Or at least trying to.  If anyone can do it, it’s Gates.  I mean, the biggest shame of the MIC is not that it increases militarization and encourages war when war is not the best answer.  That’s a huge problem, but that’s a problem from a certain vantage point others might not share.  On the Pentagon’s own terms, the current system is terrible because it’s not good for winning wars.  It’s good for getting great contracts to high level general in the Pentagon who will then get sweet gigs when they retire.  The whole thing is literally disgusting.   I use that word rarely, but I’m not sure how else one can talk about an industry that tries to make as much money as possible off of killing.  I understand the necessary evil of weapons.  I’m not a pacifist.  I have friends in the military, and I grew up around bases since my Dad was in the Air Force. But the idea of trying to make more rather than less for not protection but profit, that’s just gross.  Anyways, read more here:

Gates has signaled his frustrations with the broken and “rigid” purchasing system for months, and in a January article in Foreign Affairs magazine, he noted that the pursuit of perfect solutions combined with a lack of flexibility and innovation had made it “necessary to bypass existing institutions and procedures to get the capabilities needed to protect U.S. troops and fight ongoing wars.”

But Gates sees this year as a rare opportunity to pursue politically controversial ideas, one of his top aides said, largely because of two factors. First, President Obama’s repeated claim that procurement reforms can increase efficiency and save expenses across the government will provide “top cover” for Gates in his head-butting with a group of service chiefs that proposed last year to alleviate their woes by adding tens of billions of dollars to the budget instead of making hard choices or undertaking major reforms.