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1 1 (January 22, 2025)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiafbt0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Key Points Washington must supply the Pentagon with real budgetary growth to enable reforms that comeat a cost uptroit but produce lorng-term savings and effciencces. * Consirained defense budgets corniicate the military's choices, often requiriring it to mcdifY or abandon strategic initiatives, reforms, and crucial modernization expenditures. * The US military's inabiity to address critical rnodernization and force-planning challenges has left it in decline relativeto its comnpettors, shifting the global military balance against the United States. Washington knows the US military is teetering on17 the brink of insolvency, but policymakers seem incapable of solving big, hard, multifaceted, generational prob- lems betbre the next crisis. Indeed, exactly what crisis would make these systemic problems worth addressing is no longer clear. In the not-too-distant past, actively supporting European and Middle Eastern allies in two bloody, grinding, existential wars would likely have galvanized policymakers to pursue radical change. Throw in a half year of nonstop operations in the Bab cl Mandeb strait fighting Iranian proxics and deplet- ing decades' worth of missile inventory in mere weeks, and the imocment seems ripe for bold action., The incoming second Trump administration's Departmient of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will target w'aste, fraud, and inefficiency across federal agencies, and the bureaucracxy-laden Pentagon is no exceeption2 'This effort is well positioned to boldly revitalize entrenched Pentagon processes and purge inefficiencies from America's military. Early priori- ties will likelv include timely initiatives such as accel- crating shipbuilding to rebuild the Navy, increasing munitions production to meet the demands of mod- ern warfare, and retiring outdated legacy systems that nco longer contribute to warfighting effective- ness. Long-term initiatives will likely focus on revi- talizing military readiness while addressing systemic inefficiencies in the defense bureaucracy-including rigorously scrubbing the Pentagon's sprawling fourth estate, redirecting resources from redundant agencies and overhead to critical priorities like modernization and readiness, and sim-ul'taneously reducing oper- ation demands on the force and working to realign defense strategy.3 The most direct step that the incoming adnministra- tion can take now to start closing the gap of declin- ing deterrence across three theaters is providing the military with real and consistent budgetary increases. ... V .. :'e i' F .. .. ..