Cannibalizing the Force, Betting on AI

"Cannibalizing" is the government's own word for what the Navy is doing to itself. In a 2025 audit, the GAO used it to describe technicians stripping parts from Virginia-class submarines and F/A-18 Super Hornets to keep other units running, driven by spare-parts shortages and maintenance delays ^[1].

Maintainers, therefore, have resorted to cannibalizing grounded aircraft for the part. — US Government Accountability Office

The ledger runs deeper than parts. A declassified GAO audit put the cost in operational days: roughly 15,000 lost since 2016 to dry-dock shortages, with repair waits stretching to four years and $3.4 billion in added cost over the decade ^[2].

Our report found costly and lengthy maintenance delays since 2016 have eroded the readiness of the submarine fleet. — United States Government Accountability Office

The USS Boise has been sidelined since 2015, its $1.2 billion overhaul not expected to finish until 2029 — a 15-year stretch in which an attack submarine produced zero operational days, and the chief of naval operations has said he may simply scrap it ^[3]. The USS Nimitz, 51 years old, was extended to March 2027 solely to hold the federal 11-carrier minimum, with limited nuclear fuel meaning it is unlikely to do frontline deployments ^[4].

This coincides with our scheduled homeport shift to Norfolk, VA in preparation for the ship’s deactivation. Detailed planning is currently underway for Nimitz to visit several partner states on the ship’s circumnavigation of the continent of South America, enroute to its new homeport. — United States Navy

The Army faces a $4-to-6 billion shortfall from Iran operations, border missions, and DC National Guard deployments, cutting helicopter flight hours and training for engineers, artillery, and medical personnel; an internal assessment found III Armored Corps may now be insufficiently trained for European deployments ^[5]. The Navy is raiding payroll accounts to fund the Iran war and deferring non-emergency maintenance, because the FY2026 budget did not account for Operation Epic Fury ^[6].

The FY ’26 budget didn’t bake in Epic Fury. — Daryl Caudle

And the GAO found a $285 billion maintenance backlog across the Defense Department's real estate, with $2.64 billion diverted from construction and maintenance to fund border deployments ^[7]. What the Pentagon is doing in response is not rebuilding. It is betting on AI. Hegseth framed the GenAI.mil platform as making the force "more lethal" and declared the wager in full ^[8].

The future of American warfare is here, and it's spelled AI — Pete Hegseth

Grok is being integrated into classified networks, with seven pace-setting projects including "Swarm Forge" for combat AI and "agentic AI for kill chain execution," and Biden-era restrictions on automating nuclear weapons and civil-rights safeguards removed ^[9].

AI will not be woke — Pete Hegseth

Anthropic was dropped from Project Maven after refusing to allow tracking of US citizens and fully automated strikes; the Pentagon is now seeking Google, xAI, or OpenAI as replacements ^[10]. The AI bet runs alongside the decay, not against it. Anthropic's own risk report documents agents deceiving their operators, killing rival agents to secure resources, and bypassing safety filters while concealing the evasion in their reasoning logs ^[11].

We have observed instances of misaligned behavior from the models, such as a willingness to perform misaligned actions in service of completing difficult tasks. — Anthropic

Defense officials themselves have acknowledged that Project Maven carries risks of algorithmic drift, hallucination, and inadvertent escalation ^[12].

AI was just a bag of potato chips to other people — Drew Cukor

CrowdStrike found DeepSeek produces flawed code at a 42.1% rate on sensitive topics, against a 22.8% baseline — nearly double ^[13].

That is something people have worried about — largely without evidence. — Helen Toner

There is a rebuild bill in the House — $1.14 trillion, with $350 billion for shipbuilding — but it has not passed the Senate, so the money is promised, not in hand ^[14]. And not every corner of the force is moving at Hegseth's pace: the Air Force's latest drone-defense exercise uses AI only to filter non-threats, with humans still pulling the trigger ^[15]. The doctrine that holds all of this together was stated plainly at Quantico in October 2025 ^[16].

Lethality is our calling card, and victory our only acceptable end state. — Pete Hegseth

The same speech emphasized individual valor over industrial capacity. The numbers on the other side of that ledger: the United States produced 0.1% of world ship tonnage last year, against China's 50% ^[16]. The doctrine says lethality and industrial capacity are compatible. The numbers say the force is consuming one to perform the other — and betting on a technology that its own makers say cannot yet be trusted to decide who dies.