American flag displayed on a laptop screen and Elon Musk post about DOGE on X displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 13, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should take steps to speed up the defense acquisition process and reduce barriers to foreign military sales, the chief executive of General Atomics’ aeronautical systems division said in a new letter.
“Within GA-ASI’s own export market, poor US Government (USG) policy and sluggish bureaucratic decision-making has opened the door for competitors like China, Turkey, and Israel to win important international customers,” Linden Blue wrote in the Jan. 24 letter addressed to DOGE head Elon Musk and released by the company today. “Sales lost to these competitors while we waited on some USG action means less funding available for re-investment into R&D and modernized manufacturing infrastructure.
“Bold leadership is needed. Past reform efforts, often supervised by the very organizations most in need of reform, have failed. DOGE has the potential to drive meaningful change, and we are ready to help where we can,” he said.
Blue’s letter comes about a week after L3Harris CEO Chris Kubasik sent a letter to Musk laying out his ideas on how to reduce Pentagon bureaucracy, including by eliminating certain government accounting rules as well as reducing regulations that require defense contractors to submit detailed pricing data. At the time, Kubasik’s letter — which also directly criticized the outgoing Biden team — seemed an outlier. With General Atomics now following suit, it could signify a trend in which others in industry now race to get their own takes in front of DOGE.
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The agency (not a Department, despite the name) was formally established on inauguration day, with the White House issuing an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency. The order renamed the existing US Digital Service as the US DOGE Service and tasked it with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” specifically by improvements to software, networks and IT systems.
While the Defense Department waits to see how DOGE could seek to overhaul existing processes or systems, defense contractors have begun soliciting Musk with their own ideas for reform.
In his letter, Blue calls for setting time limits on Defense Department milestones for larger acquisition programs, specifically suggesting that the length of time between when a program’s requirements are first defined and a product’s initial operational capability be capped at five years.
He criticizes a culture of “buck-passing” in the foreign military sales process, stating that greater accountability is needed across the State Department, Pentagon and military services to ensure an administration is meeting its security cooperation goals.
That can be accomplished by instating “clear lines of authority and responsibility, time limits for decision-making, and a modern IT system to track the distribution and expenditure of billions of dollars (entirely funded by foreign customers) in the US FMS administrative fund account,” he said.
Finally, Blue recommends revamping the US government’s current interpretation of the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement that governs the export of missiles and uncrewed aerial system, arguing that the US should focus its attention on “focus on missile technology tied to weapons of mass destruction rather than UAS.”
The MTCR has been a longstanding concern of General Atomics, which has held that the US’s current posture is too restrictive, and has resulted in stricter controls for drones than exist for other military aircraft, including advanced, lethal capabilities like fighter jets. (On the way out the door the Biden administration issued guidance loosening the interpretation of MTCR, but primarily for space-related technologies.)
“We should counter the unfair market advantages gained by foreign suppliers not subject to self-imposed MTCR limitations. Further, we must objectively balance the prioritization of technology security with that of arming allies and partners (using their own money!) for future conflicts and increased burden-sharing,” he wrote.
