Delay has been the Pentagon’s dance partner all spring. Program after weapons program has fallen behind its production schedule, which means cascading costs for taxpayers and declining readiness for the military. The problem stems from choosing systems that are too complicated, too exquisite and too costly to maintain — and relying on just a handful of prime contractors, most of which face little or no competition. On June 17, the Government Accountability Office, in its annual survey of 76 leading procurement programs, described the Pentagon as “alarmingly slow” in fielding weapons for every service.
Consider these alarms: In an uncommonly public report in April, Carlos Del Toro, the Navy secretary, announced that nine Navy ship programs were between one and three years behind schedule. The ships include the new Columbia–class submarine (12 to 16 months late); a new aircraft carrier (18 to 26 months late); and the first Constellation-class frigate (three years late). Del Toro called out dilatory contractors by name — General Dynamics Electric Boat, Huntington Ingalls Industries and Fincantieri Marinette Marine — and went so far as to suggest that the United States should consider building some of its warships overseas.
The delays are just as rampant at the Air Force. The first flight of its new ICBM, dubbed the Sentinel, is already two years behind schedule, while its price tag, once touted at $100 billion, has jumped by an additional 37 percent. That news triggered a little-used Reagan-era law that requires Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to certify that the program is worth pursuing. Meanwhile, a new Air Force trainer is more than two years behind schedule, and the service has halved its purchase of the jet in 2025 in part to help its manufacturer, Boeing, catch up.
Deliveries of Boeing’s new KC-46 Pegasus tanker were briefly halted earlier this year due to issues with its refueling boom, one of several delays that have beset an aircraft vital to U.S. force projection around the world. And dozens of F-35 fighters are parked at Lockheed Martin’s facilities waiting for long-delayed software upgrades.
Breaking the hammerlock that a handful of prime contractors has on Pentagon budgets and timetables won’t be easy. Del Toro is right to push Congress to buy more ships and their subsystems from faster-moving foreign manufacturers. Lawmakers such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are right to press the Navy to move some portion of ship construction away from the overworked yards on the coasts and instead tap smaller, civilian facilities along the Great Lakes, where skilled labor shortages are less severe.
Inside the Pentagon, there are distinct signs that the prime contractor gravy train might be slowing. In April, the Air Force ended a 50-year arrangement with Boeing and instead asked a Reno-based firm, Sierra Nevada Corporation, to build the next-generation command and control “Doomsday” plane. Pentagon officials like to talk about “off the shelf” equipment, but Sierra Nevada did better than that; it bought five used Korean Air 747s and is now refitting them for the mission.
Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy A. George deserve praise for canceling a new reconnaissance helicopter program in February, and the service gets extra credit for noting that the aircraft’s mission could “be more affordably and effectively achieved” by relying on unmanned and space-based sensors. In May, the Space Force canceled its contract with RTX (once known as Raytheon) for a missile-warning satellite because of delays and cost overruns. And it was encouraging this month to see two Pentagon agencies tap four smaller companies to build a new armed drone that can fly 500 miles using commercially available systems. “Widening the aperture to include more nontraditional aerospace companies offers the best chance at accomplishing our cost-per-unit goals, project timeline and production quantity goals,” a Pentagon official said.
Thinking beyond the prime contractors is overdue and welcome, but it remains the exception rather than the rule at the Pentagon, now on track to spend nearly $1 trillion next year on defense.
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