The Pentagon’s acquisition process is broken. But a series of possible reforms promises to fix decades of waste and mismanagement, at least somewhat. With a potential conflict with China in the offing, there’s no time to waste.

When it comes to procuring weapons systems, reform is not only necessary, it’s vital. The F-35 fighter jet is perhaps the most infamous example. The program was launched in 1996 but didn’t go operational until 2015-2019. And even then, “it flew with unresolved software problems … and many inadequacies remained to be corrected,” as defense analysts Edward Luttwak and Eitan Shamir noted.