The U.S. Military Needs To Reorganize

If a crisis can also be seen as an opportunity, the United States Department of Defense is staring at the greatest opportunity of its existence. In the last eight months of warfare with Iran, the U.S. military has produced arguably the worst performance in American history. It had many months, if not years, to prepare for an air campaign against Iran. It was facing an enemy with an already devastated air force, which had been bombed heavily by Israel and once by the United States the year before. The United States had the benefit of an advanced mixed force of land-based and sea-based air power, missiles which the Iranians could not intercept, and excellent intelligence on Iranian activity. Furthermore, the U.S. military also had access to supposedly world-leading, cutting-edge artificial intelligence capabilities, with which it helped construct much of its air campaign. Finally, the United States had the support of the Israeli air force and Israeli intelligence, pound for pound the two best services of their type in the world.

And the U.S. military failed miserably. In only a few weeks of fighting (from February 28 to April 7), the United States flew 36,000 military sorties and supposedly hit 13,500 targets. Yet, while it damaged the Iranian military, it left it able to recuperate surprisingly quickly. Within weeks of the end of the first phase of the U.S. bombing campaign, the Iranians were rebuilding their missile stock and even improving their technical capabilities. Even more depressingly, the U.S. military showed itself woefully unprepared to defend some of its most important military facilities, from Bahrain to Kuwait to Saudi Arabia. In just a few weeks it lost the ability to operate efficiently from bases that it had used for decades to patrol the Persian Gulf. Soon, the United States would have to start pulling its forces further and further away from Iran. Now, the U.S. military is admitting it may never come back.

This military failure, for that is what it is and must be admitted to be, did not come out of nowhere. It was aided and abetted by a series of destructive policies over the last 20 months, but it was built on years, arguably decades and decades, of mistakes. This brings up one of the most uncomfortable truths about the U.S. military since the end of World War II. Repeated failure has occurred even though the United States has had in most cases overwhelming economic and technological power and the ability to build and deploy the most advanced weaponry the world has ever seen, all supported by expenditures of trillions and trillions of dollars. In FY 2025 alone, for example, the U.S. spent $850 billion on the military.

Yet, even with all these immense advantages, the U.S. military has failed repeatedly and arguably more emphatically as time has gone on. The war against Iran was preceded by a 20-year War on Terror in which the United States did not lose a battle but ended up withdrawing chaotically from Afghanistan (and it just pulled its last forces from Iraq a little over a week ago). The past decades have also seen the United States lose the Vietnam War and undertake a number of quixotic and less-than-successful military endeavors.

The last two years have seen matters decay at a quickening rate. The U.S. military has been used in a campaign of dubious legality and little if any strategic effect against boats in the Caribbean. It has most likely assassinated civilians while clearly killing people who posed no imminent threat to U.S. forces. It has even tacitly admitted its own doubtful activity by returning some captured fishermen to their country of nationality. Even U.S. successes have been of little or arguably no strategic value. Yes, the U.S. military seized and spirited off Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela. However, in his place, Venezuela has been left under the rule of a number of Maduro’s henchmen, including some reputedly even more ruthless.

Then we have the Iran war, which has seen the United States lose large amounts of advanced equipment and achieve nothing of strategic value. Indeed it is probable that the United States will find itself in a much diminished strategic position in the Persian Gulf region when the war is ended, when compared to where it was on February 27, 2026.

One of the major reasons for repeated American failure, which has gotten worse over time, is a dangerous combination of arrogance and hubris. For instance, the United States might have the best weapons systems in the world, but they can be cripplingly expensive to use. Thus, the United States ran into trouble fighting Iran because it did not have a cost-effective way in which to shoot down cheaper Iranian drones—relying on very expensive Patriot and THAAD interceptors. These it has burned through at an unsustainable rate—compelling the United States to pull forces further and further back from Iran.

One of the greatest reasons to doubt that the present Pentagon can save itself was that it had an example of warfare changing right in front of its face—in the Russo-Ukraine War—and failed to adjust. It could have overseen the growth of cheaper, numerous attack drones and missiles, which are daily fired in large numbers by Russia and Ukraine, and it did not prepare to face a similar counterattack from Iran. This was hubris, a perennial military failing to understand that the rules of war apply to U.S. forces no less than anyone else.

The assumption here seems to have been that the U.S. military did not need to learn from others—poorer, less advanced militaries that could not possibly contend with American might. That is the only way to explain why, even after repeated Ukrainian offers, the United States did not adapt to cutting-edge drone tactics. Recently resigned U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll admitted it was “humiliating” to see how much more adaptable the Ukrainians were to the conditions of modern warfare.

The long-term and short-term failures of the U.S. military needs to be put into context. Arguably no other superpower of its era, from the Roman Empire to the Chinese in the high Ching era to the British Empire, has experienced so many military failures while at the height of their power.

Moreover, the United States cannot afford to spend the kinds of vast sums that it has on its military—especially considering the very poor returns. The trillions spent on the U.S. military have resulted in neither military success nor global security, and a breathing space and period of reflection is called for. Though the Trump administration has a request in to Congress for a budget this year of $1.5 trillion, the reality is that the United States should probably spend less on its military, not more. The national debt is rising at what looks to be an unsustainable rate, and interest rates on that debt are back to highs not seen for decades (when the debt was much lower as a percent of GDP).

Pumping even more money into today’s Pentagon, and adding even more national debt in the process, will, if anything, hamper and hold back U.S. defense resources going forward. What the United States needs to do is recalibrate and think, reduce the size of the military and the vast procurement structures that underpin it, and learn to adjust to this new world sensibly and prudently.

This is the opportunity the present era of failure presents. There are so many things that need correcting that small alterations will probably make little difference. The United States needs to look at itself and the relations with allies differently. It needs to see how corruption has entered the procurement process, it needs to see how arrogance has led it to over-invest in showpieces of advanced weaponry while allowing its defense industrial base to whither.

Getting rid of the physical building of the Pentagon could even be a step in this process. The Pentagon was put together in an era of U.S. dominance, in the thick of World War II, when America emerged as the world’s unchallenged economic powerhouse and the country maintained massive traditional services (armies, navies, and eventually air forces). It is not clear now whether it is helpful to maintain such a vast and bulky infrastructure.

The present ossified structure makes rethinking defense exponentially harder. What the United States needs to do is assess what technology it needs and, just as importantly, what older technologies and platforms it can rid itself of. There is a real discussion about whether large warships, tanks, even manned aircraft are the best way to defend the country. Thinking honestly about these questions is not easy in a vast building set up to create a military along exactly those lines.

So what would be the best way forward? I write this primarily for Democrats who might soon have the power in Congress to enact these reforms, and for those Republicans who are brave enough to admit the problems that now face the U.S. defense structure:

Freeze at its current levels or even reduce the funding of the U.S. Department of Defense for as long as the present administration is in charge.
Start immediate plans to rehouse the Department of Defense in a different building(s)—something smaller, more modern, more conducive to the integration of technology and national strategy.
Start a serious discussion, as non-partisan as possible, about the shape of a new U.S. military, one that has no interests in lobbying for the continuation of older, legacy systems. This conversation would include:
A serious study of the technological, productive, and adaptive lessons from the Russo-Ukraine and U.S.-Iran war, with an honest admission of U.S. failures in these areas.
A serious study on the structure of the U.S. military, with no automatic assumption that the older, domain-conceived organization (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force) is the only way to be organized.
Planning on how best to transition the U.S. military away from always expecting to lead its allies to one of being a helpful support.
Planning on the best way to root out and stop the return of corruption to the Department of Defense procurement process, including preventing close members of the president’s family from playing roles in the award and reception of Pentagon contracts.
Planning on the best way to reverse the politicization of the military and to prevent the influence of overt religiosity in the services going forward.

This is not a process for the faint of heart, and it cannot bear positive fruit for many years. The U.S. military seems, at present and probably for the next two years or so, determined to follow an anti-intellectual, anti-reflective, pro-zealotry, even pro-corruption mindset which stresses mindless aggression, testosterone shots, fighting in the service of some vengeful lord, and extreme loyalty not to the Constitution but to the administration of the moment. The Secretary of Defense made that clear in his bravado-dripping “State of the Force” speech delivered in late September in which he said of Trump administration measures: “Those generals who did not [get the message]—who clung to the ‘Woke Department’ or seem to think civilian control of the military is simply a suggestion, well, they no longer work here.”

Sentiment like that means that real change will have to wait until the military comes under leadership that will allow it to look honestly at itself and into the future.

The U.S. military has, for its size and strength, had more than its fair share of failures, and the trend line is spiraling downward. The best way to respond is to fully clean house, downsize, and honestly rethink the way the United States conceives of (and funds) its military. In other words, “blowing up” the Pentagon might be the best way to save the Department of Defense.

*Phillips O’Brien is Chair of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews and author of War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why (2025). He also writes one of the most read substacks in the world: Phillips’s Newsletter.

Source: https://www.persuasion.community/p/is-it-time-to-end-the-pentagon