President Trump issued an Apr. 9 executive order titled “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurning Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base.” This order is the latest in a series of hollow promises from the administration to cut Pentagon waste, and the latest push to deregulate Pentagon a cquisition in ways that will lead to dramatically more waste. The executive order requires the Pentagon to complete a comprehensive review within 90 days of all Major Defense Acquisition Programs. It asserts that “any program more than 15 percent behind schedule based on the current acquisition program baseline" that is "unable to meet any key performance parameters, or unaligned with the Secretary of Defense’s mission priorities, will be considered for potential cancellation.” The number of programs that fall into this category is stunning. The list should include programs such as the Sentinel ICBM, the F-35, the Constellation-class Frigate, and many more programs that do not meet their cost, schedule or performance goals. Under normal circumstances this would be cause for celebration, as the current system for addressing overbudget weapons systems is woefully inadequate. While Congress passed the Nunn-McCurdy Act in the 1980s, requiring the Pentagon to review major programs significantly over budget, the requirement has become little more than a box-checking exercise. For instance, when the Pentagon realized the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile was 37 percent over budget, the Nunn-McCurdy Act required it to inform Congress, review the program, and either cancel it or restructure it and certify it to move forward. In July, the Pentagon cleared it to continue, but not before admitting that the restructured program would actually come in 81 percent over budget. Unfortunately, President Trump is not serious about cutting Pentagon waste. The Pentagon budget currently sits at about $850 billion. Yet, after DOGE took its first swing at waste in the Pentagon budget, all it had to offer was $80 million in potential cuts, and as of April 8, the Department of Defense ranks 17th in DOGE’s estimate of agency savings despite being No. 1 in discretionary spending. Further evidence that the president will not deliver on his promises to cut Pentagon waste resides in his warm embrace of congressional proposals to add between $100 billion to $150 billion to the Pentagon budget through budget reconciliation, and in his recent announcement that he plans to request a $1 trillion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2026, a 17 percent increase. If that’s not enough to expose the bait and switch, just look at what else this executive order has to offer. Section 3 of the executive order calls for “Utilization of existing authorities to expedite acquisitions throughout the Department of Defense, including a first preference for commercial solutions and a general preference for Other Transactions Authority, application of Rapid Capabilities Office policies, or any other authorities or pathways to promote streamlined acquisitions under the Adaptative Acquisition Framework.” All of these are code for less transparency and accountability. Take the line about “commercial solutions” for instance. Over the years, Congress has significantly expanded the definition of commercial products and services to benefit Pentagon contractors, because the “commercial” designation effectively exempts contractors from sharing certified cost and pricing data with the Pentagon — the only effective means the Pentagon has for assessing the true cost of products and services it buys. As a result, contractors have been able to overcharge the Pentagon for supposedly “commercial” products by resting on the premise that commercial products are competitively priced. But in reality, Congress has stretched the definition of commercial so far that many of these products aren’t available to the public, and aren’t actually used in commercial settings — making claims that these products are competitively priced highly dubious, and impossible to verify given the lack of a requirement for certified cost and pricing data for commercial products. Expanding the Pentagon’s reliance on commercial solutions, as the EO calls for, will lead to more overpriced contracts and more waste. To be clear, the Sentinel, the F-35 and a range of other struggling programs should absolutely be cut. The Sentinel offers no meaningful capabilities that aren’t covered by our nation’s nuclear bombers and submarines. The F-35 is only fully mission capable 30 percent of the time. The Constellation-class Frigate is behind schedule and overbudget. If this executive order leads to cuts in these programs — and that’s a big if — that would be a welcome development. But even if it does, if the administration replaces these programs with deregulated acquisition practices and Silicon Valley’s vision for, in Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s words, “a new Manhattan Project in order to retain exclusive control of the most sophisticated forms of AI for the battlefield,” then waste will continue to find a 6.5 million square foot home at the Pentagon. Ultimately, reining in waste at the Pentagon will fall to Congress. If lawmakers want to make good on the president’s hollow promise to cut Pentagon waste, they can cut their funding in future budgets, bring more scrutiny and skepticism to funding requests for emerging technologies, reject proposals to dramatically increase the Pentagon budget topline, and strengthen the Nunn-McCurdy Act by requiring Congress to vote on programs experiencing critical cost overruns. Whether Congress can muster the political will to achieve any of this remains to be seen. But in the meantime, don’t be fooled by the president’s latest fallacy. Gabe Murphy is a Policy Analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog advocating for transparency and calling out wasteful spending. ...read more read less