If there is one game the Pentagon knows how to play, it is "reforming defense procurement." It has gone through the drill more times than it or I can remember.

The script is always the same. A "reform" program is announced with great fanfare. Experts are convened -- all from or on their way to the defense industry -- commissions and panels meet, reports are issued and recommendations are offered. Then it all peters out, and nothing changes. The whole game is just another form of "rounding up the usual suspects."

How do I know this time won't be different? By the Obama administration's defense appointments. With the exception of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who seems to have some inclinations toward genuine reform, they are hacks. All either served in Pentagon jobs in the Clinton administration or come from the defense industry, or both. They have demonstrated for years that they are custodians of business as usual.

A further clue to the meaninglessness of the president's "reform" initiative is its focus on "waste, fraud and abuse" in defense budgeting. There is no shortage of all three, in the Pentagon as in all government departments. But the only "reforms" this focus will elicit are changes in procedures, which are not the heart of the problem.

More "reviews," more layers of bureaucracy and more PowerPoint briefings will do nothing to reduce waste, fraud and abuse. The system will have dozens of work-arounds for any changes that might actually threaten rice bowls. Again, we've seen it all before, with virtually every new administration.

What would real reform of defense procurement entail? First, the U.S. government would reform what is being procured. Most current and projected major defense programs are buying weapons and other "systems" that are outdated or simply represent a false understanding of war.

The U.S. government spends tens of billions of dollars on computerized command and control systems that encourage more and more centralization of decision-making. But sound military doctrine calls for decentralized decision-making.

The U.S. Army's Future Contract System, the most expensive current Pentagon program, is a Rube Goldbergian, semi-portable Maginot Line that in combat would collapse of its own internal complexity. The Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter-bomber is another F-111, a flying piano that is useless for the one attack aviation function that really works, supporting ground troops.

Only a handful of the ships the U.S. Navy wants are useful in coastal waters, where future naval actions are likely to be fought. These and many similar "legacy" systems are military museum pieces, designed for wars with the armies, navies and air forces of other states. Serious defense procurement reform would start by canning all of them.

(Part 2: How to implement a Pentagon reform that would really work)

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

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