QUANTICO, VIRGINIA – SEPTEMBER 30: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia. In an unprecedented gathering, almost 800 generals, admirals and their senior enlisted leaders have been ordered into one location from around the world on short notice. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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Tomorrow, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth will address the key leaders of the U.S. defense industry, from the large, old guard contractors like Lockheed Martin to emerging tech firms like Anduril and Palantir.
It’s unclear how much detail Hegseth will provide in the speech itself, but leaks on the administration’s proposed approach provide cause for concern. The overarching goal of the initiative is speed – getting weapons produced for U.S. and foreign forces approved and delivered more quickly. Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has pointed out that speeding up the process will come at a cost:
“What it does not acknowledge is that there’s always an inherent tradeoff between cost, schedule and performance. He [Hegseth] is saying, of those three, I want to prioritize speed. What he’s not saying is ‘I’m willing to accept higher costs and lower performance.”
In addition to the prospects for higher cost and poorer performance, the expedited process could push transfers to foreign clients out the door more quickly as well, raising potential security risks. Under the proposal, the Pentagon’s unit that implements arms sales – the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) – will report to an acquisition official instead of a policy official. As Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center pointed out in a piece for Responsible Statecraft, this bureaucratic shift will likely mean more of a focus on getting weapons approved and out the door and less of a focus on vetting potential recipients for human rights abuses, destabilizing military interventions, or propensity to pass on U.S.-supplied weapons to third parties, as the UAE did when it provided U.S.-supplied arms to extremist militias in Yemen.
Lest one wonder what the balance will be between policy considerations and the rush to push weapons out the door, the proposal’s provision calling for the creation of Portfolio Acquisition Executives, which are described by the industry publication Breaking Defense as follows: “a single official . . . accountable for many interrelated programs, with the ability to shift cash among weapon systems based on performance or schedule considerations.” The PAE’s will receive “incentive compensation” tied to “capability delivery time, competition, and mission outcomes.” Consideration of policy concerns, like whether the proposed client state is a force for stability or chaos, is not considered relevant enough to be taken into account in evaluating, and potentially rewarding, PAEs.
There is a long history of U.S. arms being misused, either through violations of the laws of war in conventional conflicts or through passing U.S. weapons on to extremist militias, criminal gangs, and other groups that often act in ways that are contrary to stated U.S. interests. Prominent examples of nations in conflicts of U.S-supplied weapons ending up in the wrong hands include the capture of U.S.-origin weapons by ISIS and the proliferation of U.S. arms destined for fighting the Taliban to third parties, including Taliban members themselves.
During the Yemen war, a CNN investigation found that the UAE was arming extremist militias in Yemen that engaged in torture of civilians and declared themselves sworn enemies of the United States. Speeding up the process of approving and delivering arms to allies, while reducing regulations that would require a more detailed assessment of how those weapons might be used, could open the door to increased misuse and diversion of U.S.-supplied weapons.
It’s rare that Congress dives into the details of something as arcane as Pentagon acquisition rules, but some members must do so, in the interests of U.S security and the stability of key regions.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2025/11/06/when-it-comes-to-buying-weapons-at-the-pentagon-speed-can-kill/
