‘Valley of death:’ Defense contractors urge Congress to cut red tape

(The Center Square) – Defense contractors are urging Congress to cut red tape, ditch byzantine rules, and eliminate duplicative reviews to expedite the delivery of high-tech weapons to U.S. forces.

Margaret Boatner, of the Aerospace Industries Association, noted a 2024 study from the Government Accountability Office that found the average amount of time for major defense acquisition programs to deliver capability was 11 years. Just getting a contract can take months. Another GAO report found that the average time from agency solicitation to contract award for contracts over $50 million was 255 days, or nearly 8.5 months.

Funding is an even bigger problem.

“Neither Congress nor the [Department of Defense] have provided industry with predictable and reliable funding,” Boatner told Congress this week. “Flat defense budgets, combined with the annual reliance on short-term continuing resolutions, and the persistent threat of government shutdowns have created instability and an uncertain business environment.”

She said those issues, along with other challenges, have a “corrosive effect over time on the health of the industrial base. “

Eric Snelgrove, senior fellow at the National Defense Industrial Association, put it this way: “The challenge is not a lack of ideas or ambition; it is a system that is encumbered by red tape and resists change.”

Snelgrove said American innovation isn’t reaching the battlefield fast enough.

“While the private sector is making accelerated progress in developing breakthrough capabilities … the government side of the ecosystem continues to lag behind in procurement, budgeting, and industrial mobilization,” he said. “We are operating at two speeds: one fast, adaptive, and entrepreneurial; the other, constrained by outdated processes and paralyzing uncertainty.”

Defense contractors aren’t alone. The GAO, which serves as Congress’ research arm, reported that “major weapon costs continue to rise as DOD struggles to deliver innovative tech quickly,” in a new report.

Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, the head of the GAO, said the warning bells are growing louder.

“Our findings over my 15 years have grown increasingly dire,” he wrote in a letter to Congress. “DOD weapon systems continue to cost more and take even longer to deliver, notwithstanding recent reforms.”

The GAO report noted that “DOD plans to invest nearly $2.4 trillion to develop and acquire its costliest weapon programs. But it continues to struggle with delivering timely and effective solutions to the warfighter.”

Shelby Oakley, director of contracting and national security acquisitions at the GAO, told Congress that change is required.

“There’s near universal agreement that the status quo is not working, but DOD can’t keep applying workarounds to a broken system,” she said. “The threat environment is evolving too quickly for that. What’s needed is a full-scale shift toward an acquisition model built for speed, flexibility, and innovation.”

U.S. Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said the result is that promising technology never makes it into the hands of the military.

“Unfortunately, for too many of those innovators, the path to partnership with the federal government is blocked by a procurement process that is opaque, rigid, and often punishing,” he said. “The risk of entering the defense market – both in time and cost – deters even the most promising companies. And for those who try, many never make it past what many in the industry have called the ‘valley of death,’ where transformative technologies die on the vine between prototype and production, often because of bureaucratic red tape.”