FORT MCNAIR—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to undertake far-reaching reforms on the way the U.S. military buys weapons, promising a sweeping overhaul of the way the Defense Department defines requirements, manages acquisition, and tests new systems.
The fundamental goal, which Hegseth underscored in a one-hour speech at the National War College, is “speed.” He repeated the word more than 25 times in his remarks.
“We won’t do incremental improvements,” Hegseth said to some 270 attendees, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior Defense Department officials, and defense industry executives. Air & Space Forces Magazine was among a select few media outlets allowed to attend the speech, which appeared to be received cordially.
“This is about fundamentally reshaping our approach from concept to delivery,” Hegseth said, summing up the reforms intended to overhaul the Pentagon’s acquisitions enterprise, in an address titled “The Arsenal of Freedom.”
“We’re injecting speed and agility into every facet, ensuring that we can outpace our adversaries and maintain our technological edge in places like AI, cyber, and space,” Hegseth said. “It’s not about building a military that is not only strong, but it’s how to be adaptable, resilient, and ready to meet any challenge with a magazine depth that makes sure that any fight we choose or that which is thrust upon us is an unfair battle.”
The push for acquisition reform is not new. For decades, the Pentagon has promised to alter its sometimes cumbersome weapons purchasing enterprise, which is marked by baseline requirements for basic capabilities, extensive testing programs, and regulations designed to ensure fair competition for the nearly trillion dollars the Pentagon spends annually.
One change in emphasis this time is that Hegseth stressed the speed of getting new capabilities into the military’s hands more than a focus on cost savings.
Hegseth said the U.S. military must be willing to accept imperfect solutions that, while unable to meet 100 percent of requirements, can nevertheless be delivered faster, made more modular or updatable, as the result of greater competition or private investment.
Hegseth also tackled the underlying challenge of manufacturing capacity, an issue that has become increasingly alarming as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East exposed shortages in weapons stockpiles, and long lead times for replenishment. “It is not just about what we can make,” Hegseth said. “It’s how much of it we can make, how quickly, and how quickly we can deliver it.”
The address was the Pentagon chief’s first systematic presentation of his new acquisition philosophy, and had been foreshadowed in Air & Space Forces Magazine and other publications earlier this week. Skeptics worry that the approach could raise some risks for the military, such as acquiring solutions that do not ultimately mature as expected or funding multiple programs and spending more than necessary.
Hegseth acknowledged the long and tortured history of acquisition reform, opening his speech with a lengthy prelude from a speech given by Donald Rumsfeld in 2001. “Previous administrations have tried and failed to address these issues,” Hegseth noted, confidently predicting that this time will be different. “We will have—and we will be—the arsenal for freedom.”
Acquisition Overhaul
Hegseth’s vision for overhauling the Pentagon’s acquisition system is the latest—and most significant—in a series of procurement reforms he’s introduced over the last year. In March, he mandated that all DOD acquisition offices apply commercial best practices to software acquisition, and in June he unveiled sweeping changes to the way the department buys and fields drones, calling for the services to achieve “drone dominance” by 2027.
More recently in August, Hegseth announced the department would scrap its cumbersome requirements process, known as the Joint Capability Integration and Development System, and replace it with a Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board.
The Secretary’s newest reforms call for slashing the reviews and bureaucratic processes that slow buying practices. He stressed greater focus on trying to use commercial options first, before developing new solutions, and ensuring greater production capacity across the industrial base.
Hegseth’s plan for achieving greater speed involves making program offices more flexible and accountable. Along those lines, he called for the services to replace program executive offices—which manage acquisition efforts as individual, siloed programs—with a portfolio approach that is more flexible and encourages resource-sharing.
Proponents of portfolio acquisition say the construct could provide more flexibility to move resources among programs as threats and needs evolve and more transparency into how much funding is actually required to perform certain missions.
Hegseth said his department will now prioritize schedule performance over compliance and embrace iterative delivery targets that emphasize fielding technology that incrementally improves on a more frequent cadence. To hold companies accountable, the DOD will introduce “portfolio scorecards” that measure performance based on how much commercial capability a program contains or whether it is meeting schedule targets. How strictly that oversight will be enforced and the precise metrics for the new system have yet to be fully articulated.
The Pentagon will also emphasize “multi-track” acquisition approaches where multiple vendors remain on contract, competing and offering buyers options as technologies mature prior to initial production.
“We will foster competition, embrace modularity, and pursue multi-source procurements at every opportunity, moving fast to contract, test, scale, and deploy when a solution is clear,” he said.
To increase production capacity, the department is creating a Wartime Production Unit, which Hegseth said will replace the Joint Production Accelerator Cell, established in 2023 to boost weapons manufacturing capacity.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the new office will differ from the JPAC, but Hegseth noted that the unit will offer financial incentives for companies that increase production rates and delivery speed, and will negotiate contracts on faster timelines.
Modernizing Foreign Military Sales
The Pentagon also has several initiatives underway to improve its foreign military sales process, which Hegseth, and others before him, have criticized as broken and ineffective.
“President Trump is securing deal after deal to bring cold, hard cash to American manufacturers, but our processes are too slow and our industrial base is too inefficient to keep up and deliver on time to our allies and partners,” he said.
Hegseth said that oversight of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign military sales and helps train allies on U.S. equipment, would shift from the Pentagon’s policy shop to its acquisition office. A tighter link to the acquisition community, Hegseth said, will help speed weapons sales to foreign governments.
Along with the DSCA realignment, the department has directed programs, as they develop acquisition strategies, to consider and incentivize exportability as part of that process. Hegseth said the Pentagon is also modernizing its IT infrastructure and working with combatant commands to root out inefficiencies and support faster deals.
Industry Response
Initial reactions from experts and industry to the reforms were largely positive, as they reflect similar proposals made in recent years by Washington think tanks, former Pentagon officials, and lawmakers of both parties. The House and Senate armed services committees have pending legislation in play to address weapons buying practices, prioritize speed, and increased production capacity across the defense industrial base.
Jerry McGinn, director for the industrial base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Nov. 5 that there is “broad, bipartisan consensus” that the defense acquisition system is sluggish and industrial base capacity falls well short of what the U.S. military would need in conflict.
“These reform efforts have been building over the past decade through various initiatives, such as the creation of a defense innovation ecosystem through the Defense Innovation Unit and similar organizations, as well as the congressional commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) reform, and have now reached a critical mass,” McGinn wrote.
The memo includes a detailed implementation schedule that would require the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment to issue guidance within 45 days and the military services to submit their own plans of action within 60 days. Within that same timeframe, the services must identify initial program portfolios and, by the six-month mark, publish the “portfolio scorecards” that lay out schedule-driven requirements and prioritize commercial technology integration.
Sticking to that implementation plan will be key, McGinn said, making a nod toward past reforms that have failed due to a “lack of follow-through.” He noted that one self-inflicted constraint that could work against the department is the size of this administration’s acquisition cadre, which has shrunk amid federal workforce cuts.
One executive, who requested anonymity, spoke optimistically: “I think this administration is the best opportunity I’ve seen in my career for this to actually work,” the industry executive said. “I’ve never seen more alignment across the services up and down the ranks for this type of stuff to get implemented. … My confidence in it is growing.”
Several firms released statements with similar praise. Applied Intuition, a software and AI-focused startup, said the Pentagon’s reforms will make it easier for non-traditional companies to work with the department.
“The Department of War’s move toward an acquisition approach that mirrors commercial development is the most important step it can take to accelerate capability delivery,” Applied’s Chief Technology Officer Peter Ludwig said in a statement after Hegseth’s speech. “Modern systems evolve too quickly for bespoke development cycles.”
The Aerospace Industries Association, which represents both traditional and non-traditional defense and commercial firms, said the Pentagon’s reforms are “ambitious” and “long-needed,” and will require close collaboration to succeed.
“For this plan to work, industry and government must work closely to implement these reforms and fine-tune the details,” AIA President Eric Fanning said. “We welcome the push for innovation and the promise of real, actionable change. The defense industrial base is ready to answer the call.”
