The U.S. defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. About half is going to defense contractors, who have a history of overcharging the Pentagon and fleecing American taxpayers. Raytheon recently agreed to pay $950 million to resolve investigations concerning defective pricing, foreign bribery and export control schemes. I look forward to working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce waste and fraud at the Pentagon. Consolidation in the defense industry has allowed companies to drive up prices. The price of stinger missiles has increased from $25,000 in 1991 to $480,000 today. One reason is that Raytheon became the sole supplier and can drive up costs. We should make defense contracting more competitive, helping small and medium-sized businesses to compete for Defense Department projects. We can do this by reducing massive sole-source contracts that only specific large companies can fulfill, breaking up major acquisitions into smaller programs, and improving funding and administrative support to help companies cross the "valley of death" between research and product commercialization. The Defense Department also needs better acquisition oversight. Defense contractors have gotten away with overcharging the Pentagon and ripping off taxpayers for too long. DOGE should provide recommendations for systems to better manage government spending and acquisition.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.