Key Points and Summary – Former Navy advisor Neal Urwitz argues the Pentagon must push forward with its new “portfolio scorecards” to fix a broken defense acquisition system, despite inevitable “whining” from entrenched contractors.
-Comparing these complaints to children crying “it’s not fair,” Urwitz asserts that the need for reform outweighs minor methodological quibbles. By adopting private-sector accountability standards used by companies like Amazon and Toyota, the military can penalize underperformance and stop wasting billions.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is piped aboard at the U.S. Pacific Fleet boathouse in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, March 24, 2025. USINDOPACOM is committed to enhancing stability in the Indo-Pacific region by promoting security cooperation, encouraging peaceful development, responding to contingencies, deterring aggression and, when necessary, prevailing in conflict. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class John Bellino)
-Citing General Patton, Urwitz concludes that a “good plan violently executed now” is superior to waiting for a perfect plan while the status quo fails.
Never Mind the Whining: The Pentagon’s Portfolio Scorecards Must Move Forward
I already know exactly what defense contract incumbents and entrenched interests are going to say about the Pentagon’s new portfolio scorecards, but that’s only because I have two kids under seven. Confronted with results they don’t like, they’ll whine “it’s not fair!”
Even if there is a kernel of truth to their complaints, our defense acquisition system is so broken, our need for reform so acute, and the proposed solution so obvious that we cannot let quibbles over methodology grind progress to a halt. Portfolio scorecards, which, according to the Pentagon, would “capture [military] programmatic performance to deliver capability, scale production, implement commercial solutions . . . [to] allow Department leadership to assess portfolio and program health,” must move forward regardless of the inevitable bellyaching.
Such portfolio scorecards can and should be a game changer. In the short-term, they can alert leadership when contractors (or government employees) are not performing and need more attention, new leadership, or deserve penalties that can better align incentives and protect the taxpayers’ interests. In the longer-term, they could empower the defense acquisitions system to at least gain parity with private-sector processes. Portfolio scorecards could demand continuous improvement of contracting partners.
After all, when was the last time you bought a product on Amazon or at an electronics store that hadn’t improved in the last ten years? The Pentagon, however, does that all the time. Without this improvement, the Pentagon will continue to waste tens of billions of dollars (if not more) every year.
The dividends to the defense enterprise – in lower costs, faster timelines, and better performance – then, are so immense that they’re worth brushing off minor concerns.
Make no mistake, the complaints will be minor, no matter how loudly entrenched interests protest. First, they will argue that a perfect “apples-to-apples” comparison is impossible. That assertion is both untrue and beside the point. AI and advanced algorithms empower us to appropriately balance different solutions’ attributes and drawbacks, so even if two solutions are not precisely the same, we can still see which programs are showing real improvement and which aren’t. We can see which programs are accelerating delivery and keeping costs in check and which ones are standing pat. There are concrete factors, from the percentage of a ship’s maintenance completed on time to the reduction in upfront bureaucracy delaying program starts, that we can measure. We have the data and the private sector has the tools necessary to provide accurate measurements.
Further, even if the argument were true – and, to be clear, it isn’t – the complaints are irrelevant. If the private sector has a far better performing product than the one the military is using – or if, say, the Navy is using a better-performing product than the Army – the portfolio scorecards will let us know if the Pentagon needs to make a Joint Force-wide switch. Precise methodology makes a difference if we are trying to judge between two solutions with nearly identical performance, but if a supplier can produce unmanned undersea vehicles roughly twice as quickly as we could before, or if automation-forward ship repair can get warships off the dock months earlier, it doesn’t matter whether the innovative solutions are a 102% improvement or “merely” a 98% improvement. They’re still a massive improvement over what we have now and are thus worth adopting.
As Leo Strauss wrote, “if we cannot decide which of two mountains whose peaks are hidden by clouds is higher than the other, cannot we decide that a mountain is higher than a molehill?”
Entrenched interests will also try to poke holes in the initial version of the portfolio scorecard. If they are making genuine recommendations that the Pentagon can implement immediately to make the scorecard more rigorous, we should listen. If, however, their complaints would lead to lengthy delays for minor improvements, we should ignore them. The scorecard, like any other product or process, should improve over time. The Pentagon should take a page from the private sector companies they are trying to emulate. It should “innovate and iterate,” allowing real world use cases to show it where improvements are possible.
Demanding a perfect plan out of the gate – and doing nothing until that plan exists – would produce neither speed nor perfection. In fact, it is that approach that so hampered our defense acquisitions apparatus in the first place. Instead of pausing at the behest of entrenched interests, we should heed General George S. Patton instead. “A good plan, violently executed now,” he said, “is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” General Patton, of course, knew a thing or two about the importance of moving fast.
Finally, entrenched interests will argue that an effective portfolio scorecard system is impossible. The private sector begs to differ. Toyota uses its “Balanced Scorecard” to identify its highest performing programs and managers. Amazon uses scorecards to measure performance for nearly every aspect of its business, from its personnel to its warehouses to its vendors. Even offices within the Pentagon already use such scorecards; the Program Executive Office – Digital is already using them to drive greater efficiency. The idea that simple scorecards reflecting straightforward metrics are impossible is false.
Not everyone raising concerns about the portfolio scorecards – and the Pentagon’s larger acquisition reform push – is doing so in bad faith. Long-term, companies may be hesitant to invest time and energy in defense projects if they think their contract could be usurped. We also shouldn’t minimize the transaction costs and lost institutional knowledge that comes with switching a project to a new Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) or contractor.
Such conceptual concerns, however, are not the same as complaining that the measurements in the portfolio scorecards are unfair. People serious about acquisition reform – which should be everyone concerned about America’s ability to deter great power conflict – must see such complaints for what they are: mere roadblocks designed to prevent changes to the status quo.
When my kids complain that something’s “not fair,” I usually respond that I appreciate their feelings but that doing hard things we don’t want to do is part of life. When the portfolio scorecard whining starts, our Pentagon should at least have the discipline of a tired dad.
About the Author: Neal Urwitz
Neal Urwitz is the CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies and served as a speechwriter for and advisor to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro from 2021-2023.
