The budget for the Department of Defense (DOD), the government’s largest discretionary expenditure, accounts for approximately one-sixth of federal spending. Despite the need to spend each dollar effectively to enhance national security, its procurement system is failing to prepare the country for future conflicts and operates well behind the pace of modern warfare, as detailed […]
Longtime readers of the WasteWatcher will be familiar with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a poorly designed vessel that has long dogged Pentagon planners while burning taxpayer cash. Unfortunately, two recent examples have demonstrated that the Department of Defense (DOD) has learned nothing from that boondoggle and continues to struggle to build new ships on […]
The Trump administration has taken numerous steps to reform how the Department of Defense (DOD) buys services and equipment. The latest effort was signaled in DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth’s November 7, 2025, speech in which he announced a slew of reforms designed to increase speed and competition in contracting. The new acquisition policy will look […]
Speeding up the procurement process at the Department of Defense (DOD) has been an immense challenge, but a rare example of success is the M1E3 Abrams tank. The DOD announced on September 6, 2023, that it intends to replace the M1A2SEP with the M1E3, and initially projected that the tank would be fielded sometime in […]
Congress has been busy preparing the fiscal year (FY) 2026 suite of defense bills, and thus far there is substantial disagreement between the Pentagon and legislators. The Senate Committee on Armed Services (SCAS) on July 9, 2025, approved its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contained $878.7 billion for the Department of […]
The Artemis program endeavors to return American astronauts to the Moon and then on to Mars. A July 1, 2025, Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that it is also responsible for almost half the cost overruns for major projects at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The GAO has been tracking costs in […]
The Trump administration is signaling it will end support for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The so-called fiscal year (FY) 2026 “skinny” budget, released on May 2, 2025, called for an end to the SLS after three launches, noting that the program is 140 percent over budget. The […]
There should be no third bite at the taxpayers’ money for the twice-killed alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). In 2011, following years of opposition from multiple presidential administrations and the Department of Defense (DOD), along with a coalition of taxpayer organizations, the first attempt to provide an alternate engine for the […]
The Department of Defense (DOD) has far from a sterling reputation for financial discipline. It remains the sole federal agency to have not passed a clean audit under the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. The Marine Corps is the only one of the five DOD branches that has passed an audit, which it accomplished […]
The M10 Booker embodies fundamental failures of with Department of Defense acquisition, including the lack of critical analysis and when to stop wasting the taxpayer’s money. Start with what the Army first envisioned in 2013: A light tank to replace the retired M551 Sheridan that could support infantry with two of them airdropping from a […]
