectronics and space launch combined.

Solving this barrier by redefining national security, and therefore what belongs in the DoD budget, to focus on military capability should be a U.S. priority. Removing lower priority expenses or transitioning their funding to another, more appropriate department or agency will result in a real sense of what defense costs and make room in the budget for military readiness, modernization, and operations, including those critical to Taiwan efforts.

Time Is of the Essence

Fourth, institutional and statutory rules and processes do not promote speed and agility in testing, procuring, and integrating modern capabilities. 

The United States must compete with China and any other adversary that threatens U.S. national security. With the small wiggle room DoD has left after the aforementioned obstacles have wreaked havoc on its budget, the department must spend its funding as economically as possible. Barriers to doing so come in many forms, including incentive structures that support bureaucracy and risk-aversion over innovation, agility, and speed; legacy and diverse business systems that don’t communicate; and general stagnation and opposition to creative change. 

The ability to integrate and operationalize new technologies will likely determine success on the future battlefield. Unfortunately, technology companies find it difficult to work with the DoD. With technology solutions being ideal for defense adoption, many start-up firms decline to enter or quickly exit the federal market. DoD needs to maintain access to these cutting-edge businesses to ensure that the warfighting capabilities it delivers are relevant and remain relevant. 

Transforming future concepts of operations into actionable programming guidance will require a new construct that abandons the legacy lifecycle funding model where a technology slowly moves from research, development, test, and evaluation to procurement and concludes with operations and maintenance. Instead, the budgeting process needs to support timely movements of funding to capture technology solutions and move them quickly from concept to a fielded capability. This approach also forces a reevaluation of how DoD conducts oversight and management.

The seemingly immense changes necessary to solve this fourth barrier and modernize how DoD operates can be made more manageable by adopting an acquisition approach built around evolutionary innovation. This will require leadership, cultural change, and funding lines that are flexible and responsive to rapid iterative development, testing, and fielding.

To seize the opportunities of an evolutionary approach to modernization, the Pentagon needs three things.

First, it needs stable lines of funding that can accommodate the open-ended nature of an evolutionary development process and provide current year funding for any type of appropriation aligned with joint and combatant command needs.

Second, it needs business systems that can track metrics for an information-age military capability to keep up with the speed of continuous development and enable effective oversight. The Advancing Analytics capability, initially developed to support the DoD’s full financial statement audit, can meet this need when fully implemented.

Third, it needs congressional support to modernize the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process to match acquisition reforms made over the last decade with agile, responsive, and transparent funding not tied to a specific stage in development or fiscal year. The recently enacted NDAA provision that requires a commission to look at this issue, if structured correctly, should help shed light on what works, what does not work, and specifically what changes will have the most positive impact. 

Conclusion

Any defense of Taiwan planning must fix the above four barriers to succeed. 

Proper budgeting is essential in the success of all U.S. military priorities. The defense budget must account for inflation, which increases the cost of must-pay bills, and it must support the modernization necessary to remain competitive. 

Congress should prioritize and hold itself accountable for executing its fundamental constitutional responsibility of passing annual appropriations bills. We can’t spend good intentions or fall back on blaming others when it comes to defense priorities. 

Defense should remain focused on its primary and core function, deterring, preparing for, and winning America’s wars. Administration officials and Congress should remove non-defense spending from the defense budget to make clear what the nation is really spending for its security and to support federal priorities within other agencies with corresponding missions. 

And finally, DoD and Congress should shake off the chains of the past in the way it plans, programs, budgets, and executes the sustainment and advancement of the world’s best fighting force. 

With these four barriers solved, the United States exponentially increases its ability to succeed in all future endeavors, including defending Taiwan.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She is a former Acting Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). 

Emily Coletta is a project coordinator and research assistant at AEI.

Image: Flickr