By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned Friday the Pentagon is revamping how the navy buys weapons, shifting the main focus away from producing superior and complicated expertise and towards merchandise that may be made and delivered shortly.
Hegseth, chatting with navy leaders and protection contractors in Washington, mentioned the “goal is straightforward: remodel your entire acquisition system to function on a wartime footing, to quickly speed up the fielding of capabilities and deal with outcomes.”
Hegseth gave his handle, which ran for greater than an hour, on the Nationwide Struggle Faculty. It delved rather more into navy minutia than a earlier massive speech to a whole bunch of navy leaders abruptly summoned to a base in Virginia, the place he declared an finish to “woke” tradition and introduced “gender-neutral” directives for troops.
Hegseth acknowledged the granularity Friday, saying, “If people are watching this on Fox, their eyes are rolling over.”
The protection secretary argued his modifications are supposed to transfer the navy away from the extra conventional course of that prioritized delivering an ideal, if costly and late, product in favor of one thing that’s much less best however delivered shortly. Some specialists say the modifications may imply much less transparency and the navy ending up with programs that won’t perform as anticipated.
“An 85% answer within the arms of our armed forces in the present day is infinitely higher than an unachievable 100% answer … endlessly present process testing or awaiting extra technological growth,” he mentioned. He asserted that what used to take a number of years may occur inside one.
The shift is coming as Russia’s grinding conflict has seen an underfunded Ukraine utilizing low cost, mass-produced drones to successfully maintain off a technologically superior Moscow, which is armed with superior missiles and a whole bunch of tanks.
“Drones are the most important battlefield innovation in a era, accounting for many of this yr’s casualties in Ukraine,” Hegseth argued in a July memo earlier than declaring that “whereas world navy drone manufacturing skyrocketed during the last three years, the earlier administration deployed pink tape.” That memo lifted some Pentagon restrictions on drone purchases.
Todd Harrison, a protection price range and acquisition knowledgeable on the American Enterprise Institute, mentioned Hegseth’s concepts symbolize a major shift in how the navy would purchase arms.
However he warned that if contractors aren’t incentivized “to examine all of the containers” for every thing the navy desires in a product, “they might ship one thing quicker, however it could not do what you need it to do.”
The way in which the U.S. navy buys weapons and platforms has confronted criticism for numerous causes for many years. In recent times, probably the most well-known instance of the Pentagon’s failure to get the appropriate gear to the entrance line was the scores of troops that died from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan due to poorly armored autos that weren’t designed for the battle.
Then-Protection Secretary Robert Gates used his affect to shortly develop the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Car, or MRAP, by the acquisition course of in beneath a yr.
Hegseth acknowledged the trouble Friday, noting that “your entire course of should transfer on the velocity of … the MRAP.”
Extra just lately, different Pentagon efforts have tried to copy this dynamic to shortly cope with the specter of China invading Taiwan or shortly develop swarms of drones, with blended outcomes.
Hegseth additionally argued that the businesses that promote weapons and platforms to the navy have to “assume danger to accomplice with the US.”
He then took goal on the massive protection contractors, saying the Pentagon will transfer away from the standard system the place there’s restricted competitors to “harness extra of America’s progressive corporations.”
Harrison mentioned dangers are inherent with turning away from conventional contractors — they possess deep experience and are largely publicly traded corporations. Meaning “we now have extra visibility into their liquidity, the steadiness of their firm, their board,” he mentioned.
With the modifications comes a chance for higher fraud and abuse.
”Whereas many of those newer corporations, we now have little or no visibility inside how the corporate works, who owns what, how they make selections — it’s all very opaque,” Harrison mentioned.
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