Acquisition
Image: Midjourney
Acquisition Reform Needs Its Own Wargame
Stephen Bittner, War on the Rocks
To bridge the gap between policy and performance, the Department of Defense must implement wargames that specifically model how acquisition decisions directly impact battlefield strike capacity. This approach transforms vague reform assertions into the concrete numerical data required by Congress to justify and authorize critical defense legislation.
- Operational Blind Spots: Traditional wargames excel at predicting the "day one" consequences of conflict—such as exhausting missile stocks in weeks—but they rarely examine whether different acquisition decisions made years earlier could have altered those outcomes.
- Quantifying the Impact: Reform proposals often stall in Congress because they arrive as qualitative assertions rather than quantitative data; lawmakers need a "scoreable" battlefield number, such as projected strike capacity increases, to defend statutory changes.
- Empirical Progress Tracking: Establishing a recurring wargame series tied to the annual budget cycle would provide a vital benchmarking tool, allowing Congress to measure the effectiveness of reforms already on the books while guiding future legislation.
A new executive order makes fixed‑price, performance‑based contracts the default across the federal government
Terry Gerton, Federal News Network
A new executive order establishes fixed-price, performance-based contracts as the mandatory default for federal procurement. The directive shifts financial risk from the government to the private sector while requiring high-level leadership approval for any deviations from this standard.
- Portfolio Reviews: Agencies are mandated to conduct a 90-day review of their ten largest non-fixed-price contracts, including those managed on behalf of other agencies, to assess potential restructuring.
- Better Acquisition Planning: The new default forces agencies to engage in more rigorous initial planning to define requirements clearly and anticipate how a project might evolve over its lifecycle.
- Potential Process Delays: While designed for efficiency, the requirement for extra justification and senior-level signatures may inadvertently slow down the acquisition cycle for complex, legitimate exceptions.
Executive Order: Promoting Efficiency, Accountability, and Performance In Federal Contracting
Navy unveils three new PAEs for aviation, mission systems, munitions
Diana Stancy, Breaking Defense
The Navy has launched three new Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) roles to streamline procurement for aviation, mission systems, and munitions as part of a broader effort to modernize its acquisition framework.
- Strategic Leadership Tapped: The Navy appointed Vice Adm. John Dougherty to lead Aviation, Jim Day for Mission Systems, and Paul Mann for Munitions, tasking these interim executives with accelerating the delivery of critical warfighting capabilities.
- Expanding Reform Efforts: These appointments build on a momentum that began with a robotics and autonomous systems PAE in December, with further organizations planned for maritime, undersea, industrial operations, and the Marine Corps.
Innovation
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Michael Cadenazzi addresses the crowd at the XPonential conference on May 12, 2026. (Barry Rosenberg/Breaking Defense)
Working ‘outside the lines’ to scale production isn’t working: Cadenazzi
Barry Rosenberg, Breaking Defense
Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Cadenazzi asserts that the Pentagon must move beyond "outside the lines" workarounds and instead reform its core acquisition system to achieve production at a wartime scale.
- Core Over Bypasses: While organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) successfully integrated nontraditional tech firms, they did not fundamentally improve the underlying acquisition bureaucracy, which remains slow and fragmented.
- Prioritize Production Scaling: The military’s primary challenge has shifted from innovation to mass production; a successful prototype is insufficient if it cannot be rapidly certified, reliably manufactured at scale, and supported by a resilient supply chain.
- Head-First Reform: The new Acquisition Transformation Strategy (ATS) focuses on fixing the system from within by tackling difficult cultural and procedural hurdles in testing, qualification, and contracting.
- Matching Global Demand: Realigning Foreign Military Sales (FMS) organizations under the acquisition and sustainment branch aims to synchronize international demand with actual U.S. production capacity, creating more stable signals for industry.
- Closing Capability Gaps: The cost of a rigid system is seen in the procurement of drones, where the Pentagon is only now starting bulk purchases of basic FPV models years after their effectiveness was proven in Ukraine.
Defense & Strategy
Aircraft assigned to the 1st Fighter Wing conduct an elephant walk, the Air Force term for a close formation of aircraft taxiing en masse before takeoff, at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., Jan. 31, 2025. The demonstration showcased the wing's ability to rapidly mobilize forces and maintain combat readiness. (Photo credit: Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew Coleman-Foster)
What It Takes to Mobilize for War
Todd Harrison, American Enterprise Institute
Mobilization readiness — the nation’s ability to convert resources into military power at speed and scale — is a central but underappreciated dimension of military readiness. Unlike operational mobilization, which deploys and sustains existing forces, strategic mobilization expands military power by surging spending, personnel, and weapons production.
- Four Foundational Pillars: Success relies on the synergy of economic strength, workforce capacity, industrial capacity, and political will, as a bottleneck in any single area can derail the entire national effort.
- Economic Surge Limits: A nation's economy provides the financial ceiling for war, but high debt-to-GDP ratios and existing fiscal commitments can severely constrain the ability to borrow or reallocate funds during a crisis.
- The Political Throttle: Political will determines when the mobilization engine starts and how hard it is driven, influenced by threat perception, leadership effectiveness, and overall social cohesion.
- Credibility as Deterrence: To effectively deter adversaries, mobilization capacity must be visible and credible, signaling that the nation can outpace opponents in both the speed and scale of its military expansion.
- History’s Warning: The U.S. has a long "tradition of unreadiness," characterized by deep peacetime demobilization that forced a reliance on rapid, often unbalanced mobilization cycles during every major conflict from the Revolution to World War II.
The Pentagon Needs a Playbook for Munitions Surge Production
Bryce Loidolt, War on the Rocks
The U.S. military must shift from reactive improvisation to proactive planning by treating munitions surge production as a core competency developed and practiced well before a crisis occurs.
- Warm Production Lines: To avoid "boom-or-bust" cycles, munitions manufacturing should be funded as a continuous readiness requirement rather than a discretionary line item that is only purchased when needed.
- Formal Surge Playbooks: The Department of Defense should establish a common definition for "surge" and require detailed capacity data from prime and sub-tier contractors to identify potential supply chain gaps.
- Strategic Stockpiling: Legislators should authorize the procurement of long-lead materials before end-items are needed, providing an "insurance policy" against production delays during a crisis.
- Realistic Stress-Testing: The military should conduct routine wargames and physical production exercises to identify bottlenecks, supported by a working capital fund to fix discovered vulnerabilities.
Industry
Image via First Breakfast
Building the WAR MACHINE: Why the next fight will be won between the factory floor and the foxhole
Greg Little, Shyam Sankar, Madeline Hart, and Blake Seitz, First Breakfast
Modern military victory depends less on quick tactical decisions and more on the integrated power of industrial production. While the United States has mastered the "kill chain" of finding and hitting targets, the authors contend that a fragmented supply chain and a lack of real-time data currently prevent the military from sustaining a long-term conflict.
- Output Defines Victory: Modern battlefield possibilities are strictly limited by what factories can produce, making production lines the true determinant of a conflict's pace and scale.
- War Machine: The authors propose a framework that integrates the entire ecosystem — suppliers, depots, and frontline units — into a singular system that surfaces bottlenecks and constraints before they become catastrophic during war
- Supply Chain Visibility: The Department of Defense currently lacks the real-time data necessary to see into sub-tier supply chains, leaving it "at the mercy" of an industrial base it should be leading.
- Production Over Speed: While digital innovation has accelerated decision-making loops, physical "atoms" have lagged behind "bits," creating a dangerous gap where targeting capacity far outpaces actual manufacturing capacity.
- Production Oversight: Visibility into a weapon system's production should be a requirement. To overcome industry resistance, the Pentagon should emulate the approach taken by Apple and automotive OEMs, who embed engineers with suppliers to ensure supply chain visibility.
Government Reports
A soldier wears virtual reality glasses. Illustration created by NIWC Pacific.
Artificial Intelligence: Uses and Risks for Small Business Contracting and Innovation Research
Government Accountability Office
Mariner Training: Maritime Administration Should Share More Information About Financial Aid and Careers
Government Accountability Office
Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System
Congressional Budget Office
DOD Financial Management: Questions Associated with New Financial Audit Approach
Government Accountability Office
DOD Real Property: Actions Needed to Better Ensure Efficient Leasing and Space Management in the Capital Region
Government Accountability Office
Report to Congress on the Marine Corps’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle
Congressional Research Service
Research
An aerial of the Pentagon, May 12, 2021. (Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brittany A. Chase)
Establishing Standardized Metrics for the Acquisition of Services Pathway
Daniel Cary, Michael Alexander, & Ashley Presley, Naval Postgraduate School
The Department of Defense (DoD) relies heavily on contracted services but lacks a standardized, outcome-based framework to assess program health. Current practices emphasize process compliance and obligation rates rather than mission impact, limiting oversight and strategic visibility. This research develops a standardized performance measurement framework for the Acquisition of Services Pathway to improve accountability and decision-making. The study validates a “Core-Plus-Tail” governance model and identifies seven foundational metrics covering cost, schedule, quality, customer satisfaction, and compliance, enabling enterprise reporting while allowing category-specific tailoring. The Enterprise Performance Visibility (EPV) model and a Flexible Balanced Scorecard (FBS) are introduced to operationalize this model. Recommendations include updating DoDI 5000.74 to mandate the core set, automating data collection, and piloting a three-tier rollup structure to shift the acquisition culture from compliance to outcomes.
Optimizing Defense Requirements Cooperation Among the United States and Its Allies
Andrew Dowse, Daniel Marns, et al., RAND
The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are currently overhauling their defense acquisition frameworks to better address modern geopolitical threats, providing a unique window for international cooperation on defense requirements, which could significantly improve the interoperability of allied forces. In this paper, RAND researchers outline the benefits of defense requirements cooperation; highlight areas of divergence among the United States, the UK, and Australia; and analyze how the benefits of cooperation may be optimized among these three allies.
When Bans Don't Build Markets: Rethinking the DoD’s Critical Mineral Strategy
Bethany Russell, Technology & National Security Review
The U.S. government and the Department of Defense (DoD) are increasingly treating critical minerals as a core national security priority. Over the past several years, both entities have invested heavily in supply-side interventions—financing .projects, supporting processing capacity, and expanding mineral stockpiles. Far less attention however has been given to the design and sequencing of demand-side policies intended to create a durable market for U.S. and allied-sourced minerals. One of the DoD’s most consequential demand-side measures is its 2027 ban on procuring certain covered minerals and components sourced from China. The intent of the ban is clear: reduce dependencies on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and catalyze a secure supply chain. However, as it is currently structured, the ban risks outpacing industrial realities. A ban alone does not create a market; it creates a compliance obligation. Without aligned capital investment, pricing mechanisms, and scale beyond DoD procurement, the ban risks producing bottlenecks, volatility, and consolidation rather than resilience.
Events
What Is Driving Poor Weapon System Readiness and How Can Readiness Be Improved?
AIRC Insights
26 May 2026
Virtual
MILSATCOM USA
SAE Media
8-10 June 2026
Arlington, VA
Converge @ NPS
Naval Postgraduate School Foundation
22-24 July 2026
2026 Air and Space Summit
Potomac Officers Club
30 July 2026
One more thing...
A Century of Resilience, 75 Years of Mission: The Heritage of the Hotel Del Monte Campus
NPS PAO
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Hotel Del Monte’s grand reopening on May 8, 1926, following a devastating 1924 fire, and the 75th anniversary of NPS making the site its permanent home in 1951.
- Pivotal Wartime Mission: During World War II, the hotel shifted from a vacation destination to a naval aviation training school, an essential service to the nation that set the stage for its eventual role in leadership development.
- Strategic Navy Acquisition: In 1948, the Navy formally purchased the property for $2.148 million to house the General Line School, completing a transaction that officially began the next chapter of the Del Monte’s history under military stewardship.
- Graduate Education Center: The Naval Postgraduate School completed its relocation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1951, successfully transforming the former luxury resort into a premier hub for defense-focused graduate education, research, and innovation.
- Modern Leadership Legacy: Today, the campus remains dedicated to its mission of preparing warfighters to navigate an increasingly complex global landscape, embodying the American spirit of adaptation while serving the needs of the Navy and national defense.
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