The Pentagon’s Best Schools & Safest Nuclear Program with the Expanse’s “Dream of Mars”
The United States' hidden cache of state capacity inside the Department of Defense
You know what I love most about Mars? They still dream. We gave up. They’re an entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden - Franklin DeGraaf in Remember the Can’t Episode 3 Season 1 of The Expanse
In The Expanse, a character observes the civilizational contrast between Earth and Mars. Mars is unified by a dream: transforming a lifeless rock into a garden. Earth had a garden and paved it over. Mars still dreams; Earth gave up.
The observation resonates because it touches on lost state capacity: the ability not just to imagine better futures but to systematically build them. America once had that capacity. We built the Interstate Highway System, landed on the moon, created the internet. We were Mars. Somewhere along the way, we became Earth.
Or so the narrative goes.
The same federal institution demonstrates both spectacular dysfunction and extraordinary implementation success.
The Dysfunction Is Real
The United States Department of Defense has failed its financial audit seven consecutive times since audits became mandatory in 2018. The Pentagon cannot properly account for its $824 billion budget. In 2024, auditors gave DoD a “disclaimer of opinion.” They couldn’t obtain sufficient evidence to form any opinion on the finances.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, once projected to cost $233 billion, now exceeds $428 billion in acquisition costs (84% over initial estimates), with total lifetime costs now exceeding $2 trillion. The aircraft remains plagued by cost overruns, delays, and poor performance. Mission-capable rates hover around 50-60%.
The Zumwalt-class destroyer program was cut from 32 ships to just three after costs ballooned to $7.5 billion per ship. That’s more than many aircraft carriers. The ship’s primary weapon system was canceled because ammunition cost $800,000 per round. Together with the Littoral Combat Ship, these programs “consumed tens of billions of dollars more to acquire than initially budgeted” and delivered far less capability than promised.
This is the military most Americans imagine: bloated, wasteful, bureaucratic, lost in its own complexity. These failures are real and staggering.
The Success Is Also Real
This same institution operates America’s highest-performing school system. DoDEA students scored 234 in fourth-grade reading on the 2024 NAEP, outperforming the national average of 214. That’s roughly two grade levels ahead. In eighth-grade math, DoDEA scored 291 versus 272 nationally. When 2024 NAEP results showed national reading scores declining, DoDEA was the only jurisdiction where scores increased.
The Pentagon runs the world’s safest nuclear energy program. For over seventy years, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has operated more than 80 nuclear-powered vessels without a single reactor accident resulting in radiological release. Since 1968, no personnel have exceeded 5 rem/year radiation exposure, well below federal limits. Civilian nuclear power looks reckless by comparison.
Buried within the defense budget sits one of America’s most effective infrastructure implementation apparatuses: the Army Corps of Engineers. In Iraq alone, the Corps delivered over $9 billion in reconstruction projects. Schools serving 324,000 students. Crude oil facilities producing 3 million barrels daily. Water projects serving 3.9 million people. Delivered faster than it takes California to approve high-speed rail.
The Paradox
The Pentagon that cannot find warehouses containing billions in spare parts operates schools that consistently outperform Massachusetts. The institution that has missed its audit deadline for seven consecutive years maintains a seven-decade nuclear safety record without peer. The military that wasted $24.5 billion on three Zumwalt destroyerssystematically deploys renewable energy faster than civilian utilities.
These contradictions coexist within a single bureaucracy.
Policy circles obsess over state-level education reforms while ignoring the federal government’s most consistently successful schools. We debate renewable energy deployment while the Pentagon systematically builds microgrids. We agonize over infrastructure failures while the Corps delivers complex projects in war zones.
The left resists militarization of civilian functions. The right resists expansion of federal power. Both prefer not to acknowledge that the U.S. military may be better at implementing domestic policy than civilian agencies designed for that purpose.
But there’s a deeper story here, one that’s been almost entirely forgotten...
I. The Education Apparatus: Beyond K-12 Excellence
How DoDEA Became America’s Best School System
When fourth-graders in DoDEA schools scored 234 on the 2024 NAEP reading assessment, they outperformed every single state. The national average was 214. Their eighth-grade peers scored 282 versus a national average of 257. In mathematics, DoDEA fourth-graders averaged 251 against a national 237; eighth-graders hit 291 versus 272 nationwide.
These translate to proficiency rates of 53% in eighth-grade reading compared to 29% nationally, and 54% in fourth-grade math versus 39% nationwide. Unlike state reforms that show recent gains, DoDEA’s performance has been consistent for decades.
The immediate objection (a fair one) is selection bias. Military families have stable employment, guaranteed healthcare, housing. Officers are college-educated. Perhaps DoDEA’s success tells us nothing about educational methods and everything about student populations.
But this objection requires careful examination. DoDEA serves approximately 67,000-71,000 students across 160-163 schools in 11 countries, seven states, Guam, Puerto Rico. This is a diverse, geographically dispersed population including both officers’ and enlisted families. The system maintains consistent excellence whether schools are in South Korea, Germany, or Kansas. When states like Massachusetts and New Jersey (serving more advantaged populations than the national average) are compared to DoDEA, the Pentagon’s schools still win.
The reality of military family demographics is more complex than stereotypes suggest. Contrary to popular perception, military recruits don’t come disproportionately from poor families. A Heritage Foundation analysis found that enlisted recruits in 2006-2007 came from neighborhoods with median household incomes of $54,834, above the national average of $50,428. Low-income families are underrepresented in the military, while middle-class families are overrepresented. Over 60% of 2016 enlistments came from neighborhoods with median household income between $38,345 and $80,912.
Yet despite stable employment and middle-class origins, military families face significant challenges. Between 24% and 27% of active-duty military families experience food insecurity, roughly double the national rate of 13.5%. Approximately 15% rely on food stamps or food banks. This paradox (middle-class families with stable employment facing food insecurity) reflects the unique stressors of military life: frequent relocations every 2-3 years that disrupt spousal employment, unemployment rates for military spouses running 24 percent before the pandemic, housing costs in high-cost military locations, financial volatility of special pays and deployment-related expenses.
Military children also face elevated mental health challenges despite their families’ relative economic stability. Research shows that approximately 30% of military children show signs of distress after multiple parental deployments: increased anxiety, depression, declining grades, behavioral problems. Children with deployed parents have significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to civilian children. Military children ages 5-9 admitted to hospitals are 113% more likely to receive an anxiety diagnosis and 93% more likely to receive an affective disorder diagnosis than non-military children.
When we discuss DoDEA serving a “selected” population, we must be precise: these families chose military life and passed background checks, yes. But they’re not uniformly affluent or problem-free. They represent a lower middle-class/working-class population facing unique, service-related stressors. Frequent moves that no family can opt out of. Extended parental absences during deployments. Elevated mental health challenges for children. Surprisingly high rates of food insecurity despite stable military paychecks.
This creates a “bit” of challenge. We can observe that the military implements systematically and produces superior results, but we cannot cleanly separate method effects from selection effects without experiments that will never happen. Military populations (whether K-12 families, nuclear operators, or officer candidates) represent fundamentally self-selected groups who have committed to military life with all its unique constraints and command structure. DoDEA families accept that they cannot quit mid-school-year when policies change. Naval Nuclear applicants come from the top 10% of candidates and most then wash out during training. Service academy applicants are pre-screened for leadership potential.
Selection operates at multiple levels: initial choice to join the military, continued commitment despite hardships, background checks and eligibility requirements, acceptance of authority structures that civilian contexts don’t impose. These selection effects likely explain some significant portion of military success, but we cannot determine if it’s 30%, 70%, or somewhere in between. That uncertainty should make us cautious about wholesale adoption of military methods for universal civilian populations. This constraint applies to nearly everything that follows.
What exactly does DoDEA do differently? The system implements technology integration throughout daily instruction, maintains consistent curriculum despite geographic dispersion, operates under centralized oversight with standardized accountability. Student-teacher ratios, facilities, and technology infrastructure exceed what most civilian districts can afford.
But here’s where the analysis gets uncomfortable: even accounting for these resource advantages and the complex reality of military family demographics, DoDEA’s consistent implementation of evidence-based practices across 160 schools (with no local school boards to fragment decision-making, no teachers’ unions to resist changes, no electoral pressures to chase pedagogical fads) may be intrinsic to its military structure in ways that don’t transfer to civilian contexts serving more diverse populations under democratic constraints.
From High School to Highly Specialized: Military Technical Training
If DoDEA demonstrates sustained K-12 excellence, the military’s technical training programs showcase something even more striking: the ability to take 18-year-old high school graduates and transform them into operators of extraordinarily complex systems, safely and at scale.
Consider the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. Every six months, several hundred young sailors enter Nuclear Power School for six months of intensive theoretical training in nuclear physics, reactor engineering, thermodynamics, electrical systems. Survivors spend another six months at Nuclear Power Training Units operating actual nuclear reactors under supervision. All operators are qualified on operating naval nuclear propulsion plants before their first sea tour.
The program accepts only the brightest minds from among applicants, meaning significant selection effects are at work. But selection alone doesn’t explain the outcomes: approximately 8,000 personnel maintain the world’s safest nuclear enterprise. These aren’t theoretical physicists or MIT graduates. Most are enlisted personnel with high school diplomas systematically trained to operate the most dangerous technology humanity has created.
The contrast with civilian nuclear training is instructive. Naval Nuclear operators receive roughly 12-18 months of intensive training before touching an operational reactor. Civilian programs vary widely in rigor, duration, outcomes. The Navy’s operators face immediate, potentially lethal consequences for error; the training reflects those stakes.
Or consider Air Force pilot training, where Undergraduate Pilot Training takes officers through structured progression from basic flight to aircraft-specific qualification. The curriculum is standardized, assessment continuous, seat assignments performance-based. Graduation means you’re qualified to fly complex aircraft; there’s no ambiguity about competence.
Even military vocational training shows systematic skill development. The GI Bill enables veterans to pursue vocational training in automotive, HVAC, welding, culinary arts. DoD worked with the Departments of Labor, Education, and VA to develop vocational licensing and certification pathways that translate military training into civilian credentials. Veterans with military medical training have a 41.7% medical school acceptance rate versus 40.7% nationally, despite entering with 0.16 lower GPAs and 3.4 lower MCAT scores. The training quality compensates for lower test performance.
The implementation model common across these programs: clear standards at every stage, hands-on training on actual equipment before operational deployment, intensive screening up front, structured progression with defined milestones, long-term institutional commitment epitomized by the eight-year director terms at Naval Reactors (the longest standard assignment in the U.S. military).
Could civilian technical training replicate these outcomes? For nuclear plant operators, arguably yes. The stakes are similar, the technology comparable, NRC oversight already exists. The barriers are less technical than political: the cost per trainee would be astronomical by civilian workforce development standards but that can be scaled up and optimized.
For vocational training more broadly, the military’s success partly reflects captive audience advantages: trainees can’t quit mid-program, face clear consequences for failure, have strong incentives to complete. Civilian vocational programs serve students juggling work, family, financial pressures. A fundamentally different context.
Elite Development: The Service Academy Model
The service academies demonstrate what unlimited investment in elite development produces. West Point ranks #10 among National Liberal Arts Colleges with an 84% four-year graduation rate and 6:1 student-faculty ratio. The Naval Academy’s 9.4% acceptance rate makes it more selective than West Point’s 14%.
These institutions function as both elite universities and leadership development crucibles. West Point ranks among the top undergraduate engineering programs in the nation, with recent rankings showing #3 in civil engineering, #6 in mechanical engineering, and #7 in electrical engineering.
Total undergraduate enrollment at West Point is only 4,473. With roughly 1,300 cadets entering annually and 1,000 graduating, the per-graduate investment likely exceeds $450,000 over four years. That’s sustainable for producing a small officer corps; it’s fantasy economics for mass higher education.
But the academies exist alongside a larger, more accessible system: ROTC. More than 1,700 colleges and universities offer ROTC programs. Four-year scholarships cover full tuition, $1,200 annual book allowance, $420 monthly stipend. This makes college affordable for middle-class students who commit to military service. ROTC produces the majority of military officers; the academies produce only 20-25%.
The training methodology is worth examining. Cadets attend 35-day Advanced Camp at Fort Knox, the culminating leadership assessment. “Blue Cards” continuously record leadership abilities, physical fitness, military skills during labs and training. After-action reviews are conducted after nearly every event to assess leader and organizational actions, building a culture of continuous feedback.
Research on ROTC effectiveness reveals something unexpected: a study of 234 cadets found “temporal self-distancing” (the ability to see challenges from a long-term perspective) was the only significant predictor of leadership effectiveness among factors tested. This suggests the continuous cycle of challenge, stress, feedback, reflection may matter more than specific content.
Even high school JROTC programs (which create no military service obligation) provide leadership development, civic education, life skills training that many participants credit with transforming their trajectories. The curriculum addresses Common Core State Standards while developing core abilities and emphasizing integrity, civic engagement, preparation for post-secondary options.
The leadership development formula: performance-based assessment with continuous feedback, real-world scenario training under stress, mentorship from experienced personnel, clear progression pathways, integration of classroom and experiential learning. This isn’t rocket science. It’s sustained execution of known best practices.
What civilian higher education could learn here is genuinely unclear. Top universities produce excellent graduates through very different methods: more intellectual freedom, less structure, diverse pedagogies. Perhaps the lesson is that different populations need different approaches, and the military’s structured development model works brilliantly for those who choose it but shouldn’t be universalized.
Or perhaps the real lesson is simpler: massive investment in human capital development, with clear standards and consequences, produces results.
II. The Energy Powerhouse: Nuclear Excellence and Renewable Leadership
Seven Decades Without an Accident
In the seventy years since the USS Nautilus became the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine in 1955, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has operated more than 80 nuclear-powered ships without a single reactor accident resulting in radiological release to the environment. The only notable incident occurred in 1978 on the USS Puffer when a valve opened releasing up to 100 gallons of radioactive water into a drydock. The water was fully contained, no personnel were irradiated, and the incident reinforced safety protocols. Since then: nothing.
Average annual radiation exposure for naval nuclear personnel is about one-tenth the natural background radiation the American public receives annually. No personnel have ever exceeded federal lifetime radiation exposure limits. Since 1968, none have exceeded 5 rem/year, which became the federal limit in 1994.
This safety record has international implications. U.S. nuclear-powered warships are welcome in over 150 ports in more than 50 countries precisely because the program’s well-documented record showing the absence of adverse environmental effects enables global port access. Nations that wouldn’t tolerate civilian nuclear facilities in their harbors accept American naval nuclear vessels because the safety case is overwhelming.
Compare this to the civilian nuclear power industry: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Even accounting for different risk profiles, the contrast is stark. The Soviet Union’s naval nuclear program experienced significant problems, demonstrating that military nuclear programs aren’t inherently safer. What makes Naval Nuclear safe is how it’s run.
The organizational structure is unique. Presidential Executive Order 12344 in 1982 established a dual-authority model where the Director reports to both the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Energy, serving an eight-year term with total “cradle-to-grave” responsibility for every aspect of naval nuclear propulsion from design through decommissioning.
This institutional continuity matters. Eight years gives a director time to implement systemic improvements, see their consequences, be held accountable for outcomes. Compare this to civilian energy agencies where political appointees churn every 2-4 years. The Naval Reactors organizational structure has remained virtually unchanged since 1982, 42 years of institutional stability.
The program operates extensive research infrastructure. Bettis and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories employ nearly 8,000 engineers, scientists, technicians, support personnel. Knolls operates prototype nuclear propulsion plants in New York for operational testing before fleet introduction. The Naval Reactors Facility at Idaho National Laboratory examines spent nuclear fuel and irradiated test specimens.
Independent oversight is rigorous. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards independently review each Navy reactor plant design. All U.S. naval nuclear powered warships use pressurized water reactors (PWRs) with established safety history. Four barriers prevent radioactivity release: the fuel itself, the all-welded reactor primary system, the reactor compartment, the ship’s hull. These barriers are “far more robust, resilient and conservatively designed than those in civilian reactors”.
The implementation secret: technical rigor combined with uncompromising standards, long-term institutional continuity, total lifecycle responsibility with no handoffs between agencies, intensive personnel selection, no separation between design, operation, and regulation, principles of personal responsibility, technical knowledge, rigorous training, auditing consistently applied.
Could this transfer to civilian nuclear power? The technical answer is probably yes. The political and economic answers are murkier. The per-operator training investment Naval Nuclear makes likely exceeds $100,000 and takes 12-18 months. Sustainable for a fleet of 80 ships, absurd economics for an industry competing with natural gas and renewables on price.
More fundamentally, Naval Nuclear’s organizational model (unified authority, no separation between regulator and operator, eight-year leadership terms) violates virtually every principle of civilian nuclear governance. We deliberately separated the NRC from the Department of Energy precisely because concentration of authority in nuclear matters terrifies us. The military gets away with it because military necessity overrides normal institutional safeguards. Replicating this in civilian contexts means accepting more concentrated authority than our regulatory philosophy allows.
Microreactors and Military Innovation
While Naval Nuclear operates proven technology, the Pentagon is now pioneering portable microreactors that could transform both military operations and civilian energy infrastructure.
Project Pele, launched by the DoD Strategic Capabilities Office in 2019, aims to develop a transportable, cost-effective advanced nuclear microreactor prototype. X-energy received an expanded $17.49 million contract in September 2023 to build a prototype at Idaho National Laboratory. Assembly begins in February 2025, with delivery targeted for 2026. The unit will be transportable in four 20-foot shipping containers.
The broader Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program selected eight vendors in April 2025. The goal: design, license, build, operate microreactor nuclear power plants on military installations. Microreactors generate up to 20 megawatts thermal energy (small by power plant standards but sufficient for a military base or small town).
The strategic rationale is compelling. DoD uses approximately 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day. The goal is generating 100% of mission-critical energy load at each installation by 2030.
Energy resilience matters for national security. Between 2002-2011, approximately 1,000 soldiers were killed on fuel-related missions to forward operating bases. Microreactors that eliminate those supply lines save lives.
But the real innovation may be the commercial dual-use potential. DoD is effectively de-risking early-stage projects for broader commercial adoption, using military procurement to validate technologies that private capital won’t yet fund.
This isn’t unprecedented. The Army Corps of Engineers successfully operated small nuclear reactors for remote sites from 1954 through 1979. The Shippingport commercial reactor (America’s first civil nuclear power station) grew directly from the naval nuclear program.
The innovation pipeline: DoD becomes early adopter and validator, the Defense Innovation Unit manages private sector partnerships, testing at military bases provides real-world operational data, regulatory pathways get established through DoD-NRC coordination, technology becomes de-risked for subsequent commercial deployment.
The model shows how military procurement can serve broader public purpose. GPS, the internet, countless medical technologies emerged from defense research. Microreactors could follow that path.
But limitations exist. Military procurement moves slowly despite rhetoric about “rapid advancements.” Project Pele launched in 2019 for 2026 delivery. Regulatory approval remains uncertain. The commercial business case depends on unit economics that won’t be clear until multiple units are deployed.
Renewable Energy at Scale
While the microreactor program represents the future, the Pentagon is already America’s largest deployer of renewable energy.
DoD has deployed over 750 megawatts of solar capacity across installations, representing 1.3 gigawatts of total renewable capacity installed since 2010. The portfolio includes 130+ operational renewable energy projects, with the Army alone operating 950 renewable energy projects supplying 480 megawatts.
The Army plans to add 25 new microgrids by 2024, with plans to incorporate microgrids in 100% of bases by 2035. The first Army microgrid was installed in 2013 at Fort Bliss, Texas.
Fort Riley, Kansas exemplifies the scale. Its 16-megawatt solar installation powers 40% of base housing. Camp Lejeune in North Carolina operates a 17-megawatt solar installation with microgrid system that kept critical operations running during Hurricane Florence in 2019 when grid power failed.
Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base in California showcases the most sophisticated system: a 26-megawatt hybrid solar microgrid combining solar, batteries, backup diesel with 14-day self-sufficiency in the event of civilian grid failure. When power isn’t needed for base operations, energy is distributed to the nearby San Diego region.
The resilience focus distinguishes military renewable deployment from civilian. Naval Air Station Jacksonville’s solar-powered microgrid can isolate from the main power grid within 15 milliseconds of detecting a threat, ensuring continuous operation during cyberattacks or widespread power outages.
An Association of Defense Communities 2018 report noted DoD is deploying renewable projects “because of increasing threats to the U.S. electric grid.” Russian hackers have proven capable of breaking into the power grid, a vulnerability that’s strategic, not theoretical. Energy independence isn’t just about carbon emissions or cost savings; it’s about operational readiness when adversaries target civilian infrastructure.
The implementation characteristics matter. DoD uses partnership models with commercial providers like Duke Energy and Corvias, integrates battery storage for resilience, feeds excess power back to civilian grids for community benefit, employs public-private partnership structures with clear contractual frameworks.
The deployment model differs fundamentally from civilian approaches. DoD prioritizes operational resilience over cost savings, though some bases report annual energy savings exceeding $1 million. Long-term contracts of 15+ years provide investor certainty that civilian utilities rarely offer. Technology integration combines solar, storage, grid management, backup systems in sophisticated configurations. Community co-benefits create local support and regional resilience. Learning from deployments systematically informs subsequent projects.
The military’s climate targets are aggressive: 50% installation emissions reduction by 2032, net-zero emissions by 2045, 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030 (Executive Order 14057’s requirement with 50% matching on a 24/7 basis), 100% non-tactical vehicle fleet electric by 2035. These aren’t aspirational goals. They’re mandated requirements with implementation plans and budgets.
What can civilian energy infrastructure learn? The procurement models (15-year power purchase agreements, public-private partnerships with clear risk allocation, standardized contracting frameworks) transfer directly. The technology integration approaches work for any large energy consumer: hospitals, universities, data centers, industrial facilities. The resilience-first mindset applies to critical civilian infrastructure that can’t afford downtime.
What probably doesn’t transfer: mission-driven implementation where operational resilience trumps short-term economics, the ability to make multi-decade commitments without electoral pressures, unified decision-making authority without regulatory fragmentation, acceptance of higher upfront costs for resilience benefits.
But here’s the uncomfortable insight: the military is deploying renewable energy at scale while civilian utilities struggle with similar projects. It’s doing so faster, at comparable or better costs, with superior resilience features, achieving community co-benefits. If a civilian federal agency or state government deployed renewables this systematically, policy circles would celebrate it as proof of concept for public-sector climate action. Because it’s DoD, the achievement gets ignored or dismissed as militarization rather than studied for replicable lessons. That’s ideological squeamishness preventing practical learning.
III. The Infrastructure Machine: Army Corps of Engineers
America’s Original Nation-Builders
Before the Department of Education existed, before the Environmental Protection Agency, before most federal civilian agencies, there was the Army Corps of Engineers, and it literally built America.
In the 19th century, the Corps built the bulk of the nation’s initial railways, bridges, harbors, roads. Westpoint was the only engineering school in the country until the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. When America needed infrastructure, the Corps provided it.
Today, the Corps employs approximately 26,000 civilian employees on civil works programs across 38 district offices and multiple field offices worldwide. It manages construction, operation, maintenance of dams, canals, flood protection in the U.S., plus a wide range of public works worldwide.
The civil works portfolio is extensive. Congress authorizes three business lines: navigation, flood and storm damage protection, aquatic ecosystem restoration. The Corps generates 24% of U.S. hydropower capacity and administers the Clean Water Act Section 404 program.
But the Corps’ most striking work happens overseas. In Iraq, the Corps delivered over $9 billion in infrastructure projects including schools serving 324,000 students, crude oil production facilities with 3 million barrels per day capacity, potable water projects serving 3.9 million people, fire stations, border posts, prison and courthouse improvements, transportation infrastructure, communications systems, village roads, expressways, railway stations, postal facilities, aviation projects.
The Corps’ Middle East District currently operates Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs providing infrastructure for partner nations. It provides master planning, engineering and design services including site planning, infrastructure layout, building systems, utilities, force protection requirements.
The deployment expertise matters most in crises. Forward Engineer Districts deploy to disaster and war zones, designed to provide immediate technical-engineering support. Corps personnel bring real estate, contracting, mapping, construction, logistics, engineering, management experience.
One part is project management infrastructure. The Defense Acquisition University has evolved over 40+ years to train project managers systematically. The training methodology seems simple enough, but the fact that there is in-house training is more than a lot of private firms and civilian administration. Students share personal learning goals with small groups; peer feedback sessions occur every few weeks using the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) process. Integration of feedback practices increases the likelihood of use with real project teams.
But the Corps also operates under constraints, especially considering the bulk of their work is in water management. Congress typically authorizes projects through the biennial Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), with annual discretionary appropriations required before USACE can act. Nonfederal cost-sharing is required for most projects.
The Corps faces real challenges. Aging infrastructure at some facilities includes World War II-era organic industrial base with outdated depot equipment.
How the Corps Compares
The Corps offers advantages over private contractors: institutional continuity not driven by quarterly earnings, public interest alignment without the mercenary incentive structure Machiavelli identified in The Prince, extensive project management training infrastructure, proven ability to work in challenging environments, small business integration and local capacity building expertise.
Compared to civilian federal agencies, the structural differences matter: military discipline and clear chain of command, more robust decision making and governance structures (broad goals are set by the top, and decision making on topics is delegated to appropriate units), comprehensive project management training through Defense Acquisition University, access to military logistics and personnel in crises, faster deployment capability for emergencies.
The historical precedent is instructive. In the 19th century, the Corps built America’s foundational infrastructure because no civilian alternative existed. In the 20th century, it was assigned the military construction mission after the Quartermaster Department struggled. The New Deal deployed the Corps for major civil works. Repeatedly, when America has needed infrastructure built at scale and speed, it has turned to the Corps.
Could civilian infrastructure agencies replicate this capacity? The technical answer is yes. There’s nothing mystical about project management or engineering excellence. The political answer is much harder: Would Congress grant civilian agencies the authorities, continuity, resources the Corps enjoys? Would the local or regional unions accept the performance standards and deployment requirements? Would state and local governments cede enough control for centralized implementation?
The uncomfortable possibility is that we can’t have it both ways: we can have highly effective infrastructure implementation or we can have whatever we have now.
IV. What Separates Success From Failure (Fully Cited Version)
The Mississippi Lesson
Mississippi is America’s poorest state, with per capita income below $50,000 and spending less on public schools than all but three states. Yet Mississippi improved from 49th to 29th in fourth-grade reading between 2013-2019 and achieved top-tier results when demographic-adjusted by the Urban Institute in 2024.
Mississippi wasn’t the first state to pass literacy laws, but excelled at execution. The 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act mandated phonics emphasis, early screening three times annually in K-3, literacy coaches, third-grade retention. The state invested $15 million annually and sustained that commitment over a decade.
The implementation components: 55-hour training requirement for all K-3 teachers and principals, highly trained literacy coaches supporting classroom teachers, state test overhaul aligned with NAEP frameworks, intensive tutoring and summer literacy camps, sustained investment over a decade.
Mississippi’s largest NAEP gains occurred between 2013-2015 when no third graders were retained, refuting claims that retention created statistical illusions. Mississippi’s Black students now rank third nationally in reading; Hispanic students lead the nation.
Why didn’t this work elsewhere? Oklahoma passed a similar 2012 law, then defanged it two years later. More than half of U.S. states adopted early literacy policies in the last two decades, but most didn’t achieve Mississippi’s results. Policy adoption without implementation depth consistently failed (at least that’s my working theory).
Former Superintendent Dr. Carey Wright: “Educators do not call these achievements a ‘miracle’ because we know Mississippi’s progress in education is the result of strong policies, the effective implementation of a comprehensive statewide strategy and years of hard work from the state to the classroom.”
Mississippi didn’t invent phonics; the military didn’t invent training or safety protocols. Both simply executed well, consistently, over time.
The Lost Art of Government Implementation
What Mississippi and the Pentagon share isn’t just disciplined execution. It’s something the federal government once knew how to do systematically but largely forgot.
During World War II, the federal government faced chronic manpower shortages, inexperienced managers, bureaucratic dysfunction. The Bureau of the Budget launched what Kevin Hawickhorst calls a “work simplification” initiative. The concept was elegantly simple: teach managers to think critically about processes in their office and make them a little bit simpler each and every day.
The approach was adapted from “Training Within Industry” (TWI), the same methodology used to rapidly train workers in new war factories. Hawickhorst explains: “The Bureau of the Budget said, we can take this idea and adapt it for training government managers.”
W. Edwards Deming, the management consultant who would later transform Japanese industry, served as a long-term adviser to the Bureau of the Budget in the 1940s. His contribution: statistical control. Instead of trying to review every government transaction, agencies should use randomized spot checks and audits, then hold agencies accountable for managing their own work effectively.
The tools were deceptively simple. Managers learned process charting: documenting every step of how their office actually worked, then systematically eliminating unnecessary steps, combining related documents, streamlining workflows.
: “It was a process for getting rid of process.”The General Accounting Office provides a perfect example. The GAO tried to examine every single government transaction, resulting in cursory reviews, endless paperwork sent back for minor typos, no real fraud detection, everything hopelessly late. Deming’s solution: stop trying to look at everything. Use statistical sampling to spot-check agency work, relax controls, tell agencies to figure out good management themselves, but audit them randomly to ensure accountability.
This wasn’t just theory. The approach worked across government. These 1940s-50s practices were “the immediate precursors of total quality management and lean,” according to Hawickhorst. Training Within Industry died out in the U.S. after the war but became popular in Japan, where Toyota adapted it and called it “lean.” The government in the 1940s-50s “actually looks pretty modern” because “the actual founders of these disciplines were consulting for the government.”
Then something went wrong.
The Reforms That Made Things Worse
In the 1960s, American corporations embraced “long-run planning”: centralized planning offices setting high-level goals, generalist managers translating plans into actions, workers executing whatever they were told. The theory: better prioritization and long-term focus. The reality: more top-down control, more red tape, worse processes.
America was so economically dominant that the dysfunction wasn’t obvious. Hawickhorst: “People said, if General Motors and DuPont do it, then it must be modern management.”
The federal government decided it should adopt these “modern” corporate practices. The driving force: Robert McNamara, Kennedy and Johnson’s defense secretary, previously CEO of Ford. He was “keen to get the government to adopt these modern management practices, as he saw them.”
The irony is almost unbearable: “The government was actually much more modern before it was reformed than after.”The government in the 1940s-50s had progressive operational improvement, rapid iteration, workforce investment. Then in the 1960s, “people assumed it must be an outdated practice, and they actively went to get rid of it at the federal level.”
Corporate America would eventually pay for these bad practices. The companies that embraced centralized planning “got destroyed by Japanese competition”—competition using the very practices America had pioneered in the 1940s then abandoned.
The government paid an even steeper price. It traded systematic process improvement for planning bureaucracies. It traded workforce development for management hierarchies.
When Digital Transformation Actually Worked
One government success story from this era deserves attention: the modernization of the Internal Revenue Service under Treasury Secretary John Snyder in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It’s arguably the only truly successful case of government digital transformation.
The IRS in the 1940s was a disaster. Regional revenue collectors were political appointees: party donors and bigwigs. The predictable result: endemic corruption. Meanwhile, experienced accountants were leaving for the war effort, work was running hopelessly late (tax refunds took over a year), inexperienced staff couldn’t catch fraud.
Snyder, a businessman from Missouri and longtime Truman friend, diagnosed something crucial: the corruption and delays were “two sides of the same coin,” both symptoms of poor procedures and bad management. Hawickhorst: “All of these confusing procedures are what causes everything to be running late. And also, it gives cover to the corrupt officials.”
Snyder’s approach was revolutionary. Instead of just cracking down on corruption or throwing new processes at the problem, he focused on getting to the root causes: the fact that the organization didn’t make sense, documents were confusing, processes for processing returns were outdated.
His strategy started small. Low-ranking managers began improving office procedures and experimenting with new technologies at trial-run scale. The IRS reworked tax forms to be more legible. They combined related documents. They streamlined office workflows.
When corruption scandals broke and Congress tried to rake the IRS over the coals, Snyder could respond: “Shame on you. I’ve been working to make the IRS much better and here’s my successes.” Congress approved his reorganization plans.
The digitization initiative that followed was masterful. Snyder started with the most unambitious goal possible: taking a single tax form in a single office (Cincinnati) and seeing if they could automatically add up numbers instead of tallying by hand. Just one step. One form. One office.
When that worked, they expanded: other offices tried it, then multiple procedures on multiple forms, then producing records on punch cards, then integrating with Treasury headquarters. Hawickhorst marvels: “He had figured out the problems with waterfall and the benefits of agile decades in advance.”
The lesson for today’s digital transformation efforts: start small, prove it works, learn systematically, scale gradually, all while building culture change and institutional buy-in. Snyder’s IRS modernization took years but transformed one of government’s most troubled agencies.
When Reorganization Destroys Capacity
If Snyder’s IRS shows how reform can work, the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows how it can go catastrophically wrong.
The early USDA (in the 1900s and 1910s) was “the best department in the United States, the most competent,” according to Hawickhorst. Its structure was straightforward: multiple agencies each with technical focus. The Forest Service did forestry. The Bureau of Entomology did insects. The Bureau of Soils did soils.
Each agency combined expertise with mixed functions. Hawickhorst: “Each of those agencies had a narrow technical focus and they were able to attract pretty good people. If you’re an entomologist, the Bureau of Entomology could say, ‘Hey, this is the only place in the United States where you’re going to see such a breadth of issues in your career.’” Entomologists could do regulation, oversee research, talk to farmers about practices: “a little bit of everything.”
But the org chart looked “messy.” The secretary of agriculture had 10-20 people reporting directly to him. Reformers thought this lacked “integrated focus.” From the 1920s to 1950s, USDA was systematically reorganized: all scientific research moved to one agency, all farmer aid to another, all regulation to a third.
On paper, this looked much cleaner. In practice, it destroyed what made USDA effective.
The research agency, separated from farmers and regulation, “no longer work[ed] with farmers. It didn’t care that much about the usefulness of its research. Its research rapidly became much less applied.”
The farmer aid agency, isolated from research and other perspectives, “became completely and totally captured by the farm lobby. The agency did absolutely nothing except hand out money to the farmers.”
The reorganization “got rid of the mix of perspectives and the sense of mission.” USDA went from exemplar of government competence to just another agency.
The parallel to modern corporate organization is exact: classic USDA was structured like Apple (product lines that are self-contained, with some redundancy, focused on end products, constantly growing and improving). Modern USDA is like any struggling corporation: all R&D in one organization, removed from operations.
The lesson: organizational structure isn’t just about neat org charts. It’s about preserving mission focus, maintaining diverse perspectives within units, keeping expertise connected to application, resisting the temptation to make things look tidy on paper while destroying what actually works.
V. Why DoD Implements Better: Seven Structural Advantages
The Pentagon’s implementation advantages aren’t mysterious. Seven factors explain most of its superior execution and reveal the limits of transferability.
Long-term institutional continuity. Navy Nuclear directors serve eight-year terms, enabling deep expertise accumulation and continuous improvement. Typical political appointees serve 2-4 years, barely enough time to understand an agency. The military gets away with longer terms because defense is seen as above politics.
Comprehensive accountability. Clear chains of command with defined responsibilities. Performance standards at every level. Regular evaluation and structured feedback. Meaningful consequences for failure. When standards aren’t met, people are removed from programs because lives depend on competence. Civilian agencies have accountability systems on paper but rarely enforce consequences.
Training infrastructure investment. DoD trains its own implementers rather than relying on external markets. Nuclear Power Schools plus six-month prototype training represent enormous per-capita investments. Defense Acquisition University provides comprehensive program manager training. The civilian sector invests far less. Training is easy to cut when budgets tighten because effects aren’t immediate. This is precisely what the Bureau of the Budget understood with work simplification in the 1940s: systematic training in process improvement, sustained over time, compounds into organizational excellence.
Mission clarity. Operational readiness is measurable, urgent, consequential. Either the reactor operates safely or it doesn’t; either the pilot can land the aircraft or can’t. Civilian agencies serve multiple masters with conflicting objectives. Education must balance academic excellence, equity, social services, workforce preparation, democratic citizenship. These trade-offs are inherent to democratic governance. They make execution harder.
Integrated design-implementation. Organizations that design also execute and maintain. No handoffs. Feedback loops directly inform decision-makers. Naval Reactors has total “cradle-to-grave” responsibility from R&D through decommissioning. Civilian governance fragments authority: Congress authorizes, the executive implements, agencies issue regulations, contractors deliver, states and localities operate. This diffusion serves real purposes (checks and balances, federalism) but creates massive coordination costs. This was precisely what destroyed USDA’s effectiveness: fragmenting integrated agencies into separate functional units lost the accountability and feedback loops that made it work.
Tolerance for standardization. Military culture accepts centralized, uniform approaches. DoDEA’s curriculum is consistent across 160 schools in 11 countries. Standardization enables systematic improvement. Civilian contexts value local control and variation. This pluralism has benefits: innovation through experimentation, responsiveness to local conditions. But it prevents system-wide learning and quality control.
Selective personnel. The military can screen and select, particularly for officers and specialized roles. Service academy acceptance rates below 15%. Selection effects compound training effects. Civilian institutions serving universal populations can’t select this way.
The seven factors interact and reinforce each other. But they also explain why transfer is hard. Civilian institutions operate under different constraints: political churn, diffuse missions, fragmented authority, universal service. These aren’t accidents. They reflect conscious choices about democratic governance.
The critical question isn’t whether civilian agencies can copy military methods wholesale (they can’t and shouldn’t). It’s whether civilian agencies can selectively adopt some practices (intensive training, continuous feedback, long-term leadership, outcome accountability) while preserving democratic values.
Mississippi suggests the answer is yes: disciplined implementation of known best practices, sustained over a decade, with adequate resources and political support, produced dramatic gains. Mississippi didn’t become the military. It remained a civilian education system with local control, democratic accountability, universal service. But it borrowed implementation disciplines: standardized training, systematic assessment, consistent support, sustained focus.
The historical record shows civilian government once knew how to do this. The work simplification programs of the 1940s-50s. Snyder’s IRS transformation. The early USDA’s integrated technical agencies. The Civilian Conservation Corps. These weren’t military operations. They were civilian government implementing excellently through systematic process improvement, careful organizational design, sustained investment in workforce development.
The Marshall Legacy
The Pentagon’s implementation excellence isn’t primarily a product of modern military leaders being superior managers. These are inherited institutional practices, organizational cultures, structural frameworks largely established during and immediately after World War II under leaders like General George C. Marshall, called the “Last Roman” by Churchill and the “Organizer of Victory” by Eisenhower.
Marshall’s legacy includes the systematic training infrastructure, the emphasis on after-action reviews, the integration of technical expertise with operational command, the long-term institutional continuity that enabled knowledge accumulation. These practices were codified during the massive expansion of the military in the 1940s and became embedded in organizational DNA.
The same inherited structures that enable Naval Nuclear’s seven-decade safety record and DoDEA’s educational excellence also coexist with significant modern management failures. The Pentagon has failed its financial audit seven consecutive times. In 2024, DoD received a “disclaimer of opinion.” The department can’t properly account for 63% of its $3.8 trillion in assets. The target to correct this: fiscal year 2031.
This reveals a critical insight: the military’s operational excellence in specific domains (nuclear safety, certain educational outcomes, renewable energy deployment) coexists with severe administrative and financial management failures. Modern military leaders inherit both functional practices (training systems, safety protocols, standardization) and dysfunctional ones (accounting chaos, inventory management failures, bureaucratic bloat).
The lesson isn’t “military leaders are better managers than civilians.” It’s that specific inherited organizational practices in particular domains work remarkably well, while others are catastrophic failures. These successes deserve study precisely because they’re replicable systems and processes, not dependent on the genius of any particular generation of leaders.
When we talk about learning from the Pentagon, we’re really talking about learning from what Marshall and his generation built. The same institution that operates the world’s safest nuclear program also can’t locate warehouses containing $126 million in spare parts and routinely procures equipment it may already own.
VI. The Uncomfortable Truth
The data compels an awkward conclusion: the U.S. military implements certain domestic functions (education, energy deployment, infrastructure projects) better than civilian agencies designed for those purposes. DoDEA consistently outperforms every state. Naval Nuclear operates 70 years without accidents while civilian nuclear struggles with safety. The Army Corps delivers complex projects globally while civilian infrastructure crumbles.
The capabilities exist within the federal government. They’re just in an institution we’re uncomfortable expanding for domestic purposes.
The historical record proves civilian government once had this capacity. The Bureau of the Budget’s work simplification programs. Snyder’s IRS transformation. The classic USDA’s integrated technical agencies. The Civilian Conservation Corps that employed Norman Borlaug and built infrastructure across Depression-era America. These achieved implementation excellence without militarization. We abandoned proven practices for “modern management” fads that made things worse.
Three Paths Forward
Study and Adapt: Commission comprehensive analysis of current military practices and historical civilian successes. Test adapted methods in pilots. Scale based on results.
Cautious Expansion: Expand Army Corps civil works authorization for urgent infrastructure needs. Include strict safeguards: time-limited missions, Congressional authorization for each expansion, civilian agency leadership, sunset provisions.
Build Civilian Capacity: Establish civilian equivalents of Defense Acquisition University. Implement 6-8 year terms for key positions. Resurrect work simplification training. Create modern versions of programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, using the Army Corps as an organizational model.
None of these paths are easy. The first requires years of research while crises compound. The second creates mission creep risks. The third demands political commitments unlikely to survive electoral cycles and faces opposition from contractors profiting from current inefficiencies, unions protecting work rules, and those concerned about federal overreach.
What we’re doing now: ignoring military implementation capacity while starving civilian agencies, then expressing shock when projects fail.
VII. What Might Actually Work
This analysis doesn’t claim certainty about what will succeed. It identifies patterns worth testing.
Research First
Political parties, local, state, and federal governments and agencies can and should study implementation practices: current DoD operations, historical civilian successes (work simplification programs, Snyder’s IRS, classic USDA, Civilian Conservation Corps), international examples.
Document what actually works. DoDEA’s operational procedures. Naval Nuclear’s safety culture. Army Corps project management. How the Bureau of the Budget trained managers in the 1940s-50s. Why McNamara’s reforms made things worse.
Run pilots. Scale what succeeds.
Specific Tests Worth Running
Education: Partner struggling school districts with DoDEA. Adapt teacher training, continuous assessment, literacy coaches. Resurrect work simplification training for school administrators.
Infrastructure: Army Corps project management for selected civilian projects. Test small business development approaches. Simultaneously, establish civilian project management training modeled on Defense Acquisition University.
Training: Open DAU courses to civilian project managers. Establish new civilian training programs based on work simplification principles.
New Civilian Corps: Create modern equivalents of the Civilian Conservation Corps, using Army Corps organizational structure for civilian infrastructure and climate adaptation work.
All pilots need: pre-specified outcomes, independent evaluation, clear metrics, honest assessment of what works and what doesn’t.
What Could Transfer Now
Long-term leadership: Authorize 6-8 year fixed terms for directors of major programs. This worked before the 1960s reforms.
Training investment: Establish civilian project manager training. The Bureau of the Budget’s work simplification materials still exist in archives.
Integrated authority: For selected programs, grant single agencies responsibility from planning through operation. Don’t fragment integrated functions to make org charts neat.
After-action reviews: Require systematic learning from major projects.
The Political Reality
Building support requires a coalition: governors frustrated by federal inflexibility, unions where training provides career pathways, climate and infrastructure advocates, defense hawks, public administration scholars.
Opposition will come from: contractors profiting from inefficiency (see the fight AMLO had in Mexico with his republican austerity!), those opposing federal power, unions protecting current rules, civil liberties advocates worried about militarization.
Success requires: federal employees, state and local officials, teachers, project managers. Top-down elite reforms fail.
The appropriations process remains the binding constraint. Military gets stable multiyear budgets; civilian agencies fight for scraps annually. Changing this requires increased spending, reallocation, or acceptance that improvement proceeds slowly.
Constitutional constraints (Posse Comitatus, federalism, separation of military and civilian spheres) aren’t bugs. They’re features protecting against authoritarianism. Reforms will be slower and more compromised than military models. That’s acceptable.
What Earth Forgot
Civilian government once knew how to implement effectively. The Bureau of the Budget trained thousands of managers systematically. Snyder transformed the IRS through careful iteration. USDA’s integrated agencies produced applicable research. The Civilian Conservation Corps built infrastructure that still functions today.
We abandoned these practices for management fads. We fragmented integrated agencies. We stopped training managers in process improvement. Japanese competition later destroyed American companies using the very methods America had pioneered then discarded.
The question isn’t whether democratic governance can match authoritarian efficiency. Can we learn from success wherever it exists and do the patient work of building capacity while preserving democratic values?
DoDEA serves 70,000 students exceptionally. America has 50 million public school students. Naval Nuclear operates 80 ships without incident. America needs hundreds of new nuclear plants. The Corps delivers globally. America needs trillions in infrastructure investment. Scaling excellence 714 times is different from demonstrating it works.
But scale challenges are arguments for proceeding carefully, not for inaction.
The path forward: learn from current military practices, resurrect civilian successes from the 1940s-50s, study international examples, honestly assess why 1960s “reforms” failed. Test adapted methods through rigorous pilots. Invest in civilian training. Establish leadership continuity. Accept that democratic governance won’t achieve authoritarian efficiency.
This requires facing uncomfortable truths: The federal government’s most effective implementation engine sits in the wrong agency. We had effective civilian practices and abandoned them. Civilian weaknesses reflect political choices. Building alternatives requires authorities and resources we’ve been unwilling to grant.
The Expanse poses a difficult question: What happens when the dysfunctional-but-free civilization can no longer maintain the infrastructure that makes freedom possible?
The answer can’t be abandoning democracy. But it can’t be accepting permanent dysfunction while pretending we don’t know how to implement effectively. We have examples. Mississippi proved dramatic improvement is possible. The Bureau of the Budget proved it’s possible.
Whether we choose to remember what we once knew, learn from what works now, and build the civilian implementation capacity that makes democratic promises credible remains an open question. That’s the work democracies must do. Harder than ignoring successes or outsourcing to generals. Harder than pretending we lack models. But it’s the only path that preserves democratic control while improving execution.
In an era when authoritarian states claim superior implementation capacity, that’s the challenge of 21st-century governance.