OPINION — When Steve Clean and I sat down over espresso a decade in the past and realized that the shopper discovery course of in Lean was equivalent to what I would been doing with the Fast Equipping Drive in Afghanistan, neither of us imagined we would nonetheless be making the identical argument in 2026. However right here we’re.
The Division of Conflict has simply executed probably the most formidable acquisition reform in 60 years. Portfolio Acquisition Executives have changed PEOs. JCIDS is useless. The Warfighting Acquisition System rewards pace to supply. These are actual reforms, and so they implement practically each advice the protection innovation group has made for the final decade.
And they’re about to repeat the most costly mistake of the post-9/11 wars.
This is why.
The Counter-Drone Struggle Is Not a Expertise Drawback
Everybody in Washington is speaking in regards to the counter-UAS problem as if it is an engineering puzzle. Construct a greater jammer. Discipline a less expensive interceptor. Develop AI-enabled goal recognition. The know-how shelf is full: directed-energy weapons at $12 per shot, drone-on-drone interceptors with over 1,000 kills in Ukraine at $14,500 every, digital warfare techniques that may defeat business flight controllers.
The know-how works. The method for getting it to the warfighter doesn’t.
A brand new drone variant seems on the battlefield each week — constructed from business components, open-source flight software program, and parts obtainable on Amazon and Alibaba. A firmware replace that defeats your jammer prices nothing and takes hours. Your counter to that replace, by means of even the reformed acquisition system, takes months.
This isn’t a know-how hole. It is a cycle-time hole.
And I’ve seen this precise hole earlier than.
I Had This Drawback. It Was Known as the IED.
From 2010 to 2013, I led the Military’s Fast Equipping Drive through the top of the counter-IED marketing campaign in Afghanistan. The structural parallels between that struggle and the present counter-drone struggle are usually not approximate. They’re precise.
Each threats share 5 traits that make them resistant to traditional acquisition:
Low-cost, dual-use parts. IED components had been globally obtainable business merchandise. Drone parts are equivalent — flight controllers, autopilot software program, motors, all commercially sourced. A Shahed-pattern drone prices ~$20,000. An FPV kamikaze prices a number of hundred {dollars}. We interact them with $400,000 Stingers.
Information that proliferates quicker than countermeasures. IED development strategies unfold by means of casual networks quicker than JIEDDO may area counters. Drone designs unfold even quicker — by means of open-source repositories, business provide chains, and state-sponsored proliferation from Iran to the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Russia.
Modular adaptation at near-zero price. Each time we fielded a jammer, the adversary swapped set off mechanisms inside weeks. Drones are modular the identical means. New radio, new software program, new flight profile — all outdoors any formal course of. The adversary’s improvement cycle runs in days. Ours runs in years.
Tactical variation that defeats one-size-fits-all options. On the REF, we realized that the pressure-plate IED in Helmand Province was a basically completely different drawback from the explosively shaped penetrator in Baghdad. Completely different triggers, completely different emplacement, completely different defeat mechanisms. The C-UAS risk has equivalent variation. A Houthi one-way assault drone flying 1,500 km is nothing like an FPV kamikaze on the platoon degree, which is nothing like a Chinese language autonomous swarm. Washington desires a consolidated answer. We made the identical mistake with IEDs.
5. The institutional reflex to throw know-how at a techniques drawback. We spent over $75 billion on counter-IED. We stood up JIEDDO. We misplaced that struggle anyway. As Conflict on the Rocks concluded final November: drones are “IEDs that fly now.” The failed counter-IED framework shouldn’t be replicated. However that’s exactly what is going on.
The Actual Drawback: No person Owns the Entrance Finish or the Again Finish
Steve and I’ve spent the final decade instructing the identical lesson: the standard of your answer is decided by the standard of the issue you select to resolve. Or as Einstein reportedly mentioned, if given one hour to avoid wasting the world, spend fifty-five minutes understanding the issue and 5 minutes on the answer.
The Pentagon’s C-UAS response addresses the final 5 minutes of the equation, not the primary 55.
The Division has invested closely within the develop and deploy phases. JIATF-401 was stood up final August to proliferate counter-drone capabilities. The Military runs biennial business competitions. DIU scouts business know-how. The PAE reform consolidates necessities, contracting, testing, and sustainment beneath a single portfolio chief. These are the center phases of the innovation cycle, and they’re getting actual funding and actual consideration.
However no person is doing the opposite 4 issues:
Detect — No person is persistently monitoring how the drone risk evolves on the tactical edge. There are not any forward-deployed drawback discovery groups embedded with operational items, scanning for the way the adversary tailored since final week. The REF & AWG had these groups. They not exist.
Outline — No person is scoping the precise drawback every unit faces with sufficient precision to drive helpful options. A PAE chief at headquarters, regardless of how empowered by the brand new reforms, can not see the distinctions that matter with out floor fact from the struggle. Necessities nonetheless originate from inside the institutional system — headquarters staffs, Service-level assessments — not from troopers and Marines observing the issue in context.
Lacking is also a Fusion Cell that collects the inputs from the operational power, business and the labs and executes the invention required to substantiate we’re engaged on precise issues (not signs) and the required pace to resolve them.
Assess — No person is systematically measuring whether or not fielded C-UAS techniques truly work towards an adversary who adapts after each engagement. We area techniques and declare victory. With out evaluation, there isn’t any suggestions loop. With no suggestions loop that anticipates adaptation, you can not out-cycle the adversary.
Distribute — No person is guaranteeing that what one unit learns reaches each different unit dealing with the identical risk at operational pace a lot much less delivers that very same evaluation to business. The Uneven Warfare Group used to do that with ahead deployed embeds, rolling assessments again into TRADOC schoolhouses. That operate was absorbed by the Heart for Military Classes Discovered, which operates at institutional tempo — months — not operational tempo.
Three of six phases of the innovation concentrating on cycle haven’t any organizational proprietor. The reforms constructed a quicker engine. No person constructed the steering.
The PAE Reforms Are Essential however Inadequate
Let me be clear: the PAE restructuring is real progress. Consolidating authority beneath a single portfolio chief eliminates the handoff delays between necessities writers, program managers, and testers that killed tempo beneath the outdated PEO construction. The brand new Functionality Commerce Councils could make real-time tradeoffs. Killing JCIDS removes probably the most ossified layer. These are critical reforms.
However they widen the scope of who writes necessities with out altering the place the inputs come from.
On the REF, we did not simply have streamlined necessities authority — although we had that. I may validate a requirement and commit funds on the spot. The REF’s actual benefit was one thing else totally: forward-deployed groups producing necessities from direct statement of the struggle. Any soldier, from non-public to four-star, may submit an issue by way of a one-page 10-Liner. We aimed for 90-day options and generally delivered in 72 hours. We transitioned 170 applications into manufacturing and leveraged $150 million into ten occasions that by means of partnerships. Our Expeditionary Lab at Bagram fabricated prototypes in days.
That wasn’t simply quick acquisition. That was drawback curation at operational pace — sourcing issues from the sphere, validating them by means of direct statement, and changing them into actionable drawback statements earlier than committing sources to options.
The Military disbanded the REF and the Uneven Warfare Group in 2021. It has not changed both. We eradicated our simplest problem-detection and solution-distribution capabilities simply because the drone risk was accelerating.
What Must Occur: The Innovation Concentrating on Cycle
The answer is just not recreating the REF or AWG. It’s guaranteeing that every one six phases of the innovation cycle have organizational homeowners, devoted sources, and a shared operational tempo.
I name this the Innovation Concentrating on Cycle[1] [2] [3] , modeled on the F3EAD course of — Discover, Repair, End, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate — that JSOC used to dismantle terrorist networks in Iraq. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Joint Particular Operations process power went from one raid a month to 10 raids an evening not as a result of it bought higher know-how, however as a result of it collapsed the cycle time between intelligence and motion. Each raid generated the intelligence for the subsequent one. Each accomplished cycle made the subsequent cycle quicker.
The identical logic applies to innovation. Six phases — Detect, Outline, Develop, Deploy, Assess, Distribute — run repeatedly by a fusion cell, every rotation producing the enter for the subsequent. A 70% answer fielded in weeks, assessed towards operational actuality, with findings distributed throughout the power and fed again into detection of the subsequent drawback.
The PAE reforms present the authorities and organizational buildings for Develop and Deploy. The Innovation Concentrating on Cycle supplies the entrance finish and again finish that join the warfighter’s actuality to these authorities.
Every PAE wants 4 issues the present reforms do not present
Ahead-deployed Drawback Discovery Groups — small, cross-functional groups embedded with operational items, sourcing and curating issues from direct statement. Not know-how scouts. Drawback scouts. These don’t have to be natural to the PAE.
Fusion Cells — that gather all of the sensor knowledge from the sphere, business and labs and do the due diligence to make sure we’re engaged on the appropriate issues on the proper tempo with the appropriate anticipated outcomes.
Fast operational evaluation — constructed into the cycle, not performed as a autopsy months after fielding. Each deployment of a C-UAS functionality ought to generate knowledge: did it work? Did operators undertake it? Did the adversary adapt? That knowledge feeds the subsequent rotation.
Lateral distribution at operational pace — what one unit learns should attain each different unit dealing with the identical risk earlier than the subsequent engagement, not the subsequent rotation. Our institutional schoolhouses function at institutional tempo. The drone risk operates at business tempo.
The Backside Line
The Division has reformed the way it acquires. It has not reformed what it acquires, whether or not it labored, or who else must know.
Within the counter-drone struggle, that hole is just not tutorial. The adversary would not have to out-technology us. He solely must out-cycle us.
We proved with IEDs the place that leads. $75 billion. Twenty years. We misplaced.
The identical struggle is right here once more. The know-how is best this time. The method failure is equivalent. You do not beat an adaptive risk by constructing a greater mousetrap. You beat it by working a quicker, smarter cycle — one which begins with understanding the issue, not constructing the answer.
That is the lesson of Lean. That is the lesson of the REF. And if the Pentagon would not study it this time, the drones will train it the laborious means.
Pete Newell is the previous director of the U.S. Military’s Fast Equipping Drive and CEO of BMNT. He co-created Hacking for Protection with Steve Clean and is the writer of “The Innovation Concentrating on Cycle: Time-Delicate Innovation Fires Contained in the Steady Innovation Cycle”
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