House and Senate lawmakers say they’re on board with the Pentagon’s latest plan to reform the way it buys new systems, but in a report accompanying the latest draft of fiscal 2026 defense spending bill, they urged more investment in the defense acquisition workforce and ...
Acquisition reform
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth foot-stomped the Pentagon's push for acquisition speed and contractor accountability in a Jan. 12 speech at Lockheed Martin’s production hub in Fort Worth, Texas—the heart of the department’s biggest acquisition program, the F-35.
The Department of the Air Force announced seven new mission area-focused portfolio acquisition executives for the Air Force and Space Force, some of the department's first steps to implement Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's sweeping acquisition reforms.
Space Force leaders say that while they’re eager to implement the Pentagon’s newly announced acquisition transformation strategy, civilian personnel cuts and a prolonged government shutdown have depleted the acquisition and contracting workforce, adding to pressures on the cadre that could make it difficult to hit ...
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled out an expansive acquisition reform agenda earlier this month, he promised aggressive implementation and reorganization aimed at transforming the way the Pentagon develops and fields weapons and platforms. The plan appears to have been well-received by past administration officials and ...
The emphasis on speed in the Pentagon’s newly unveiled slate of acquisition reforms may come with increased near-term cost increases, analysts say. But according to U.S. defense officials, the new weapons-buying construct provides the military with enough flexibility to prevent runaway budget overruns in major ...
The Pentagon is readying a slew of reforms to its acquisition practices designed to speed up the military’s process for buying weapons and systems and structure its program offices to prioritize competition and commercial capabilities, according to a draft memo.
The Pentagon is dismantling its oft-criticized Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, pushing authority back to the military services in hopes of streamlining the setting of requirements and speeding up development of new weapons systems.
The Department of Defense is pushing ahead with a plan to automate and streamline the system it uses to ensure that software running on military networks is secure, and will start implementation next month, acting Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington said May 7.
Aerospace Industries Association president Eric Fanning says steady, predictable defense budgets, not outliers like the proposed $150 billion reconciliation package, are the way for the Pentagon to get the production capacity increases it wants.
A new paper from the Hudson Institute argues that the Pentagon should dump the entire Joint Capabilities and Integration Development system, saying it has irretrievably failed and does more harm than good. In its place, the authors suggest a more service-oriented, bottom-up system that sets ...
The Ukraine war has taught that speedy countermeasures, flexible funding and exploiting off-the-shelf commercial technology are crucial to equipping forces for modern conflict, policy veterans of the Pentagon and Congress said on a CNAS webinar.
