Executive Summary
The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) has evolved from an aspiring solution to meet joint warfighting needs into a bureaucratic impediment that actively impedes military modernization. Analysis reveals a system that consumes more than 800 days to validate requirements—nearly 2.5 years during which technology evolves, threats advance, and opportunities evaporate. This is not merely inefficient; it represents an existential threat to America’s military advantage in an era when commercial technology cycles span only months and adversaries are increasingly agile in capability development.
We recommend immediate legislative and executive action to eliminate JCIDS through modification of Title 10 of the US Code and parallel Department of Defense directives. This action requires no extended study or transition period—existing mechanisms within the resource allocation process can better achieve JCIDS’s core functions of ensuring jointness and strategic alignment, particularly by empowering the Joint Staff’s analytical arm to shape investment priorities.
JCIDS represents the ultimate perversion of military strategy—a system in which America’s brightest officers spend their days debating section headers and formatting while our adversaries field new capabilities. It transforms strategic thinking into document compliance, measuring success by staffing completion rather than combat advantage. The vice chairman’s calendar, which should be devoted to shaping the future of joint warfare, is instead consumed by ceremonial reviews of memoranda that neither guarantee funding nor deliver capabilities. The real work of joint warfighting adaptation happens despite JCIDS, not because of it.
Far from powering American military advantage, JCIDS has devolved into a ceremonial priesthood—fixated on formatting, enthralled by committees, and divorced from tangible warfighting needs. Its illusion of jointness cloaks a system in which vital modernization efforts wither under paperwork and parochial battles, even as adversaries advance at speed. By enshrining bureaucratic theater rather than true capability, JCIDS poses a structural liability that saps America’s competitive edge, undermining the very warfighting potential it was meant to unleash.