The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
364 comments
·November 11, 2025stackskipton
Alupis
The F-35 was Lockheed's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The JSF has roots going back to 1996. The X-35 first flew in 2000. The F-35 first flew in 2006, and didn't enter service until 2015(!!).
That's nearly 20 years to develop a single airframe. Yes, it's the most sophisticated airframe to date, but 20 years is not trivial.
The F-35 had many issues during trials and early deployment - some are excusable for a new airframe and some were not. I suspect the issue wasn't "move fast, break things" but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline.
The F-22 was part of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program which dates back to 1981. It's prototype, the YF-22 first flew in 1990, and the F-22 itself first flew in 1997. It entered production in 2005. Again, 20+ years to field a new airframe.
Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies. By the time these technologies are fielded, a whole generation of employees have retired and leadership has turned over multiple times.
stackskipton
Most of time, this delay is in peacetime, it makes sense to do a ton of testing, wait until testing results then go to full production. Your primary concern is not spending a ton of money and not getting a bunch of people killed. It's basically waterfall in fighter development.
Wartime is more agile, you quickly close the loop but downside is sometimes does not work and when it does not work, there might be a people cost. US has done it with fighters before, F-4U Corsair was disaster initially in carrier landings and killed some pilots in training. However, this was considered acceptable cost to get what was clearly very capable fighter out there.
nateglims
I think this is the crux of it. The article discusses Ukraine but they weren't making millions of drones, the private capital wasn't there and the bureaucracy that coordinates it wasn't primed until the war.
potato3732842
So then what value does the bureaucratic process add if it's the first thing that gets shitcanned when good results in good time matter?
At the end of the day it's all people cost. Just because it's fractional lives wasted in the form of man hours worked to pay the taxes to pay for unnecessary paper pushing labor instead of whole lives doesn't actually make the waste less (I suspect it's actually more in a lot of cases).
themafia
> but rather massive layers of bureaucracy and committees that paralyzed the development pipeline.
They decided to make one airframe in three variants for three different branches. They were trying to spend money they didn't have and thought this corner cutting would save it.
> Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field next-generation military technologies.
It's the funding. The American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us. They're simply building the _wrong thing_.
Alupis
The problem clearly is, once a need is identified - it can be costly or ruinous to wait 20+ years to realize the solution. The DoW is clearly signaling they want the "Need -> Solution" loop tightened, significantly, sacrificing cost for timeliness.
That puts the US on good footing, ready to face peer and near-peer, next-generation warfare.
If Ukraine has taught us anything, it's off-the-shelf - ready today - weapons are needed in significant quantity. Drone warfare has changed almost everything - we're seeing $300 off-the-shelf drones kill millions of dollars of equipment and personnel. If the military needs anti-drone capabilities, it can't wait 20+ years to field them.
We don't just need to pick on new/next-generation military technologies either. The US currently produces between 30,000-40,000 155mm artillery shells a month, but Ukraine (at peak) expended 10,000 per day[1]. The loop is far too long...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-...
Spooky23
> The American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us.
That’s a problem easily solved.
We have the menace of the Red Maple Leaf people to the north, and perhaps a buffer zone south of the Rio Grand would stave off the caravans, give Texans some breathing room, and make more room for real Americans. Remember, the anti-Christ may show up at any time.
dangus
> The American appetite for new "war fighters" is exceptionally low when there's no exigent conflict facing us.
Isn’t this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Who would want to get into a conflict with someone who has guaranteed air supremacy?
HPsquared
Lack of funding? My impression is that the F-35 program is the most expensive in history.
Calavar
> Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies.
Is it? By what criteria? IMHO the point is to get new tech out quickly enough that you aren't falling behind other major powers in the international arms race. The F35 seems to be ahead of the competition because countries around the world are lining up to buy it over much cheaper alternatives from Russia (Su57) and China (J35).
Not to mention that the Su57 also had about a 20 year development cycle. Maybe that's just how long takes to develop a new stealth fighter?
Retric
It didn’t take 20 years to make an airframe it took 20 years to do lots of research which eventually resulted in a wide range of systems and multiple very distinct airframes.
Hell F-35B does vertical takeoff and still mostly uses the same systems as the other designs, that should tell you something.
p_l
F-35B was added to JSF to ensure Lockheed (who had been working on exactly that since 1980s even to the point of licensing designs from USSR) was the only company that could win the contract.
thereisnospork
It doesn't take 20 years to do that, it takes 20 years to do that and wade through the bureaucratic morass. The SR-71 went from initiation to deployment in under a decade, more than half a century ago. With the myriad of advancements in everything from engineering, computation, to business development/management practices, building new cutting edge planes is the sort of thing we should be getting better and quicker at.
Design iteration cycle-times should be decreasing due to CAD, experimental cycles-times reduced due to the proliferation of rapid-turn 5-axis CNC mills, experimental cycles reduced due to simulation, business processes streamlined due to advancements in JIT manufacturing and six-sigma/kaizen/etc, and so on and so forth. That this isn't occurring is a giant blinking red light that something is wrong, and that we are going to get our lunch eaten by someone who researches, designs, and manufactures with a modicum of competence. Ostensibly China.
mpyne
> Something is very wrong if it takes 20+ years to field new military technologies. By the time these technologies are fielded, a whole generation of employees have retired and leadership has turned over multiple times.
Conversely, the Navy's first SSBN went start to finish in something like 4 years.
And unlike the F-35, which could easily have been an evolution of the existing F-22 design, the Navy had to develop 4 major new pieces of technology, simultaneously, and get them all integrated and working.
1. A reduced-size nuclear warhead (the missile would need to fit inside the submarine for any of this to matter) 2. A way to launch the nuclear missile while submerged 3. A way to reliably provide the nuclear missile with its initial navigation fix at launch 4. A way to fuel the nuclear missile with a safe-enough propellant to be usable on a submerged submarine without significant risk to the crew
The USAF's Century series of fighters were turned around quick. So was the B-52.
Having been involved in defense innovation efforts during my time in uniform, I cannot overemphasize how much the existing acquisition system is counter-productive to the nation's defense, despite 10+ years of earnest efforts dating back to before Trump's first term.
Most of the aspects to it are well-intentioned and all, but as they say the purpose of the system is what it does, and what America's defense acquisition system does is burn up tax dollars just to get us a warmed-over version of something grandma and granddad's generation cooked up during the Cold War.
Its turned into a death spiral because as these programs get more onerous the cost goes up, and who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to just let people go off on a $1B effort with less oversight?
Until it's even possible to deliver things cheaply through the DAS (or WAS or whatever it will be now) we'll never be able to tackle the rest of the improvements. I look forward to reviewing the upcoming changes but Hegseth isn't the first one to push on this, it's a huge rat's nest of problems.
trollbridge
The F-35 has the equivalent of an 80486 in it because it is so old, and can’t be updated.
ethbr1
> can’t be updated
You mean the ICP that's already been updated as part of TR3 to support Block 4 features? https://militaryembedded.com/avionics/computers/f-35-program...
carabiner
It's peacetime engineering. These things would be developed 10x faster during a hot war. Look at COVID vaccine in 10 months vs. 7 years normally.
credit_guy
That is not a guarantee. We look at WW2 and think that what happened then will happen at any other time. But in WW1 the US had to borrow rifles from France. WW1 was a total disgrace as far as the US military industrial complex was concerned. I know I'm committing a bit of a sin, today marks the 107th anniversary of the end of WW1 and that end was possible because of the US involvement. But, uncharacteristically for the US, it was the manpower, not the arsenal of the US that decided the end of that war. And, yes, even at that time the US was the largest economy of the world.
jltsiren
Peacetime funding.
Experts generally expected that there would be effective COVID vaccines by the end of 2020, because vaccine development is not magic. There are several known approaches to creating vaccines, and it was reasonable to expect that some of them would work.
What set COVID vaccines apart was government commitment. Governments around the world bought large quantities of vaccines before it was known whether that particular vaccine would be effective. (Regulatory approval was also expedited, but that it business as usual during serious disease outbreaks.)
The equivalent with fighter jets would be the government committing to buy 200 fighter jets, with an option for many more, from everyone who made a good enough proposal. And paying for the first 200 in advance, even if it later turns out that the proposal was fundamentally flawed and the jets will not be delivered.
cyanydeez
You are missing the criminals for tge policy discussion.
Idiocracy vs kleptocracy.
potato3732842
As everyone with functioning eyeballs and more memory than a goldfish who has hung around a large organization more than a year knows, you quickly run out of blood to write in and start writing in "well that could've been worse if the starts had aligned, let's write a rule about it".
I used to work for a defense contractor. My former coworkers are probably cheering right now.
mmooss
The contractors cheer because there are fewer limitations on poor quality products, project management, and fraud.
potato3732842
I'm talking engineering teams supporting already fielded equipment.
They just "know things" like which basically free tweaks ought to be made as a result of knowledge gained from the assembly being in the field. They don't stand to gain from the product being crap. Most of the fixes are basically free BOM tweaks that don't really matter but provide incremental improvements/refinements if made and the cumulative nickels and dimes really do add up.
The paper pushers on both sides that will do many rounds in order to make that happen are the only people benefitting from the make-work here as does anyone who skims their existence off of the paper pushers.
watwut
I have seen considerable fraud in corporation. Contractors love to take money and not deliver, report more hours then they workee, and then they get more money from allied managers.
yard2010
Today's societal war is a philosophical one - do you think everything sucks and it's a matter of lesser evil, or do you think everything sucks and we "just" need to find the perfect solution.
LarsDu88
Back in the day, Lockheed could move very quickly. The P-38 went from proposal to working prototype between February 1937 and January 1939. But there was a cost. Test pilots died
The top American fighter pilot of WW2, Richard Bong was killed test piloting the Lockheed P80 jet fighter.
canucker2016
Kelly Johnson, head of Lockheed's Skunk Works, worked on the P-38 (as well as U-2, Blackbird, and the F-117A).
He had a list of rules for managing the design of aircraft. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly....
There's an unwritten 15th rule (from the above-mentioned webpage):
"Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."LarsDu88
Rule 14 is pretty interesting. Keep the teams small and reward performance with compensation. Don't just reward increasing headcount. Could improve things at so many tech companies today.
cm2012
The F35 is the most in demand military plane in the world for the price. They spent 20 years iterating on it and its now the best plane for the cost with its capabilities.
themafia
> but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.
Time has already told us. Historically it means it was more expensive. If it wasn't, it would be such a rare an interesting case, that it would deserve a documentary on the surprising result.
scuff3d
Given there is apparently a large emphasis on the performance of these individual "portfolio" managers, and speed of delivery is made to be such a big deal, this is definitely going to get out own people killed.
chiph
> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis
One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to build. (the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic)
bootsmann
Is this just their marketing language or have they independently verified this? IIRC their interceptors got absolutely rinsed at trials in Alaska so I’d be very wary of their claims at this point.
Y-bar
What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies?
Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.
kchoudhu
It's the only book they've read, most likely.
dgunay
Is it a MAGA thing, or is it just a Palmer Luckey thing?
Y-bar
JD Vance has a company named after the ring Narya.
int0x29
Peter Thiel too
qchris
Here's a 2022 from Quartz article that might have some context on this. Anduril isn't on the list according to the footnote, but Thiel and Lucky have since had a history collaborating on projects with the same naming scheme.
[1] https://qz.com/1346926/the-hidden-logic-of-peter-thiels-lord...
[2] https://fortune.com/2025/07/07/peter-thiel-palmer-luckey-ere...
mellosouls
Nerd culture. Def not maga, more silicon valley and tech startup types.
Y-bar
I'm not so sure, JD Vance created a company called Narya after Gandalf's ring and Viggo Mortensen has more than once had to call out far-right groups trying to co-opt the fandom or litterature:
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-48187786
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1litq7h/viggo_mort...
JoshTriplett
Lembas seems unrelated to the MIC, or is there some investor or board member in common?
(EDIT: thanks to a reply for researching; it is the same people.)
As for the rest, I think because it's many of the same people and the same VCs.
Y-bar
Lembas LLC is owned by Peter Thiel.
mmooss
It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people.
One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc.
scandox
I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.
NedF
[dead]
nradov
In particular Anduril is designing its weapons such that they could be manufactured in many other existing civilian factories using common tools and equipment. This should allow for rapidly scaling production in a crisis.
trhway
>The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace.
That has been shown even in WWII. And the war was won by US/UK/USSR specifically because their mass production of weapons were several times higher than Germany/Japan/Italy.
The war in Ukraine actually haven't yet reached the levels of weapons use of WWII. (for example 500K-1M/day artillery shells in WWII vs. 20-60K/day in Ukraine war)
These days i so far see only China capable and ready to produce weapons, say drones, at that scale. And i so far don't see anybody, including Anduril with their anti-drone systems, able, or even preparing, to deal with 1M/day (my modest estimate of what China would unleash even in a small conflict like say for Taiwan) of enemy drones. No existing anti-drone systems/approaches are scalable to that level, and we can only hope that something new is being developed somewhere in top secret conditions, and that is why we don't know about it.
gyulai
> sustain conflict
...this turn of phrase in relation to goal-setting really makes you think twice.
dzink
Wasn’t the son of the current president invested in one of the drone companies selling to the Pentagon? Speedy purchases with no consideration for cost are great are very handy for that kind of investment.
Hizonner
The United States does not have a "Department of War".
BirAdam
That was actually the original name.
Edit: from 1798 until 1949
thaunatos
It does. https://www.war.gov/
TheCoelacanth
Departments are created by acts of Congress. Not because a wannabe dictator registered a domain name.
mlnj
I don't see any impeachment proceedings from Congress. Looks like the wannabe dictator has their blessings.
Hizonner
Bad news. Trump and Hegseth do not have the authority to rename the Department of Defense, no matter what they put on a Web site. That requires an act of Congress, which hasn't happened. And probably won't, because even if they could convince Congress to do it, that would require them to ask... and their whole modus operandi is based around pretending to have authority they don't have.
Calling it the Department of War is accepting that Trump's the King.
ap99
They can add a secondary title. And they're drafting legislation to change the primary title.
Seems pretty simple.
Loughla
The ada.gov website has a banner that reads, "Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated."
Trump is the king.
Edit: To be clear, I think it's complete and utter garbage. I'm assuming people think I think it's a good thing? It's not a good thing. At all.
johnnyanmac
I thought the executive had the power to rename existing departments and map landmarks. That's why we got "DOGE" disgused under the USDS and the "Gulf of America".
If that's not legal, I'll do my best to act shocked.
miltonlost
oh do you also call it the Gulf of America?
johnnyanmac
In my eyes, Gulf of America is really stupid and useless.
But calling it "Department of War" clearly states their intent, contrary to his campaign as the "no new wars" president. We renamed it 70 years ago for a reason, and such reason completely flew over the admins' heads.
brandonmenc
Yes.
downrightmike
Did anyone ask the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci?
gjsman-1000
Considering the sheer amount of wars the CIA and DoD are responsible for that are ongoing; the rebranding is more honest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
marbro
[dead]
felixgallo
gjsman-1000
Nobody uses statutory titles for anything to be honest; when’s the last time you referred to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act instead of “Obamacare”? When’s the last time you referred to the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program instead of “Social Security”? I’ve never heard anyone say Title XIX of the Social Security Act instead of “Medicaid,” or Title XVIII of the Social Security Act instead of “Medicare,” or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act instead of “Welfare.”
terminalshort
It does and always has. What we name that department makes no difference.
netsharc
Funny how we can tell now whether the other person is a Kool-Aid drinker by how they refer to things.
Gulf of Mexico, or Gulf of America?
beeflet
Gulf of Mexico, Department of War.
"Department of Defense" has always been a weird doublespeak term. I welcome the new old name.
"Gulf of America" is a stupid way to antagonize the world and accomplish nothing. Even if we controlled some area on a map, we ought to disguise our control through proxies rather than attract attention and to it and all that comes with the evil eye. If I was a trump supporter I would be skeptical of even accepting this as a "win", considering it is just words on paper and doesn't reflect a change in material conditions for the demographic.
rpmisms
Department of War is far more honest. The Gulf name doesn't mean anything, it's a joke and we all know it.
lm28469
> it's a joke and we all know it.
"grab them by the pussy" -> just a joke
selling cans of beans from the oval office -> just a joke
shilling a pillow company from the white house -> just a joke
"let's march to the capitol" -> just a joke
doge -> just a joke
"give me the peace nobel price" -> just a joke
"Ukraine started it" -> just a joke
"6 gazillion percent tariff on china" -> just a joke
I rug pulled my supporters with a meme coin -> just a joke
I do obvious market manipulation to help inside traders -> just a joke
It's all so convenient...
anon7725
It is a “joke” insofar as it’s an asinine undertaking.
It’s not a “joke” in the sense of being lighthearted or unserious: there was a press conference at the White House. Official US maps have been updated. Google Maps has been updated.
SpicyLemonZest
It's not a joke and I don't know it. Trump is gradually demanding the authority to control every aspect of American life, and you're enabling it by not taking his entry-level steps seriously. I hope you'll realize your mistake while he's still stuck on relatively harmless things.
watwut
It is not joke. He punished companies for not obeying. "It was just a joke bro" is stupid manipulative excuse in normal situations, but in the case of Trump, it is a complete unambigous lie.
It was not a joke, no one laught. It is what republican leader said in all seriouaness and insisted on. And his voters seen it as a show of strength.
troelsSteegin
A big assumption with this change is that the "Modular Open Systems Approach" (MOSA) [0] [1] will be adequate for integrating new systems developed and acquired under this "fast track". MOSA appears to be about 6 years old as a mandate [2] and is something that big contractors - SAIC, BAI, Palantir [3] - talk about. But, 6 years seems brand new in this sector. I'd be curious to see if LLM's have leverage for MOSA software system integrations.
[0] https://breakingdefense.com/tag/modular-open-systems-archite...
[1] https://www.dsp.dla.mil/Programs/MOSA/
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2016-title10/USCO...
[3] https://blog.palantir.com/implementing-mosa-with-software-de...
dgoodell
I think we use the same PPBE process at NASA. Many of the systems and procedures that NASA uses are are defense-derived. If it's anything like what we do, then it's a total mess and we mostly just go through the motions with it, knowing it doesn't actually reflect reality and it's kind of a waste of time for everybody.
However, it's risky to assume that scrapping a crappy system will result in things being better. The current shitty system was almost certainly the result of scrapping and replacing something else that had some problems.
Anyway, hopefully this works well, because we'll probably end up copying it at NASA.
mmooss
NASA turns out amazing results, and to the point of DoD's goals, the most amazing technology in human history. So the system 'works'.
Is there a non-crappy system for managing projects and organizations that large?
thatguymike
Based on this article alone, I can believe this is a good thing. The US military suffers incredibly from its monopsony position and without a doubt will get a heavy wakeup call (read: dead young people) next time it has to fight a real war. In addition the army should be the most accountable and results oriented branch of government, since it’s the only one that’s actively oppositional. If we can’t fix procurement there then what hope do we have for the rest of government?
bonsai_spool
> In addition the army should be the most accountable and results oriented branch of government
The army isn't a branch of government - and if you then wish for Defense to be accountable, there's the question of how to allocate money for secret things.
I don't know how other countries do this and if there are better ways to structure this.
Terr_
Plus the branch it is a part of is... Well, easily the worst for accountability-failures this year.
themafia
> there's the question of how to allocate money for secret things.
In the history of war I find very few examples where an obscure secret technology was the key to military victory.
nradov
Cryptography, radar, proximity fuses, and nuclear bombs are all examples of obscure secret technologies that were keys to military victory in WWII.
celeritascelery
The Manhattan project is a pretty obvious example. The past world wars were full of technological advances that world powers were trying to keep away from enemies.
mmooss
> Based on this article alone
Isn't it unwise to rely 'alone', in any way, on a clearly partisan article like this one?
rpmisms
Prima Facie: probably good. The existing system is pure and simple money laundering, the legendary $900 toilet seat is absurd and this seems to be a step away from the supply-chain-for-everything system in place currently. I believe the defense budget could be cut in half with increased capability, at least in theory. There's that much cruft.
freddie_mercury
Nobody ever paid $900 for a toilet seat. That was a statistical artifact caused by an accounting method called "equal allocation".
"The equal allocation method calculates prices for large numbers of items in a contract by assigning "support' costs such as indirect labor and overhead equally to each item. Take a contract to provide spare parts for a set of radar tracking monitors. Suppose a monitor has 100 parts and support costs amount to a total of $100,000. Using the equal allocation method each part is assigned $1,000 in such costs, even though one item may be a sophisticated circuit card assembly, which requires the attention of high-salaried engineers and managers, and another item may be a plastic knob. Add $1,000 to the direct cost of the part and you get a billing price. This is what the government is billed, though not what the part is really worth--the circuit card being undervalued, the knob being overvalued. The need for billing prices arises because contractors want to be paid up front for items that are shipped earlier than others."
api
I always assumed it was $50 for the toilet seat and $850 toward some hypersonic stealth cruise bomber being flown in the Nevada desert.
But maybe it’s just graft.
mcswell
Not sure, but to me this sounds a lot like the song from Paint your Wagon. (I was thinking that it came from The Way the West was Won, which would be more ironic.)
Where am I goin'? I don't know! Where am I headin'? I ain't certain! All I know is I am on my way.
When will I be there? I don't know. When will I get there? I ain't certain. All that I know is I am on my way.
celloductor
‘Two organizations ought to be very concerned – China and the defense prime contractors.’
the department was not built with a single country as their focus, and their target will come and go with the times. would have read the whole article the blatant bias is off putting.
jrajav
China is the only country that is not aligned with the US and has the military might and production capacity to go toe to toe with the US in an all-out war. Russia would drain their coffers within a year. China is likely to start out producing the US on a similar timeframe. It is pretty reasonable to assume that China is top of mind for any war planning.
dmix
China is the only game in town
scuff3d
> It’s big, bold and brave and long overdue.
I quit reading at this point. Figured I could find something not so full of braindead nonsense.
pjdesno
The mere fact that the title says "Department of War" is a raging red flag...
senkora
Do you mean a red flag for the quality of the article, or for the actions of the department? "Department of War" is currently a real name for the department:
> On September 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing "Department of War" and "secretary of war" as secondary titles to the main titles of "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense." The terms must be accommodated by federal agencies and are permitted in executive branch communications, ceremonial settings, and non-statutory documents. However, only an act of Congress can legally and formally change the department's name and secretary's title, so "Department of Defense" and "secretary of defense" remain legally official.[10][11] Trump described his rebranding as an effort to project a stronger and more bellicose name and said the "defense" names were "woke".[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...
ethin
I'm 99 percent sure that executive orders are not at all legally binding. They're just ways of setting out policy. But the president does not have the authority to override congress with an executive order. An executive order can say whatever the president wishes.
SpicyLemonZest
No, it's not. As your quote says, the Department of Defense was created by Congress; the President has no authority whatsoever to rename it or designate a secondary name for it. Writing the words "executive order" on a document doesn't make it legally effective.
Any citizen, of course, can use whatever fake names they'd like for people or places or government organizations. It's a free country. But I don't see any reason to choose this particular fake name except for the purpose of delivering propaganda to your readers.
beeflet
Uhhh War?? YIKES! The optics are off on this. Like, um this not a good look? Let's unpack this, is seems kinda problematic. Red flag much?
M95D
Remember Fat Leonard? This time there's going to be more than one.
rkomorn
Damn. Didn't know about this until now but it looks like, at least, he sure put in the effort.
"exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers, ships and subs to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal."
The devil works hard but apparently Fat Leonard works harder.
mrguyorama
"Directing the government to spend money at places you control" isn't a scandal anymore. It's how Donald Trump directing like a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to his businesses
ebbi
Sounds like a name that would be given to a GTA character!
fakedang
Even looks the part.
ReptileMan
He was a GTA character but IRL
throwup238
That page is out of date. Fat Leonard was sentenced last November to fifteen years. With time served he’ll be there for the next seven years or so.
ImPostingOnHN
He will probably be pardoned.
SpicyUme
Like piggies to the trough.
There are plenty of things to criticize in procurement. I don't see this as a useful reaction or attempt to fix issues in a long term way.
As someone who has some familiarity with this process, just like safety regulations are written in blood, Federal Acquisition rules are written in misuse of money, sometimes criminally.
Yes, we have swung too much towards the bureaucrats but I'm not sure throwing out everything is solution to the issue.
Move fast works great when it's B2B software and failures means stock price does not go up. It's not so great when brand new jet acts up and results in crashes.
Oh yea, F-35 was built with move fast, they rolled models off the production line quickly, so Lockheed could get more money, but it looks like whole "We will fix busted models later" might have been more expensive. Time will tell.