For years, I've watched the Pentagon's innovation process with the same mixture of frustration and respect that a coach feels for a team with immense potential but a flawed game plan. So when I heard the news that the Defense Secretary is considering dismantling the JCIDS process , I didn't see an act of destruction; I saw an opportunity for a profound transformation.

My career, from my time leading the U.S. Army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF) in a combat zone to my work today , has been a master class in the painful realities of defense acquisition. The current system is a leviathan, built to generate a long list of requirements and a detailed plan for the "perfect" solution. It is a system that believes perfection can be found on a timeline measured in decades, not weeks. The resul

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