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The drone warfare revolution in Ukraine and the Middle East has proved that former United States Marine Corps Commandant David Berger’s “Force 2030” organizational reforms were absolutely crucial. We desperately need more innovative, risk-taking defense leaders such as Berger.
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Berger has put the USMC in a prime position to effectively wage war with China by trading its tanks, cannon artillery, and helicopter gunships for small, independent teams of drone, anti-ship, and anti-air Marine units. Absent Berger’s courage, the USMC would be doing what the Army, Air Force, and Navy are now doing: desperately trying to catch up with a revolution in warfare that prior service chiefs chose to ignore or underestimate. There’s a very good reason the current USMC commandant, Gen. Eric Smith, has doubled down on Berger’s strategy. He knows that doing so is crucial. If China successfully conquers Taiwan, the consequences for American security, prosperity, and global influence will be catastrophic.
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We need many more innovators in the military and defense industrial complex. And leaders who will empower them to succeed.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth has done an excellent job on one side of this ledger, empowering new companies such as Anduril to develop lower-cost munitions and drones capable of flying alongside manned aircraft. Anduril invests its own money and then seeks government contracts. Palantir has similarly stepped into the breach to deliver innovative technology solutions.
At the same time, President Donald Trump has imposed a long-overdue reckoning on defense behemoths such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing. He is demanding they start delivering on time, on budget, and with working products, or face serious financial penalties.
While Lockheed might have made some very special still-secret spy planes, its development of the F-35 fighter jet program has been an expensive joke. The Electric Boat Company might produce the best submarines in the world, but it has tolerated extraordinary construction delays. These companies have some of the world’s best engineers and machinists, but their CEOs and boards have too long assumed that the Pentagon gravy train would allow them to slurp up profits without regard for warfighting efficiency. Facing today’s world, finite defense funds must go only where the nation can get the biggest figurative and literal bangs for the buck.
Unfortunately, Hegseth has done a very poor job with people, notably with his decision to fire former Army chief of staff Randy George. Another innovator, George allowed combat units to buy equipment off the shelf and bypass the torpid Pentagon procurement system. But Hegseth’s ego couldn’t handle George’s support for well-qualified officers whom Hegseth refused to promote.
This ego-loyalty dynamic is corrosive to military efficacy. Instead, the War Department needs smart officers and noncommissioned officers who command the respect of their deputies via the success of their example. It also needs more civilian leaders in the form of Biden-era Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. She led the crucially important Replicator program to develop thousands of low-cost drones to help balance the U.S. military’s force scale disadvantage against the vast Chinese military. Hicks knew that success meant challenging the defense contractor giants and going around the often-parochial congressional armed services committees. But the Replicator program has been a huge success.
Still, we must also recognize how this kind of bold leadership reaps a political and bureaucratic whirlwind. Berger’s experience offers an excellent example. The former commandant faced critics who worked relentlessly to undermine his strategy and even question his integrity.
Take the highly decorated Vietnam War USMC veteran and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb. Attacking Berger’s reforms in 2022, Webb warned that “after several unsuccessful attempts by retired senior officers to engage in a quiet dialogue with Gen. Berger, the gloves have now come off. … If Gen. Berger’s new ideas were well thought out and tested, we would be seeing 90% of retired generals enthusiastically supporting them instead of expressing concern. But the realities of brutal combat and the wide array of global challenges the Marine Corps faces daily argue strongly against a doctrinal experiment that might look good in a computerized war game at Quantico.”
Webb volunteered to serve during a time of war when many others chose to dodge that harder patriotic choice. Still, his “computerized war games” wit has been eviscerated on the battlefields of southeastern Ukraine. Berger has been vindicated by Russian blood. There, Russian combined arms formations have been unable to maneuver after being locked in place by webs of Ukrainian drone networks. The war in Iran has further underlined how waves of inexpensive drones can deplete or penetrate highly advanced air defense bubbles and create havoc deep behind the front line.
Sadly, Webb’s claims were shared widely by many former Marine generals. And as recently as 2024, more than two years after the war in Ukraine began, some of these critics still failed to reference “drones” even once in their arguments. That reflects a real problem: the unwillingness of too many in the national security bureaucracy to pursue the changes necessary to win the next war rather than dream about refighting the Gulf War.
The USMC was not designed to be a smaller version of the Army — it was designed to be an aggressive, high-speed amphibious assault force. Numerous USMC field-grade officers have told me they support Berger’s reforms. Their rationale informed my argument for the Wall Street Journal shortly after Webb’s op-ed. There, I noted that “the helicopter squadrons Gen. Berger wants to cut are highly unlikely to be able to sustain operations against the [Chinese military] under saturated fire. The tanks and cannon artillery he’d like to dump would have next to no utility in the South China Sea and would struggle to get to Taiwan in time to make a difference. Massed infantry formations would have limited strategic effect in a fight over such small pieces of land and would drain American resources… as the Russians are learning in Ukraine, it’s not enough to have good equipment if you can’t deploy it, sustain it, and use it to kill the enemy before he kills you. As the Ukrainians are demonstrating, agile forces armed with potent portable weapons can deliver major battlefield gains.”
All of this begs a question: Should those 90% of USMC general officers have been promoted in the first place? The broader question should drive promotion and recruitment decisions across the War Department and in the boardrooms of America’s defense contractors.
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The U.S. needs a strategic and procurement defense revolution to reflect the realities of modern state warfare. Inertia and old-guard thinking are recipes only for American bodies and wartime defeat. We need a culture of risk-taking that can defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan, support the defense of Europe against Russia, and maintain American dominance across the spectrum of warfare.
Berger set the example. Whether serving in the public or private sector, defense leaders must follow it.
