People need to stop using the age old axiom “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to describe the Department of Defense, and the reason is very simple. It is broken, and it needs to be fixed. The situation isn’t unlike the one that faced American automakers in 2008, when they tried to appeal to Congress for taxpayers’ dollars in order to heal wounds that were self-inflicted, by turning out gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs when consumers were buying more efficient vehicles.
It’s time that a new set of rules are adopted. Douglas Macgregor puts forward guidelines centered around several key areas that the new Congress can use to evaluate the armed services’ 2016 budget requests: purpose; capability; modernization; unity of effort; and overhead. Under these guidelines, the Senate and House have the chance “to build new forces with new capabilities for a future war.”