Op-Ed: Garrett Exner: The American military should cut fat and build muscle

The Department of Defense (DOD) announced that is looking to cut roughly 8 percent of the defense budget each year over the next five years. Much of this is simply repurposing legacy programs, climate focused initiatives, and diversity, equity, and inclusion waste into new priorities like border security, missile defense, and submarines.

The so-called, “cuts,” coincide with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) beginning an internal audit of the Department of Defense. Make no mistake, DoD has waste — tons of it. Yet, our military needs to do more than simply cut the fat if it seeks to win America’s wars. A doctrine of peace through strength requires a robust and lethal military, and a leaner bureaucracy is simply not enough.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) has laid out a road map for improving the force. His plan, a $200 billion investment over two years, would provide real reform to a broken procurement system and ensure the American military remains ahead of our adversaries. Getting this done after budget reconciliation and within this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would provide substantive improvements to procurement within one fiscal year. Timing this with the proposed repurposing is the type of institutional rebuilding that American voters were asking for in last year’s election: ruthless efficiency, combined with the renewal of American strength, to ensure American dominance.

The investment into rebuilding the military must come now, while DOGE wages war on the bloated bureaucracy of the Pentagon. Any further delay in replacing the aging fleet of ships, upgrading aircraft, and replenishing depleted stockpiles of ammunition will only strengthen the hand of America’s adversaries.

The Department finally has a leader willing to listen to the needs of the force — a force that has been suffering under the weight of a broken procurement system for over thirty years while raising the alarm about a looming conflict with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

For justification, Congress need only look at the recent collision involving the USS Truman. Our aircraft carriers are simply a method of over the horizon power projection — a way for the U.S. to provide lethal force anywhere we want. When combined with heavy bombers and a robust nuclear arsenal, they exemplify our nation’s omnipresent strength to our adversaries.

Our 11 carriers allow constant power projection on both sides of the globe. Yet, the Truman, launched over 30 years ago in 1993, was nearly taken out of service by an oil tanker this month, and it is the third newest Nimitz-class carrier, the oldest launched in 1972. We have no ability to replace a downed aircraft carrier in our current system.

The state of our carriers, and our navy broadly, is not an anomaly. Our fleet is old, as are all our methods for delivering lethal force around the globe. The B-1 bomber was first manufactured in 1983, the Air Force wants to retire it, but cannot, because the B-21 is not fully available and the B-52 (originally manufactured in 1952) is even older than the B-1. Our nuclear warheads are also old, with the long-awaited replacement to the Minuteman II not expected to arrive until 2029. Without investment America will fight the next war with Cold War era ships and planes and a navy that is now smaller than at any point since 1916.

Under Wicker’s plan, America’s military can make substantial progress in automated systems, cyber capabilities, hypersonic missiles, satellite constellations, and reigniting the forge of America’s arms industry. The last four years have placed America behind our adversaries in almost every one of these aspects. We are behind China in hypersonic capabilities, producing fewer munitions than Russia, lagging in the race for AI dominance, and have yet to fully invest in modern drone warfare capabilities.

Without timely investment, deterrence may be lost forever, and the proposed golden age of America will be over before it begins. If Congress wants to see DOD renew one hundred years of American dominance, it should pass the Forged Act and commit to a robust topline for DOD. Cutting the fat is good, but building muscle is better. If we desire a peace through strength doctrine, Congress must invest in strength while DOGE tackles the bureaucracy.

Garrett Exner is a board member of Veterans on Duty and Executive Director of the Public Interest Fellowship. Previously, he served as a defense policy advisor to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a counterterrorism policy advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy), and as a special operations officer in the United States Marine Corps.