The Sobering Truth About the Pentagon’s Acquisition Failures

Daniel L. Davis

Security, Americas

The United States is nowhere near as powerful and dominant as many believe.

During the State of the Union Address last month, President Obama catalogued many of the reasons he said the United States was strong and the future bright. One of the biggest, he claimed, was the quality of the U.S. Armed Forces. “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period,” he proclaimed. “Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world.” The audience of the most influential and powerful people in America then interrupted his speech with thunderous applause. A closer examination of a few critical facts, however, might have restrained some of that chest-thumping pride.

The truth is, the United States is nowhere near as powerful and dominant as many believe.

In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, there was great celebration in America that the crushing military victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, “kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all” and demonstrated the United States was now the world’s sole military superpower. That was no empty bluster. Even Beijing and Moscow were impressed and openly lamented they were militarily inferior. Americans across the board were optimistic and proud. However justified that pride might have been at the time, it quickly mutated into distasteful arrogance. Now, it is an outright danger to the nation. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this threat better than the Pentagon’s dysfunctional acquisition system.

As many are aware, official studies have reported in detail how the military acquisition system is broken, inefficient and wastes money. If that were the extent of the problems, it would only be “troubling.” But an examination of the subject in a broader context reveals the situation is far more serious and has already placed U.S. national security at increased risk. One of the military’s most egregious acquisition failures has been the U.S. Army’s Future Combat System (FCS). For two key reasons the damage done to overall American security by that botched effort has been far worse than most realize.

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