Even as defense spending rises, many investments are still going into high-cost, limited systems, raising questions about whether the U.S. is building the right mix to sustain a prolonged fight. Here to share her analysis is senior defense policy analyst for the Center for Defense Information at POGO, Virginia Burger.<br>See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Pentagon is spending billions on major weapons systems, but there are growing questions

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

Federal Drive is presented by GEHA, Government Employees Health Association, proudly providing health and dental benefits to federal employees and their families. Visit GEHA.com. Even as defense spending rises, many investments are still going into high-cost, limited-use systems, raising questions about whether the U.S. is building the right mix to sustain a prolonged fight. Here to share her analysis is Senior Defense Policy Analyst for the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, Virginia Berger.

Virginia, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you. It's great to see you as well, Terry. You have an interesting new paper out, Exquisite Defense Fails in Practice. Let's start at the top. Define for me what you mean when you say exquisite defense. So exquisite is a term that has been used as a label for specific systems and munitions within the U.S. military for a couple decades now.

Initially, it was used as a term by the establishment, by the leadership within the Pentagon, as a critique of our procurement habits that were left over from the Cold War.

Like looking into the patterns we had built on obtaining and procuring incredibly technologically dense and complex missiles that came out of needs identified during the Cold War, while we were playing nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviets, and all of the sort of patterns and trends that were established in military procurement and acquisition during that period.

And so in the mid-2000s, there was sort of this retrospective going on saying, okay, are those exquisite systems, these incredibly technically complex, incredibly expensive systems going to be what we need in the next fight?

The Pentagon is spending billions on major weapons systems, but there are growing questions

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

The Pentagon is spending billions on major weapons systems, but there are growing questions

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.