Defense & Aerospace Report DEFAERO Strategy Series [Nov 11, 25] Deep Dive in to Sec Hegseth's Acquisition Reforms
Nov 11, 2025
Lt. Gen. Dave Bassett, USA Ret., a seasoned former Defense Contract Management Agency director; Dr. Jerry McGinn, a specialist in industrial mobilization at CSIS; and Steve Grundman, former Pentagon industrial base chief, discuss ambitious acquisition reforms by Secretary Hegseth. They explore accelerating military capabilities, incorporating commercial products, and enhancing second sourcing. The panel also debates the challenges of right to repair, workforce dynamics, and incentivizing industry investments while gauging the future of U.S. arms exports.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Streamline Requirements And Empower Leaders
- Eliminating J-CIDS and simplifying requirements can speed delivery by removing procedural showpieces that add delay.
- Empowering a single leader to make trade-offs lets programs move faster than consensus-driven processes.
Visibility Without Money Limits Impact
- Elevating acquisition reform from OSD draws necessary attention and signals commitment across the department.
- The speech lacked concrete budget and incentive details needed to make industry change their investment behavior.
Standardize Parts To Enable Competition
- Design common interfaces and part commonality to enable multi-sourcing and reduce single‑supplier risks.
- Use second-source buys and standardized parts to build competition across munitions and components.