From 1941 until 1945, the United States was embroiled in a grueling and hellacious war across two fronts, fighting the Axis Powers in the European and Pacific theaters. Our nation would not have to fight another two-front war until 58 years later in 2003.  Operation Iraqi Freedom would expand the Global War on Terror into the Middle East while our forces were already fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Global War on Terror would effectively run for 20 years; from 2001 following the attacks on 9/11, until 2021, when the last American troops left Afghanistan. For 18 of those 20 years, America found itself having to simultaneously fund a two-front war while still funding all necessary domestic programs. The country also faced similar political division to what we’re experiencing today, and disagreements on spending and budgets in Congress led to the military often having to deal with sequestration and operating on continuing resolutions.

That means that, for almost 20 years, the U.S. Department of War (DoW) had to put significant modernization initiatives aside to focus on funding a war being fought across two fronts. Many thought that the DoW would be able to catch up in the years that followed, and that the “Peace Dividend” that would come after America’s troops left Afghanistan in 2021 would enable our military to focus on modernization initiatives.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.  

In the years between 2021 and today, the DoW’s modernization efforts have been somewhat limited. This is why the ongoing conflict with Iran, coined Operation Epic Fury, is being fought with numerous vehicles and weapons systems that were originally designed, developed, and deployed by the military’s industry partners many decades ago. And this is a problem, since fundamental changes are still needed if the military is going to be prepared to face more sophisticated peer and near-peer adversaries.

So, what happened? Why did modernization initiatives stall in the five years of peace we experienced between 2021 and 2026?  

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Too little butter...

It’s not that modernization initiatives haven’t been a focus or haven’t been prioritized in the past few years. The reality is there’s simply too much that needs modernization across the military.  

There are many more warfighting domains today than there were when we fought the Axis Powers in World War II. We have to stay ahead, and not just on the ground, in the air, and on the sea, but also in cyberspace, on the electromagnetic spectrum, and in space. In addition to the increased number of systems and domains, the DoW also has to modernize on two levels. The first level involves tools and systems needed for operational use. This includes things like weapons systems, vehicles, sensors, command and control (C2) networks, logistics systems, cybersecurity, and other mission-critical systems.  

The second level that needs modernization is the institutional backbone, the processes, procedures, and approaches for how those things are used. This includes adopting modern approaches to testing, digital engineering, and application development processes, embracing cloud infrastructure, improving cybersecurity posture, and modernizing other enterprise IT systems that underpin DoW operations.  

We’re really only five years out from the end of the Global War on Terror. Considering the massive number of different systems that needed to be modernized across both layers, catching up will be no small feat. Moving the needle on modernization requires resources, focus and institutional capacity to implement so many changes at once, all of which are finite.  

Much like trying to spread too little peanut butter across too large of a slice of bread, there isn’t enough to go around. As Chief of Naval Research Dr. Rachel Riley recently put it, “Government organizations all too often focus on peanut butter spreading — hedging bets on their investments by putting a little bit of money in many places and taking cuts in small percentages across the board.” ^[1]

And we're not exclusively talking about financial resources. While funding is part of the equation, it's not the core of the problem. Even substantial defense budgets are quickly consumed by expensive, complex weapons systems. The larger challenge is the DoW's ability to prioritize, absorb and execute modernization efforts across countless competing priorities.

There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t try to change all four tires on your car at the same time. Unfortunately, that’s what we’re asking the DoW to do when we expect the military to modernize all of its systems across both of those layers simultaneously.  

We’re now embroiled in a conflict in Iran that is threatening to take focus, finances, and attention away from modernization initiatives again. How can the DoW juggle financing and fighting this conflict while still prioritizing modernization? It requires reevaluating how they work with industry partners, and how they allocate resources.

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Turn to commercial partners and take big bets

The current president of Forterra’s board was responsible for selling the first Microsoft products to the DoW. At that point in time, every agency within the DoW had different requirements for a word processor, so they each built them in-house to meet their specific needs. Microsoft comes along offering a ready-made solution that meets most of their needs and requirements, but they’ve already sunk significant time and money into developing their own solution. Fun fact, the Government required Microsoft to be compatible with POSIX for interoperability and it was in the Microsoft kernel until 2013. An easily-deployable software alternative was available to them, but they were reticent to make a change because of institutional inertia.

There are commercial partners that are looking at fundamental problems, challenges, and requirements across the government and attacking them from the ground up, which is allowing them to identify new approaches and solutions. Much like how SpaceX is modernizing rocket launch, and Palantir is modernizing data management and analytics, there are startups and other emerging technology companies building systems and solutions that are solving big challenges in new ways, but the DoW has to the infrastructure and will to work with them.

They need to overcome their organizational inertia, like they did when embracing Microsoft’s products for word processing. Then they need to be willing to accept a solution that may not completely meet their requirement, but comes incredibly close.  

Developing a new rocket launch capability, or data management system, or autonomous vehicle solution from scratch takes significant time, money, and resources. Embracing a commercial off-the-shelf solution that is 90 percent or 80 percent towards meeting all requirements and working to adapt it to meet that last 10 percent or 20 percent will enable the DoW to modernize its systems more quickly and at a lower cost.

Next, the DoW needs to reevaluate how it develops systems and solutions, and then eliminate the stovepipes that exist between the services. Today, disparate teams and offices within each of the services of the DoD could be working simultaneously on solving the same or a similar challenge or modernizing a similar system. These stovepipes waste resources and slow modernization initiatives.

As the saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We’re seeing that with DoW modernization initiatives. There have been many fast starts and some incredible innovation in these siloed, stove-piped teams, but they ultimately didn’t elicit any change because they didn’t have the mass to get through the institutional inertia, resource shortages, and other challenges that impact modernization initiatives.

Instead, the DoW should be making big bets on particularly essential capabilities and modernization initiatives. This includes identifying commercial partners with viable solutions and high-functioning teams across the services and bringing them together to solve foundational challenges. These integrated teams will have the resources of multiple services, and the mass needed to make real change.

A great example of this is the Army team that worked on the Next-Generation Command and Control (NGC2) system. The Army brought together teams across the services that were working to modernize C2 ecosystems, aligned their funding and concentrated resources behind a single effort. They made a deliberate bet on NGC2, and the early returns have been promising.

The next era of military advantage won't belong to the organization with the biggest budget. It will belong to the one that can absorb change the fastest. That requires making difficult choices, concentrating resources behind transformational capabilities and moving with the speed of commercial innovation. The challenge isn't whether the DoW can afford to modernize. It's whether it can afford not to.

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^{[1] Dr. Rachel Riley, "Introductory Letter from the Chief of Naval Research," Office of Naval Research Science & Technology Strategy (2026)}

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