WASHINGTON – Pentagon leaders and thousands of military contractors across the country might be wondering just what President-elect Donald Trump has in store for them.
In two tweets this month that sent shock waves through defense companies and their lobbying firms, Trump criticized the spiraling costs of building a new Air Force One and a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.
That criticism triggered meetings a week ago with the heads of those two projects' main manufacturers, Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., at the billionaire's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump said afterward that he'd extracted promises to cut costs.
But it remains to be seen whether Trump will be able to stay on top of Pentagon excess after he becomes president Jan. 20. The day after Trump met with the leaders of the two defense contractors, the Pentagon announced a long list of spending projects that totaled nearly $550 million.
Trump will have a difficult time focusing on that wide range of spending and carrying out his pledge to pay for expanded military operations by trimming Pentagon waste, say experts on the way the Pentagon oversees its contracts. He won't find many friends in the process, they note.
"He's going to encounter a Pentagon bureaucracy that will instinctively say 'no' to most reforms he proposes," said Todd Harrison, a former defense lobbyist and retired Air Force Reserves captain. "He's certainly not the first president to come in saying we can cut waste and abuse within the Pentagon budget. Very few have had much success."
William Hartung, who in 2011 wrote a book about the clout F-35 contractor Lockheed Martin wields in the U.S. Congress, made a similar observation about the Pentagon.
"They don't scrutinize the original bids carefully enough, so contractors come in with a low bid while understanding that they're not going to meet it," Hartung said. "And then the Pentagon will add requirements and new features along the way. Eventually the costs get out of control."
