Steal the Ball, Kill the Umpire
SECDEF's call for Army transformation shows America is lacing up its cleats and sharpening the spikes
“Wild Bill” Donovan, one of the United States’s most decorated soldiers and the creator of the OSS, took a wartime tour of Europe in 1940 and 1941 to assess the Allies’ prospects of victory.
He returned impressed by Britain’s willingness to fight, and by the “guerrillas,” or commandos, it was training for asymmetric war against a conventionally superior German army. Britain had absorbed the lessons (and blows) from decades of imperial anti-insurgency campaigns, from South Africa to Afghanistan to Palestine. Now Britain had to wage guerrilla war to survive.
Donovan advised President Roosevelt that the United States, which was in the early stages of rearmament after decades of neglect, needed a similarly unconventional approach to take on the Axis. The Germans, he wrote, were “big league professionals,” while America was a “bush league club”—albeit one with vast, untapped potential. Until the American industrial base retooled and poured it on, the United States would have to “play a bush league game, stealing the ball and killing the umpire.”
I’m reminded of this story because of the news of the past few weeks. I’ve already written about three momentous executive orders out of the White House, which ordered a Defense Reformation at the Pentagon and dramatic changes in how the government buys commercial technology. This week, Secretary of Defense Hegseth detonated another bombshell, ordering a “comprehensive transformation” of the Army by shifting funding from legacy defense programs to asymmetric upstarts and shaking up the Army’s acquisitions process and command structure. You can read the full thing here; like all good orders, it’s short.
The order directs the Army to transform for future war, fast. It sets ambitious timelines for new capabilities. Field new long-range missiles capable of striking targets on land and sea by 2027; enable AI-driven command-and-control by 2027 (funny how that target date keeps cropping up...); embed advanced manufacturing capabilities like 3D printers in operational units by 2026. The tight timelines speak to the nature of the threat: this is a sprint to prevent Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan. They inject much-needed urgency and tempo into the equation, which are essential to action. Time pressure, like hunger, focuses the mind. It approximates competitive market forces in a decidedly non-market environment by spurring leaders to find leeway in the rules to get the job done. The Army may not achieve all these ambitious goals, but if it accomplishes even a couple, they could markedly affect Xi’s thinking as he looks at the map two years from now.
Also in the order: it directs the Army to “end procurement of obsolete systems,” singling out manned aircraft, excess ground vehicles like Humvees, and “outdated UAVs.” It calls for reforming the acquisitions process through greater use of rapid acquisitions pathways and a “shift from program-centric funding to capability-based funding.” And it recognizes the primacy of people by calling for “workforce modernization” that prioritizes merit and skill, makes it easier to hire and retain civilian experts, and culls the herd of general officers.
This order represents a serious shift in priorities, and provides vital close-air support so that leaders like Army Secretary Driscoll and General George can act. Pulling it off will be no small feat. This is the bureaucratic equivalent of charging a machine-gun nest. The order states that the Army will have to “overcome parochial interests,” and that may be the only understated part of the document. Many of the programs in the crosshairs are long-standing and expensive, with real constituencies and special-interest firepower behind them. Change will be painful. Expect plenty of resistance and lobbyist cloak-and-dagger.
But nothing worthwhile is painless, and these reforms are no exception. The nature of war has changed. The writing has been on the wall for a while (we’ve known that cumbersome, road-bound vehicles like Humvees are sitting ducks to $30 IEDs for two decades), but recent events like Russia’s war on Ukraine sealed the deal. You can see with your own eyes the videos of small drones achieving catastrophic tank kills, not just on Soviet-era armor but on modern, Western main battle tanks. You can look at the relative production stats for China and the United States in drones, missiles, ships—you name it. You can do the battle math on how much it’s costing Yemenis in sandals to threaten U.S. shipping and aircraft carriers, versus how much it’s costing us to punch back.
Keith Rabois likes to say, “when things aren’t working, you need to make radical changes.” That’s clearly the case today. The status quo is not affordable, sustainable, or survivable. Sticking with it is like showing up for World War I with mounted cavalry instead of machine guns and landships.
The executive order isn’t the only news worth highlighting. This week, the House Armed Services Committee passed a bill to boost defense spending by $150 billion, with much of the cash dedicated to high-tech capabilities and reviving the American industrial base. Highlights include $21 billion to ramp munitions production, $14 billion to expedite mass production of low-cost, asymmetric systems like aerial drones, $4.6 billion for naval drones, and more than $2 billion to expand the naval and maritime industrial bases. They say budgets are roadmaps of priorities; this is a roadmap for mobilization.
Yet another piece of news: Lockheed Martin announced it isn’t quitting the race for a sixth-generation fighter, even though it lost its bid for the Air Force’s next fighter. Instead, Lockheed will level up the F-35 and F-22 with sixth-gen tech, creating “fifth-gen plus” competitors to Boeing’s F-47 that could deliver “80% of the capability, potentially, at 50% of the cost per unit aircraft.” What this means practically is that the Air Force (and the other services) will have more fighters, more failsafes, and more experiments from which to choose in the decades to come. Competition is back on the menu.
Good news is flooding out, from the Pentagon, to Congress, to industry (both legacy and non-traditional). For once, the forces of bureaucracy, inertia, and process are on the back foot. The hard truth of our situation has sunk in, and the techno-industrial means of deliverance are at hand. For now, at least, all three corners of the Iron Triangle are doing the work of reformation with the zeal of the converted.
The vibe shift is real, but man cannot live on vibes alone. These events are shifts from theory to practice. They show that America isn’t fated for endless decadence and terminal decline. We get to choose. That should scare the heck out of our enemies.
I’ve long said that America’s great advantage is that we’re crazy. As a democratic power, we don’t do long-term planning or strategy very well (just ask DOD). But we do empower crazy innovators. We can pivot on a dime. And if you punch us in the face, there’s no telling what we might do.
This is just the start of a rough-and-tumble, bush-league game against the bureaucracy and special interests that are making our military slow, small, and unsurvivable. It’s the necessary start of rebuilding our deterrence to win the peace. It’s a warning to Communist China and other enemies that America is lacing up its cleats—and filing the studs into spikes. Wild Bill would be proud.
