Defense Procurement Reform Requires Dedicated Simulation and Wargaming Analysis
Summary
The article highlights a stark gap in U.S. defense acquisition reform, illustrated by the Navy's request for 785 Tomahawk cruise missiles in FY2027 compared to just 55 funded in 2025 — a 1,200% increase that reflects the consequences of procurement decisions never properly stress-tested against real-world conflict scenarios. The author, a legislative fellow on Capitol Hill, argues that acquisition reform proposals consistently fail to provide Congress with concrete, quantifiable operational outcomes, leaving lawmakers unable to compare the battlefield impact of specific statutory changes against the status quo. While wargames already influence defense legislation — as demonstrated when a 2023 Taiwan tabletop exercise rapidly translated into defense authorization language — existing wargames only model the world as it exists on day one of conflict, never examining how earlier acquisition decisions could have altered outcomes. The article identifies a critical missing variable: no publicly known wargame has been designed to test whether specific procurement policy changes made years in advance, such as multiyear purchasing authority or other transaction authority reforms, would have produced superior force readiness. The author calls on Washington's defense think tanks and federally funded research centers to build this analytical tool, arguing it represents the most consequential near-term contribution to the current reform debate.
Key Takeaways
- 1. The dramatic jump in Tomahawk missile procurement requests exposes years of acquisition decisions that were never tested against realistic, sustained combat scenarios
- 2. Congress cannot effectively evaluate competing acquisition reform proposals without quantifiable projections linking specific statutory changes to measurable battlefield outcomes
- 3. Existing wargames successfully influence defense legislation but are fundamentally limited to modeling operational consequences rather than the upstream impact of procurement policy choices
- 4. Acquisition variables such as multiyear procurement commitments and nontraditional vendor pathways are almost entirely absent from current wargame design, creating a dangerous analytical blind spot
- 5. Think tanks and federally funded research centers have an urgent opportunity to develop wargaming frameworks that incorporate acquisition decisions as active variables to guide meaningful reform