According to the Pentagon’s Top Weapons Buyer.
On November 7, SecWar Pete Hegseth* pressed executives of industries developing and manufacturing military weapons to focus on speeding up delivery of those weapons and producing more of them. To do this, he urged industry to invest its own dollars to upgrade facilities, up-skill workforces, and expand capacity. Speed was embodied throughout many elements of this acquisition-overhaul announcement. **
A couple of days later, however, there was an interesting twist on last week's pronouncements [Speed not a mandate for Pentagon acquisition overhaul, says top weapons buyer - Breaking Defense]. The head of the Pentagon office publishing that report, Michael Duffey, told reporters, “There’s certainly no question about the emphasis on speed, but recognizing that there’s a need for judgment and flexibility in that triangle of cost schedule performance. One thing we’re doing around here nowadays is we’re now saying ‘schedule, performance, cost’ instead of ‘cost, schedule, performance,’ just as a way of emphasizing the fact that speed is priority amongst us.”
Fortunately, a 39-page acquisition strategy document is available to shed further light on new Pentagon plans for acquiring weapons. The Conclusion of that document is below.
The DOW is postured to make significant acquisition transformations at a time when the nation and the warfighter demand urgency and speed from our acquisition system. The WAS requires an overhaul to create acquisition flexibility by delegating greater responsibility and ownership over programs and increasing requirements and resourcing flexibility and agility, enabling responsive execution. The Department will overhaul the processes in place to balance speed and rigor, while promoting competition, incentivizing faster execution, taking calculated and shared risks to accelerate increased production, and shifting from a culture of compliance to rapid and mission-focused execution. Contractors also will be provided additional flexibility in how they bid to solve problems and integrate into the Department’s planning earlier and more often. The Department will drive operational excellence and accountability in the DIB and train the WAW to ensure they are fully aware of existing opportunities for flexibilities they are empowered to use.
*[Note: In this document, SecWar = Secretary of War, DOW = Department of War, WAS = Warfighting Acquisition System, DIB = Defense Industrial Base, WAW = Warfighting Acquisition Workforce]
Although substantial consensus has been reported about Secretary Hegseth’s announced reforms of acquiring weapons, many details are yet to be defined, which will require fine-tuning by industry and government. Also, there could be industry push-back against some of the features, such as taking a lot more risk and a lot more things will fail, fixed-price contracts in development work, and the reality of long-term resourcing from a year-by-year government. Also, these game-changing reforms come as House and Senate armed services committees work to reconcile reform proposals – hopefully in step with the Pentagon’s plans – in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
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**Three sources for detail on Secretary Hegseth’s speech are below.
Hegseth presses defense execs to move faster in speech laying out sweeping acquisition changes - Breaking Defense; Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program - Defense One; Hegseth: Pentagon 'Fundamentally Reshaping' Weapons Acquisitions.
