The report warned that America’s military might be being held hostage by a procurement system designed to buy boats, not bytes.

According to the report, the US defence apparatus is still chained to an acquisition process better suited for building battleships than buying software that might help win a modern war.

Meanwhile, a hypothetical dust-up with China in 2027 would have to be fought with whatever ageing kit and glitchy code the DoD happens to have in the garage.

The report said: “In order to overcome adversarial challenges in a modern software-driven security environment, the US Department of Defence must modernise its archaic platform-centric approach to capability development. “

It says it’s all about having the “technologically advanced” tools *when* they’re needed. Sadly, the Pentagon’s idea of “advanced” is often something that gets rolled out just in time to be obsolete.

The core of the problem is a lack of software talent, an allergy to interoperability, and a persistent delusion that the military can build bespoke code as quickly as it orders more F-35s. The report emphasises that the DoD should buy software, not develop it unless it’s willing to haemorrhage money and deliver late-stage PowerPoint prototypes.

Even when the DoD does try to embrace software, it's doing so in balkanised "siloed fiefdoms," as report co-author Whitney McNamara puts it. This means your AI-enabled battlefield edge is only as good as its ability to not crash when trying to share coordinates with another branch's system, built by a rival contractor who dislikes APIs.

It calls for the development of some software experts and giving a single tech boss the power to make sure the digital plumbing doesn’t back up mid-firefight.

The cast behind this wake-up call includes CEOs, VCs, former generals, and individuals who have witnessed the sausage being made at the Pentagon’s weapons shop. They know the game. They want the rulebook to catch up with the century.

As Second Front Systems Tyler Sweatt said, “The Pentagon buys metal well.” Unfortunately, today’s wars aren’t won with just metal. They're won with code that doesn’t crash, drones that don’t phone home to the wrong server, and systems that communicate with each other without triggering a civil war in the backend.