There's an old apocryphal saying usually attributed to a WW2 German officer, who observed of the American Army, "The Americans are hard to defeat in battle, because war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis." There are any number of such sayings about our Army, most of which fill old soldiers with wry pride; in this case, because we've all experienced that chaos.
Another aspect of this is the way in which soldiers will improvise to get the job done. Weapons, tools, anything - if soldiers, especially the notorious E-4 Mafia, can find a more efficient way to get something done, they'll adapt whatever tools, weapons, or tech they need to do so.
So it comes as no surprise to learn that some of our elite forces are using government credit cards to bypass the Pentagon's torturous acquisition process, for this very purpose - to adapt, improvise, and overcome.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said U.S. soldiers are improvising with government credit cards to buy and test battlefield gear as they adapt to the exploding drone threat — as the Army shifts its long-term posture toward countering China in the Indo-Pacific.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Driscoll described how elite units like the 75th Ranger Regiment are bypassing the Pentagon’s cumbersome procurement system to test new drones, sensors and weapons in real time. At the same time, he said the Army is aligning with the Pentagon’s assessment of China as the nation’s "pacing threat," building a force optimized for the Indo-Pacific but still capable of deploying worldwide at a moment’s notice.
After a visit with the regiment at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, Driscoll said Rangers "basically just use their corporate credit card to go online and purchase things to test, and they will find what works."
"They’ll do a lot of that outside the traditional procurement process. That flexibility lets them innovate and test at a speed that’s just really hard to do in the conventional force," he added.
This should be encouraged. After all, it's something of a tradition in American military circles. Examples abound, but two that immediately come to mind are the M2 Stinger and the M2 Browning .50 caliber, used as a sniper rifle.
The Stinger we credit to Marines in the Pacific in World War 2. In 1943, Marines on Bougainville were messing around with the AN/M2 aircraft machine gun, which had a higher rate of fire than the regular .30 caliber Browning machine guns the Marines used. An E-4 Mafia aspirant, Private William Colby, took his AN/M2 and mounted a bipod from a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) on the barrel. Not one to be outdone, two Marines, Sergeant Milan Grevich and PFC John Little, improved the concept by adding a shoulder stock cut from an M1 Garand rifle and an improvised trigger mechanism to replace the original spade grips and trigger.
The Stinger worked well enough; it was easily portable and could lay down impressive amounts of fire. Only six guns were made in total, but one was used by Corporal Tony Stein of the 28th Marines to wipe out several Japanese emplacements. Corporal Stein was later awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, as those awards sadly often are.
As for the M2 Browning, we can only turn to the Vietnam War's most famous American sniper, Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hancock III. With an 8x Unertl scope mounted on an M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun, Gunny Hathcock scored confirmed kills out to 2,500 yards. This may well have been the inspiration for pieces like the Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle.
Read More: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome: Ukrainians Shoot Down Russian Drones With Shotguns
Now the U.S. Army Rangers, with their experiments, seem to be returning to this great old tradition: Play around, find out what works, adopt it, ditch the rest. That's not a bad idea; every regiment a skunk-works. In this era where methods and tactics in warfighting are changing seemingly from day to day, this may be the best way to stay on the crest of the wave. The Rangers seem to think so.
The spread of cheap battlefield technology, from drones to acoustic sensors to loitering munitions, has made stealth insertions far more difficult. "We don’t really own the night like we used to," (Army Secretary Dan Driscoll) said, noting that night-vision gear and detection tools that were once expensive and rare are now accessible to adversaries at scale.
That shift, he argued, has turned special operators into improvisers. Rangers and other elite units are now experimenting with disposable drones, commercial quadcopters and custom-built weapons to stay ahead.
Unlike conventional forces bound by long acquisition cycles, these units have the flexibility to innovate quickly.
The idea is for Rangers to test rapidly, see what works, and then pass those lessons along to the rest of the Army.
Good, but to Secretary Driscoll and Secretary Hegseth, I would say, "Let's take this show on the road." The Rangers are doing good work here; let's encourage other combat arms outfits to do likewise. Military people love to play around with equipment. They love to innovate. We should let them. We need fewer torturous acquisition processes and more M2 Stingers.
And, we should close with a reminder from the renowned Murphy's Laws of Combat: If it's stupid but works, it ain't stupid.
