Procurement issues that congress won't fix.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Watch

* The new foreign policy mantra in Washington is that the world is on fire. The nation's weapons procurement machine, meanwhile, keeps partying like it's 1999.

The Defense Department and Congress are embarking on a new effort to rewrite procurement legislation and the Pentagon introduced an updated "better buying power" policy to make the military's procurement bureaucracy more nimble and skilled at buying world-class technology.

These initiatives are commanding the spotlight these days, along with a full court press by the Pentagon and congressional defense hawks to increase military spending. But there has been little discussion about the larger problem in weapons acquisitions, which is that the Pentagon is investing most of its procurement dollars in yesterday's technology.

Military pundits like to describe the current situation as an "inflection point" where the military has to decide if it wants to continue to double down on what it knows best or make bold moves to stay ahead of rapidly changing enemies and threats.

'We are in a chase trying to figure out where this world is going," says retired Army Lt. Gen. David Bamo. Meantime, the military is planning for the future based on an outdated strategy and is under massive economic pressures caused by budget cuts but also by its crushing personnel and overhead costs that keep rising unconstrained.

Further, the military's weapon-spending priorities are out of touch with reality, says Bamo, a former top commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and a prolific scholar. Most of the Pentagon's procurement budget is being consumed by expensive programs that were conceived for a different world, he says. And there is little to no investment in technologies the military will need in 2025 like cyber weapons and extended-range, superfast platforms to overcome enemy "anti-access" strategies. This imbalance could be potentially disastrous for the United States, Bamo warns. "I'm not sure this is the best investment portfolio to put the majority of your dollars into," he says during a panel discussion at the Stimson Center.

He predicts the 21st century will see three overlapping types of conflict that Bamo calls "wars of silicon, wars of iron and wars in the shadows." The military is overinvesting in conventional "wars of iron" where it clearly dominates, and not nearly enough on advanced technology to fight the "wars of silicon" where it faces daunting competitors. Enemies will be armed with modem...