Washington, November 13, 2025 – Total News Agency-TNA – U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth launched a political offensive at the National War College in Washington to reorient the Pentagon and the defense industry toward a "wartime" scheme. The goal is to accelerate arms production, reduce bureaucratic controls, and consolidate American military supremacy for the coming decades.
He presented the reforms as a "bureaucratic war of attrition" that the Department of War plans to sustain for years, with executive orders already signed, legislative changes underway, and a reconfiguration of the foreign military sales system to reduce delivery times to allies.
Hegseth announced the creation of a "War Production Unit" to negotiate innovative agreements, expand industrial capacity, and ensure timely deliveries for both U.S. forces and allies and partners acquiring American arms.
Politically, Hegseth framed this entire agenda within President Donald Trump's vision of a "peace based on strength." He stated that the priority will no longer be to meet every administrative requirement, but to deliver fast, tangible results to combatants.
The central axis of his proposal is a thorough transformation of the military procurement system. Hegseth announced the "death" of the current defense acquisition system and its replacement with a "wartime acquisition system," designed to operate at "war speed."
Before senior military leaders and executives of major defense contractors, he warned that the country is experiencing a "moment like 1939" and that, if it wants to avoid an open war, it must now prepare for a large-scale military clash.
In his speech, Hegseth defined the "Pentagon bureaucracy" as the United States' great internal adversary. He promised that the new Pentagon structure will be prepared to fight and win the wars that, he warned, are looming on the horizon.
The principle, he summarized, is clear: increase acquisition risk to reduce the operational risk for deployed troops.
The Secretary of War also sent a direct message to the major defense contractors: if they do not adapt to this new scheme, they will "disappear." He was not targeting people but the system: a web of rules, committees, and procedures that, as he described, wastes resources, discourages innovation, and delays for years the arrival of new capabilities to the battlefield.
Instead, new decision-making bodies will be created to directly link operational priorities, funding, and technological development, with the goal that every invested dollar translates quickly into real combat power and not into plans that never materialize.
Hegseth detailed five major transformations: convert the U.S. industry into a war industrial base focused on speed and volume; unlock the potential of technical and civilian personnel by prioritizing progress over procedures; rewrite the procurement rules to favor existing commercial solutions; raise the technical risk thresholds to accelerate production; and achieve "war speed" as the norm, not the exception.
He demanded that they invest their own capital, instead of relying exclusively on the taxpayer, and accept a tougher competition, with multiple providers for critical systems, performance-based contracts, and proportional penalties for delays and overruns.
This implies radically shortening design, testing, and procurement schedules, accepting greater risks in the acquisition phase, and focusing on putting weapons and systems into the hands of troops long before processes are 100% perfected.
As part of this shift, he confirmed the elimination of the JCIDS, the complex mechanism with which the Pentagon defined requirements and capabilities for new programs, which he accused of advancing "at the speed of paperwork, not of war."
