Warfighting at Warp Speed: Why Defense Contractors Must Track the Department of War’s Acquisition Overhaul

The Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on November 7, 2025, that the U.S. Department of War (DOW) is dropping a game-changing memo: “Transforming the Warfighting Acquisition System to Accelerate Fielding of Capabilities.” This bold blueprint reimagines how defense capabilities are delivered—with speed, agility, and results at the forefront. But with rapid transformation comes turbulence. While the newly branded Warfighting Acquisition System promises thrilling opportunities, it also introduces uncertainty. Defense contractors should stay sharp and informed. Understanding how DOW plans to fast-track contract delivery will be key to thriving in this evolving landscape.

Background

The DOW and the Trump Administration stated time and again that the current system for acquiring and delivering operational capabilities to the warfighter is too slow. The DOW states that sweeping overhaul of its weapons acquisition procedures is designed to address the following three systemic challenges:

1. fragmented accountability where no single leader can make trades between speed, performance, and cost;
2. broken incentives that reward completely satisfying every specific at significant cost to on time delivery; and
3. procurement patterns that disincentivize industry investment, leading to constrained industrial capacity that cannot surge or adapt quickly.

Secretary Hegseth echoed these points in his speech to the National War College, stating “[f]or too long, our Department has been hampered by a bureaucracy, bogged down by burdensome and inefficient processes, paralyzed by impossible risk thresholds and distracted by agendas that have nothing to do with warfighting.” As such, the Under Secretary of War for Acquisitions and Sustainment (USW(A&S)), along with all military departments, were tasked with implementing guidance to immediately remedy such challenges, and as Secretary Hegseth put it, to “unshackle our people from unproductive work, and to shift our resources from the bureaucracy to the battlefield.”

Key Changes

The DOW intends to enact deep transformation. We identify five notable changes below.

1. The DOW intends to push for greater intellectual property rights. When it comes to modular open system architectures, which is a strategy for designing affordable and adaptable systems, portfolio acquisition executives have been granted permission to assert unlimited or government purpose rights to “enable modular competition and continuous system evolution.” It will be interesting to see how the DOW will put this into practice, given the Trump Administration’s stated preference for Commercial Solutions Openings (CSO) and Other Transactions Authority (OTA)—both of which incentivize broader industry participation in government contracts, partly by enabling contractors to negotiate intellectual property rights to their benefit.
2. Contracting Officers (COs) will be more responsible for tangible results. Another key change here is that the USW(A&S) will issue guidance that aligns “contracting officer accountability directly to the portfolio chain of command, ensuring they are embedded with program teams and accountable for mission outcomes rather than compliance metrics.” This marks a shift in the role of COs who will seemingly have their performance evaluated by the successes and failures of an acquisition, holding them more accountable.
3. The DOW intends to increase its use of non-FAR-based instruments. In this memo, the DOW mentioned the newly established Economic Defense Unit, which “will assist the Department in deploying capital in various forms: grants, loans, options, purchase commitments, and investment.” This new unit is poised to play a pivotal role as the DOW shifts toward greater reliance on non-FAR-based instruments, as the USW(A&S) will issue guidance that requires the use of those instruments, including OTAs, whenever feasible and appropriate.
4. The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) will be revamped. Another task for the USW(A&S) is to modernize and transform the DAU, which includes changing its name to the Warfighting Acquisition University (WAU). To effectuate this modernization and transformation, the USW(A&S) is required to prepare options that will make the WAU a “competency-based education institution that identifies and develops high-potential acquisition leaders.”
5. Timely delivery will be clearly incentivized. Lastly, as mentioned in the purpose of the memo, the DOW believes that timely delivery is currently not properly incentivized. So, the upcoming guidance will include “time-indexed incentives for contracts or agreements that reward early delivery and penalize delay proportionally.”

 Key Takeaways

1. The DOW is prioritizing speed over compliance. While the government clearly wants operating systems that its warfighters can use, this memo suggests that DOW is willing to sacrifice perfect compliance if they can field weapon systems faster. This goal is not only established in the purpose of the memo, but by the actual changes, such as the time-indexed incentives mentioned above. Secretary Hegseth even mentioned that the DOW plans to remove “excessive and burdensome” FAR requirements. Therefore, contractors should consult with their counsel about the incentives and penalties that may come with new DOW contracts.
2. There will be greater collaboration between the government and contractors. As COs will soon be more responsible for the results of their contractors, they will likely be more involved with the substance of the contract. Defense contractors should keep this in mind as tensions may rise due to the greater accountability placed on COs, especially with research and development contracts.
3. Contractors should become more familiar with non-FAR-based instruments. After Social Security and Medicare, the DOW consistently has the largest budget in the U.S. government. The Trump Administration’s priorities and the Secretary of War’s memo explaining the new ways the DOW plans to deploy its capital make it clear that there are many opportunities to come in defense acquisition—it is just not clear that those opportunities will be the FAR-based contracts familiar to traditional defense contractors. Therefore, it is vital for contractors to educate themselves on non-FAR-based procurement procedures like CSO, OTA, grants, loans, purchase agreements, etc.

Should you have any questions regarding the Warfighting Acquisition System, FAR or non-FAR procurements, or defense contracts, contact Lauren Brier, Josie Farinelli, or another member of PilieroMazza’s Government Contracts Group. Special thanks to Adel Mansour for assisting with this client alert.

________________

If you’re seeking practical insights to gain a competitive edge by understanding the government’s compliance requirements, tune into PilieroMazza’s podcasts: GovCon Live!, Clocking in with PilieroMazza, and Ex Rel. Radio.