Secretary of War Pete Hegseth‘s newly announced overhaul of the department’s acquisition process will give opportunities to nontraditional defense contractors.
Michael Duffey, undersecretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters on Monday that this commercial-first approach could benefit the nontraditional defense contractors hoping to break into the industry.
The call for commercial systems “puts a special emphasis to the program leadership to consider nontraditional contractors, giving them a prioritization when it comes to looking at new solutions,” Duffey said.
The department is “inviting new entrants into the defense industrial base” to increase competition, the undersecretary added.
“That’s part of our priority is to seek as much competition as we can where there are new entrants or privately funded startups that are showing interest in doing business with the department,” he continued. “We want to do what we can to ensure that we give them every opportunity to prove their ability to compete and then seek to leverage that competition to achieve our goals.”
Hegseth, who outlined the overarching changes during an address to industry leaders last Friday, said the department and industrial base need to work together to operate on a “wartime footing,” getting weapons into the hands of service members faster, while also being less risk-averse.
The secretary noted that “Commercial products” will be “the default policy” moving forward.
Hegseth specifically mentioned the delays in getting weapons into the hands of warfighters, saying that they will prioritize an available solution that meets some but not all of the needs, instead of waiting for every need to be met before getting that weapon to service members.
HEGSETH ANNOUNCES WEAPONS ACQUISITIONS OVERHAUL ‘TO OPERATE ON A WARTIME FOOTING’
“We will prioritize the purchase of industry-driven solutions, commercial solutions, first that meet our needs faster. Even if that means bids do not meet every requirement. It means that we will be open to buying the 85% solution and iterate together over time to achieve the 100% solution,” the secretary added.
Another part of Hegseth’s restructuring plan includes shifting the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign military sales cases, from under the undersecretary of war for policy to the undersecretary of war for acquisition and sustainment.
Many defense contractors were in the room for Hegseth’s speech, including primary companies such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, though it also included newer defense startups and major cloud companies such as Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle, according to Defense One.
