The Drone War Is Moving at the Speed of Conversation. The Pentagon Isn’t.

Acquisition reform matters. But unless the DoW learns how to detect, test, adapt and spread battlefield lessons faster, it will only buy the wrong things faster.

By Pete Newell

Drones cobbled together in the heat of combat are rewriting the rules of warfare faster than the Pentagon can write a requirement.

In Ukraine and across the Middle East, small teams are testing commercial drones, modifying them, destroying them, learning from them, and sharing what worked across informal networks in hours or days. That learning cycle moves at the speed of conversation.

The American military procurement system moves on a different clock.

This is not a new problem. I saw it in Afghanistan with IEDs, when the threat evolved faster than the institution built to respond to it. The same pattern is emerging again with drones. The Department of War is making real progress on acquisition reform, but faster contracting alone will not solve the problem. Speeding up procurement helps only if the military is asking the right questions. A faster contract for the wrong jammer, the wrong drone, or the wrong software does not create battlefield advantage; it just accelerates waste.

In my recent conversation with Jeanne Meserve on NatSec Tech, we discussed what it would take for the DoW to break this pattern. The answer is not simply faster contracting. It is a faster way to learn.

U.S. Army Cpl. Aristotle Alfaro, Avenger team chief, and Pvt. 1st Class Ronald Commare, Avenger operator, both from 52d Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, retrieve a counter-unmanned aerial system near Lipa, Poland. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Kohrs.)

Requirements Should Be the Last Step, Not the First

The DoW needs to move at wartime speed before the next war starts. The solution should begin with an overhaul of the institutional processes that stagnate us: requirements reform, operational methodology, and organizational change.

The first mistake is believing the requirement should come first.

In drone warfare, the problem can change before the paperwork clears staffing. Frequencies shift. Payloads change. Tactics spread. A countermeasure that worked last month may be useless in the next fight. If the DoW writes requirements before it understands the problem, it risks turning yesterday’s battlefield lesson into tomorrow’s failed program.

Requirements reform has to begin at the operational edge. The DoW needs better mechanisms to pull real problems from the people experiencing them: the units being targeted, the operators improvising workarounds, the commanders watching tactics change in real time. But it also has to resist the instinct to turn the first request into a program.

Operators may say they need a specific tool. The institution has to ask what mission effect is missing, what threat has changed, what workaround is already being used, and what outcome would actually restore advantage. The requirement should come only after that discovery work is done.

Integrate a Faster Operational Methodology

The DoW does not need another innovation slogan. It needs a repeatable way to learn from the battlefield faster than the enemy can adapt.

We developed the Innovation Targeting Cycle to create that kind of learning loop inside existing acquisition structures. The ITC is a framework that helps the military detect emerging problems from the operational edge, define them precisely, test solutions quickly in real conditions, and spread what works across the force and industry before the enemy adapts again.

That matters in the drone fight because requirements can change in weeks. A jammer that works in one environment may fail in another. A drone tactic that works today may be obsolete before a formal program catches up.

ITC is not a substitute for acquisition reform but can make acquisition reform useful by connecting real battlefield problems to rapid experimentation, commercial technology, and new operating concepts while they are still relevant.

Make Speed Permanent

The DoW cannot keep relearning the same lessons every time Americans are already in harm’s way. During crises, the DoW creates fast, adaptive organizations, pushes authority closer to the edge, and focuses on mission outcomes. Then, when the crisis fades, those organizations are shut down and the culture snaps back to the old process.

That cycle has to end. The DoW needs to preserve wartime learning loops in peacetime. That means maintaining organizations designed for speed, staffed with operators, acquisition professionals, technologists, intelligence analysts, and contracting experts who can detect emerging problems, test solutions, and spread what works across the force.

It also means changing what the institution rewards. Leaders should be promoted for finding real operational problems, testing imperfect solutions, killing bad ideas early, sharing what failed, and delivering mission outcomes — not simply for complying with process.

Congress has to help. Portfolio Acquisition Executives cannot adapt quickly if funding is trapped in categories built around static requirements. They need the financial agility to move money as threats change, solutions evolve, and operational needs shift.

This is not about weakening oversight. It is about making oversight match the speed of modern warfare. The DoW needs a permanent system for learning and adapting before the next crisis begins.

A heavy consequence to bear

The cost of this failure is not abstract. I saw it firsthand in Afghanistan. When the enemy adapts faster than we do, Americans and our allies pay for that delay with their lives.

The Department of War does not just need a faster acquisition system. It needs a faster learning system — one that can identify problems from the edge, test solutions in real time, spread what works, and keep doing it after the immediate crisis fades.

The next war will not wait for our requirements process to catch up. Neither should we.