DoD has officially entered the era of “do more without more” and Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Ashton Carter has publicly emphasized the department’s many efforts to streamline the defense budget—most notably by making the most of the money it spends on buying goods and services. In an April 20 speech before the Heritage Foundation, Carter emphasized that DoD organizations and contractors must adapt to a leaner environment.

Carter explained that the era of the ever-growing defense budget has ended. National security priorities, especially the Defense Department, he said, are not “exempt from efforts to bring the federal budget under control.” DoD program managers will no longer be able to “reach for more money when they [encounter a problem] … [T]hose days are gone.”

The administration has lofty goals of trimming $400 from all of national security spending in the next 12 years. DoD officials know that a large portion of this will need to be extracted from a defense budget that has skyrocketed in the last decade. Just last year, Secretary Gates laid out his aim to trim $100 billion in efficiencies from DoD’s large procurements.

But the efficiency initiative has begun to reach its desired results of streamlining and cancellations. Carter explained that leaders have already cut back weapons programs that were not performing on schedule or on budget, such as the Presidential Helicopter, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and major portions of the Future Combat System. These programs are what some experts have termed the “low-hanging fruit” in efforts to pare back DoD’s bottom line. DoD is now getting to the point, Carter said, where “most of the programs under way are military capabilities we do need and do want.” He stressed that officials need to figure out a way to arrive at these capabilities with “the money the country can afford to give us[,]” as opposed to the infinite funding stream so many programs became accustomed to.

Thus, officials and companies alike need to embrace better contracting principles and work to perform more efficiently, Carter said. By targeting more competition, a reduction in bureaucracy and unnecessary paperwork, improving internal contracting practices, building up the acquisition workforce and getting better productivity from industry, Carter said, DoD can continue to achieve cost savings on programs going forward. Officials will continue to look to restructure or scrap unnecessary and underperforming programs, he said, but the ones that are necessary need to get more efficient.

Carter also noted in his speech that help from Congress is paramount in DoD’s efforts to become more efficient. The piecemeal budgeting process undertaken on the Hill in recent months—seven consecutive continuing resolutions this year—has cost potentially billions of dollars in wasted inefficiencies, Carter said. Without having a fixed budget in place, many programs were disrupted or halted because of the funding gaps, only to be restarted on a different baseline. The lack of certainty creates a highly inefficient environment for DoD officials to work within existing resources. There must be a regular, fixed budget process from which leaders can set strategies and achieve efficiency goals in the new era of responsible defense spending, he concluded.