September 2, 2026: In 1961, when President and former Five-Star General Dwight Eisenhower left government service, he warned of the Military-Industrial Complex. In the previous two decades, Eisenhower had served as Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe. After the war, he became the first commander of NATO, then served eight years as president of the United States. After all that, Eisenhower's most important advice was to beware of the Military-Industrial Complex. After eight years of dealing with the American Congress, he could describe the threat more accurately as the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.

Recent problems involving Congressional meddling include efforts to produce an affordable naval drone, drones in general, and cruise missiles. These items are needed and have proven their usefulness in Ukraine, but the Ukrainians are at war and can produce drones inexpensively while constantly upgrading their capabilities. In the American Congress, peacetime special interests often disrupt plans to do something effectively.

The military proposes new weapons or military equipment, the defense industries offer to build it on time and on budget, and Congress either approves or tacks on more items that help with re-election for key members. Eisenhower’s prediction was depressingly accurate. Since 1945, technical failures, weapons and equipment that never functioned adequately, and wasteful spending in general have cost the American taxpayers over a trillion dollars.

For example, during the 2003-11 Iraq War, complaints about poor performance by military contractors in Iraq could be traced to quirks in the Department of Defense procurement process. The big problem is that it's easier, from an administrative and cover-your-ass point of view, to get existing suppliers to provide more of the same items they are providing, or related services, like asking a translation supplier to provide interrogators, than it is to go out and find new suppliers who might do a better job. The problem is that the paperwork and procedures for a new supplier are so complicated and lengthy that there's a strong incentive to stick with the existing ones. The current suppliers, of course, are not unhappy with this situation, and tend to have a very "can do" attitude, whether they can actually do it or not.

On top of that, you have, because of the war on terror and operations in Iraq, a surge problem. This causes problems when a small company that is staying on top of a hundred million dollars’ worth of business is suddenly asked to ramp up to handle a billion dollars of work. Things quickly get out of control as too many managers and subcontractors are hired in haste, and things go from bad to worse.

None of these problems, which have been around for centuries, is a mystery to anyone in military procurement. What has proven elusive is a solution. The one solution that works time and again is good management. But so far, that solution is largely unattainable. Government cannot attract the quality managers needed to rapidly expand procurement projects. An attempt has been made to develop a group of large civilian construction and project management firms, which regularly deal with rapid mobilization of resources for non-military projects. But even these firms rarely have to deal with projects that escalate as rapidly as wars. In the 1990s, some of these firms, like Kellogg, Brown & Root, and military staff ran planning exercises to better understand how to avoid the errors and inefficiencies encountered during a large, rapid buildup. While this provided useful guidelines, it also repeated the basic truth: the quality of the procurement managers kept things from spinning out of control.

Getting many quality people into procurement jobs is not easy. It's not a glamorous job, and the Department of Defense knows that procurement fiascos are quickly forgotten. So are procurement successes. The only other new solution involves computerized information and accounting systems to monitor things. But low-tech, low-level officials can still muck things up despite clever software and accounting controls. This is particularly true in places like the Middle East, where taking a little off the top for yourself is considered perfectly normal and acceptable.