The Pentagon is bloated. Decades of fighting insurgents in the desert left the US military with a massive, calcified training regime that is utterly useless for the next big fight. Now, the brass wants to burn it down. Or at least, “creatively destroy” it. That is the word from Adm. Frank Bradley, head of Special Operations Command. Speaking at the annual SOF Week in Tampa, Florida, Bradley made it clear: the military has to stop doing things that do not matter anymore.
Time is finite. Soldiers need sleep. You cannot just keep piling new tech training onto an already packed schedule without throwing something else in the trash. Bradley remembers the old days. As a young sailor, he dropped lead weights on strings to measure water depth, scribbling numbers on plexiglass with grease pencils. Tech evolved. The Navy moved on. The same brutal pruning must happen now across the entire force.
It will not be easy. Bureaucracy is a stubborn beast. Cutting training requires high-level sign-offs, and some old-school skills still hold value. But the battlefield is changing fast. The war in Ukraine proved that. Today’s troops need to master drones, electronic warfare, and counter-drone tactics. They cannot do that if they are stuck checking boxes on outdated checklists.
The luxury of the Global War on Terror is gone. Gen. Frank Donovan, chief of US Southern Command, laid it bare. In Iraq and Afghanistan, American troops had everything. Massive bases. Endless logistics. Clear skies. Unlimited communications. “We have none of that in SOUTHCOM,” Donovan warned. The US has not fought a peer adversary under real pressure in decades. Grit still matters.
So how do you balance it? Special operators still have to swim through freezing, violent surf to infiltrate a beach. But now they also have to operate complex electronic warfare gear. It is a brutal balancing act. Commanders must decide daily where to spend their most valuable resource: human brainpower. The old calendar has to go. Adapt or die.
