Six-month Iran war puts pressure on the Pentagon’s procurement transformation to meet the ‘1939 moment’
Washington Examiner · RC · trust 53/100
The Iran war, which on Friday hit the six-month mark and has gone on longer than the Trump administration anticipated, has exacerbated the need for the changes to the defense industrial base that Pentagon leaders were already starting to address.
Even prior to the war, which has resulted in the depletion of certain critical munitions, War Secretary Pete Hegseth had initiated a massive transformation to the department’s procurement strategy to meet what he characterized as “a 1939 moment.”
In a speech to industry leaders in November, the secretary told them that the department and the way it operates with defense companies “must transform” because the “Pentagon bureaucracy” is an “adversary that poses a threat, a very serious threat, to the United States of America.”
The department is seeking to reverse decisions made in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War to reduce the size and output from the defense industrial base while also accounting for the growing use of autonomous systems — such as aerial, ground, and surface vessel drones — and the widespread and increasing use of artificial intelligence , which has rapidly reduced the time it takes to gather, synthesize, and understand the intelligence involved in life-or-death decision-making.
“What I need you to know, and I know this is simple for me to say but hard to do, is to go faster. Please go faster,” Gen. Dan Caine , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month at an event in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. “The very character of war is changing.”
The days of a handful of prime defense contractors receiving all of the Pentagon contracts are gone. The administration is trying to ease the burden of entering defense contracting by curtailing prior hurdles and leaning into programs designed for smaller, innovative, non-traditional companies.
“The good news is the pie is growing, so it’s not like the pie is shrinking and the big guys are getting a smaller piece of a smaller pie,” Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told the Washington Examiner . “They’re still getting their piece of a bigger pie because of President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s defense spending proposal.”
Earlier this month, the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, Sebastian Gorka, told drone producers during an event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that “big legacy companies” that can’t meet the moment “will die, like the dinosaurs.”
Hegseth restarted his “arsenal of freedom” tour this week with a visit to Oshkosh Defense in Wisconsin. After touring the plant and test-driving a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, he addressed the plant workers.
Secretary Hegseth and leadership from Oshkosh observe integrated assembly line during facility tour (Business Wire).
Secretary Hegseth and leadership from Oshkosh observe integrated assembly line during facility tour (Business Wire).
“All four years, we’re going to cut red tape and requirements and ridiculous layers that have been added time and time again, year after year, mostly by lawyers of big companies that want to prevent competition,” he said. “We have to tear those barriers down to allow the best companies, America, defense or commercial, large or small, to run as fast as possible.”
The Pentagon has leaned into various opportunities depending on the stages of development the companies’ products are in, including providing them with access to military facilities to test their products and competing for financial infusions. The department is also looking to secure U.S. supply chains and access to critical minerals to ensure there are no vulnerabilities an adversary could exploit during a war.
“I’ve been working on acquisition for 20 years, different facets of it,” Jeb Nadaner, the senior vice president of government relations for Air, a defense acquisition software company, told the Washington Examiner . “Sometimes more on the technical programmatic side, and sometimes more on the government relations side. I would say this is the boldest initiative. It only launched during the first week of November 2025, so we’re not even a full calendar year out of it. The secretary made a really bold move against a lot of traditional entrenched voices in launching this.”
The department announced last month that it issued its latest round of awards under the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program, bringing the total money disbursed to more than $2 billion since the program’s inception in 2022. The program is meant to aid companies that have already completed development and are ready to transition to operational use, reducing procurement timelines.
Soldiers assigned to 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment (1-23 IN), 7th Infantry Division (Multi-Domain Command – Pacific) pilot a one-way Neros Archer First-Person View (FPV) Drone at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., May 20, 2026. This was 1-23 IN’s first infantry platoon-level drone live fire strike validation exercise conducted in support of the Department of War’s directive to achieve total drone dominance. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Taylor Zacherl)
The APFIT program is about “taking the small company with a product that we know that works, helping them scale, and the military service has already said I want it,” Michael said. “So the demand signal’s set, and that’s trying to break down this notion, which I hate talking about, the ‘valley of death.'”
The “valley of death” refers to the historical timeframe between a product’s development and the time it takes for the department to decide to fund it.
Hegseth in December announced the Drone Dominance Program, which is designed to help the Pentagon meet its drone needs. Specifically, the program’s goal is to purchase more than 200,000 drones by 2027. Michael said he has “high confidence” the department will hit that goal. The Pentagon has received 6,480 drones from seven companies so far through this…
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